Another word on parsing relative clausesEyetracking evidence from Spanish and English

Manuel Carreiras & Charles Clifton, Jr.

Universal Parsing Strategies?

Preference for the simplest interpretation Minimal attachment strategy (Frazier, 1979, 1987)

• Not postulating any unnecessary nodes Late closure

• Attach new items into clause/phrase currently processing

Are these strategies universal? Cuetos & Mitchell (1988) – late closure fails to apply

in Spanish to parsing of RCs preceded by complex NPs

1. Someone shot the female servant of the actress who was on the balcony

Universal Parsing Strategies?

Preference for the simplest interpretation Minimal attachment strategy (Frazier, 1979, 1987)

• Not postulating any unnecessary nodes Late closure

• Attach new items into clause/phrase currently processing

Are these strategies universal? Cuetos & Mitchell (1988) – late closure fails to apply

in Spanish to parsing of RCs preceded by complex NPs1. Someone shot the female servant of the actress who

was on the balcony

Universal Parsing Strategies?

Preference for the simplest interpretation Minimal attachment strategy (Frazier, 1979, 1987)

• Not postulating any unnecessary nodes Late closure

• Attach new items into clause/phrase currently processing

Are these strategies universal? Cuetos & Mitchell (1988) – late closure fails to apply

in Spanish to parsing of RCs preceded by complex NPs1. Someone shot the female servant of the actress who

was on the balcony

Universal Parsing Strategies?

Preference for the simplest interpretation Minimal attachment strategy (Frazier, 1979, 1987)

• Not postulating any unnecessary nodes Late closure

• Attach new items into clause/phrase currently processing

Are these strategies universal? Cuetos & Mitchell (1988) – late closure fails to apply in

Spanish to parsing of RCs preceded by complex NPs1. Someone shot the female servant of the actress who was

on the balcony2. Alguien disparó contra la criada de la actriz que estaba en

el balcón

Universal Parsing Strategies?

Preference for the simplest interpretation Minimal attachment strategy (Frazier, 1979, 1987)

• Not postulating any unnecessary nodes Late closure

• Attach new items into clause/phrase currently processing

Are these strategies universal? Cuetos & Mitchell (1988) – late closure fails to apply in

Spanish to parsing of RCs preceded by complex NPs1. Someone shot the female servant of the actress who was

on the balcony2. Alguien disparó contra la criada de la actriz que estaba en

el balcón

Universal Parsing Strategies?

Preference for the simplest interpretation Minimal attachment strategy (Frazier, 1979, 1987)

• Not postulating any unnecessary nodes Late closure

• Attach new items into clause/phrase currently processing

Are these strategies universal? Cuetos & Mitchell (1988) – late closure fails to apply in

Spanish to parsing of RCs preceded by complex NPs1. Someone shot the female servant of the actress who was

on the balcony2. Alguien disparó contra la criada de la actriz que estaba en

el balcón

Universal Parsing Strategies?

Differences across other languages? In Spanish, French, German, and Dutch, the head of

the complex NP (N1) is preferred as the subject of the RC

• See Carreiras & Clifton (1999), p. 827 for complete list Italian readers initially prefer N2 as the agent

• DeVincenzi & Job, 1993, 1995 As other studies have shown, English readers either

prefer N2 as the agent of the RC or show no preference

• Carreiras & Clifton, 1993; Henstra, 1996

Universal Parsing Strategies?

An experimental artifact? Gilboy & Sopena (1996) - Segmentation

• Obtained preference for high attachment of N1 to RC only with large segmentation

• La policía arrestó a la hermana del criado/que dio a luz recientemente a dos gemelos

• The police arrested the sister of the handyman/who recently gave birth to twins

• No effects were found for small segmentation (splitting RC into two displays)

• La policía arrestó/a la hermana/del criado/que dio a luz recientemente a dos gemelos

• The police arrested/the sister/of the handyman/who recently gave birth to twins

• Conclusion: N1 preferences only arise when a particular segmentation (large) allows for characteristics of prosodic patterns to appear

