Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007) observed that uninterpretable features are unavailable in second language (L2) acquisition after the critical period. In this paper, we verify this claim by providing evidence from Persian speaking learners of English as an L2 on the status of resumptive pronouns (RPs) as uniterpretable features. Unlike English which does not allow RPs, Persian shows various b...

This paper reports results from a self-paced reading study in Chinese that demonstrates that object-extracted relative clause structures are less complex than corresponding subject-extracted structures. These results contrast with results from processing other Subject-Verb-Object languages like English, in which object-extracted structures are more complex than subject-extracted structures. A k...

Object relative clauses (as in 1b) are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses (1a) (King and Just, 1991). Dependency Locality Theory (DLT; Gibson, 2000) accounts for this effect in terms of long-distance dependencies: The integration cost at in (1a) is lower than at in (1b) because just one argument () needs to be integrated in (1a), whereas in (1b), two arguments (chairman and...

In Bach and Cooper (1978) a semantics is proposed for adjoined relative clauses in Hittite and for the NP S analysis of English relatives within the general framework of Montague (1974). The aim of their analysis is to show that a potentially serious set of counterexamples to the compositionality thesis the thesis that the interpretation of a construction is a function of the interpretations of...

Chinese relative clauses are an important test case for pitting the predictions of expectation-based accounts against those of memory-based theories. The memory-based accounts predict that object relatives should be easier to process than subject relatives because, in object relatives, less linguistic material intervenes between the head noun and the gap (or verb) that it associates with. By co...

Studies on the acquisition, production and comprehension of relative clauses have been increasing dramatically in recent decades. Various models proposed to explain mechanism dynamics clauses. The complex nature has challenging linguists cognitive scientists. However, one commonalities these is that object are harder process, comprehend produce than subject This study aimed focus adult learners...