It has been proposed that cognitive processing effort at each word in a sentence depends on the amount of information conveyed by the word. Indeed, two formal measures of word information (surprisal and entropy reduction) correlate with reading times on words in general texts. If word information also accounts for psycholinguistic phenomena that have been taken as evidence for particular cognit...

Abstract This typological study based on data from a parallel text corpus is two-step investigation of selectives (“topic markers”). First, set in 81 languages all continents compiled the basis their occurrence with emphatic personal pronouns contrast constructions. In second step, it explored how this markers used across 19 subordinate clause domains. The results indicate that, despite much cr...

Broadly speaking, subject relative clauses are easier to understand than object relative clauses (Wanner & Maratsos, 1978, Ford, 1983, Holmes & O'Regan, 1981, among many others). This can be demonstrated by a variety of methods that measure the speed and accuracy with which sentences containing relative clauses are processed. As an example, compare (1a), which contains a subject relative clause...

For several languages, a preference for subject relative clauses over object relative clauses has been reported. However, Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers (2002) showed that there is no such preference for relative clauses with an animate subject and an inanimate object. A Dutch object relative clause as . . .de rots, die de wandelaars beklommen hebben. . . (‘the rock, that the hikers climbed’) did no...

This paper is concerned with a particular kind of Korean relative clause constructions that contain possessive specifier gaps, as opposed to complement or adjunct gaps. Those relative clauses have been known to violate Ross's Complex NP Constraint, and various attempts have been made to account for the apparent island violations. This paper argues that those relative clauses have possessive spe...

The detection of a gap in relative clauses is essential in syntactic and semantic analysis of natural language processing. This paper proposes automatic relative clause classification method based on various machine learning algorithms, and compare the classification performances of relative clauses. We use easily obtainable features that can be extracted from any language. We also analyze the ...

This paper studies two aspects of movement in relative clauses, focusing on evidence from Nez Perce. First, I argue that relativization involves cyclic A’ movement, even in monoclausal relatives: the relative operator moves to Spec,CP via an intermediate position in an A’ outer specifier of TP. The core arguments draw on word order, complementizer choice, and a pattern of case attraction for re...

This paper develops a compositional vector-based semantics of relative pronouns within a categorical framework. Frobenius algebras are used to formalise the operations required to model the semantics of relative pronouns, including passing information between the relative clause and the modified noun phrase, as well as copying, combining, and discarding parts of the relative clause. We develop ...

This paper develops a compositional vector-based semantics of subject and object relative pronouns within a categorical framework. Frobenius algebras are used to formalise the operations required to model the semantics of relative pronouns, including passing information between the relative clause and the modified noun phrase, as well as copying, combining, and discarding parts of the relative ...