Purpose

Two-fold:1. Whether N1 preference in Spanish is a byproduct of

segmentation or an underlying property of the language

2. Whether native English and native Spanish readers resolve ambiguity of attachment of RCs preceded by NPs in different ways for the same sentences

Examined performances for ambiguous structures of the type: N1 of N2 RC

Three eye-movement studies:1. Experiments 1&2: conducted in Spanish2. Experiment 3: conducted in English

Experiment 1

Subjects 44 undergraduate students

Apparatus Sentences were presented in lowercase letters on a

monitor which displayed up to 80 characters per line

Eye movements were monitored by a Dual Purkinje Eyetracker

Experiment 1

Design 16 sentences (English/Spanish) which contained a

complex NP (N1 de N2) followed by an RC intermixed with 144 other filler sentences

RC attachment was disambiguated by gender information

Experiment 1

Results (First-Pass Times) No significant effects for:

1. First-pass times at CR• Those disambiguated toward high attachment were

numerically faster

2. Masculine and feminine hosts3. Interaction between type of host and type of

disambiguation

Experiment 1

Results (Total time) Ss read CRs more rapidly when disambiguating

toward high attachment (N1) Sentences requiring feminine hosts for

disambiguation were read faster than those with masculine hosts

Conclusion: high attachment preferences are REAL

Experiment 2

Purpose High attachment was numerically present only when

disambiguating part of the RC required a masculine antecedent

• May be that more masculine than feminine RCs contained disambiguating morphology

Wanted to examine different sentences, all of which were disambiguated morphologically by gender

Experiment 2

Results (First-pass) No significant effects for:

• Type of disambiguation closure• Type of host• Interaction between disambiguation and host

Results (Total time) Regions disambiguating toward high attachment (N1)

were read faster than those toward low attachment (N2) Conclusion: effect not restricted to a particular gender

Experiment 3

Purpose Determine whether English readers have a bias to

interpret an RC as modifying the most recent noun (N2)

Method Subjects: 36 undergraduate students Same apparatus and design as Experiment 1

Experiment 3

Results (First-Pass) Ss read the CR faster when disambiguated toward

low attachment (N2) No significant effects for type of host or interaction

Results (Total Time) Low attachment disambiguations (N2) were read

faster than high attachment ones (N1)

Conclusions

Spanish readers have a modest preference for interpreting an RC as modifying NP1 and is not a consequence of segmentation

American English readers show a preference for low attachment of an RC to N2, although this result has not always been found

Implications

Why do the 2 languages differ?1. Spanish does not violate closure (Cuetos & Mitchell,

1988) Low attachment is an expression of a universal

processing principle, such as late closure, which is overridden by certain constructions of other languages

2. Tuning hypothesis (Mitchell & Cuetos, 1991) Initial resolution of structural ambiguities is

determined by the frequency with which alternative disambiguations are encountered

3. Predicate-proximity/Recency (Gibson, et al., 1996) Initial preferences are guided by weights of

parameters, that may differ among languages: Predicate proximity (attach to head of predicate) Recency (attach to most recent site)

Implications

Why do the 2 languages differ?1. Existence of the Saxon genitive (‘s)

Limits late closure to primary phrases (e.g. the colonel’s daughter who was on the porch)

If a speaker wanted to express high attachment, he or she would use the ‘s form

2. Pronoun interpretation (Hemforth, Konieczny, & Scheepers) RCs are associate in languages such as German by

default with the most salient available host (generally N1, the head of the complex NP and argument of main predicate)

In English, the word that is often used to introduce RCs, causing RCs to be treated less like pronouns and more like complement phrases (obeying late closure)

Implications

Why do the 2 languages differ?1. Heavy RCs

RCs are generally heavy, and prefer a relatively large host phrase

High attachment makes the N1 of N2 phrase the host (closer in size to typical RC than just N2 alone)

In English, because the word that is often phonologically reduced, it is absorbed into the preceding prosodic phrase

Thus, N2 is relatively heavier and the RC is correspondingly less heavy, encouraging their attachment