An eye tracking study investigated the effects of local and global discourse context on the processing of subject and object relative clauses, whereby the contexts favored either a subject relative clause interpretation or an object relative clause interpretation. The fixation data replicated previous studies showing that object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than subj...

The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animat...

It is well known that sentences containing object-extracted relative clauses (e.g., The reporter that the senator attacked admitted the error) are more difficult to comprehend than sentences containing subject-extracted relative clauses (e.g., The reporter that attacked the senator admitted the error). Two major accounts of this phenomenon make different predictions about where, in the course o...

This study explored the comprehension and production of sentences derived by syntactic movement, in orally trained school-age Hebrew-speaking children with moderate to profound hearing impairment, aged 7;8-9;9 years. Experiments 1 and 2 tested the comprehension of relative clauses and topicalization sentences (with word orders of OVS [object, verb, subject] and OSV [object, subject, verb]) usin...

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a significant difference in the use of syntactic and semantic information, or the combination of both in Chinese learners’ processing strategies of English subject and object relative clauses. It also aims at determining whether a relationship exists in Chinese speakers’ L1 and L2 processing strategies. Thirty three advanced and 27 le...

In this chapter, we examine the typology of relative clauses. We will define relative clauses as follows: (1) A relative clause (RC) is a subordinate clause which delimits the reference of an NP by specifying the role of the referent of that NP in the situation described by the RC. Since the NP whose reference is being delimited is in the matrix clause, we will call it NP mat , and we will call...