Relative Clause Processing: Evidence from Russian
Iya Khelm Price, Jeffrey Witzel
University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA
iya.khelm@mavs.uta.edu
This asymmetry between the processing of object-extracted and subject-extracted relative
clauses (RCs; SRCs and ORCs), where the ORCs are more difficult, has been explained in
terms of structural expectations (Levy, 2008), memory-based integration effects (Gibson,
2000), and differences in the difficulty of extracting from subject and object positions in the
RC (Lin & Bever, 2006). In many languages, word order differences between SRCs and ORCs
make it difficult to test among these accounts. Russian allows SRCs and ORCs to have the
same linear word order (with case-marking distinguishing between the RC types).
The present study (N=32) tested SRC and ORC sentences in a self-paced reading task. These
sentences were compared with corresponding complement clause (CC) sentences that do not involve
extracted NPs and provide a baseline for integration costs at the RC verb. Linear word order in the
embedded clause (RC or CC) was held constant across conditions. According to frequency counts
from the Russian National Corpus, this was the dispreferred word order in all but the ORC Control
condition. In order to compare comprehension accuracy among the sentence types, questions related to
the embedded clause followed each item.
In line with the surprisal effects, reading times (RTs) at the first embedded-clause NP
were longer in sentences with dispreferred word orders. RTs at the embedded-clause
verb were longer in SRC and ORC sentences than in their respective controls, and the
strength of this integration effect was comparable for both RC types. However,
comprehension accuracy was significantly lower for ORC sentences than for any other
sentence type. This suggests that while comparable sources of difficulty influence the
online processing of both SRCs and ORCs, only ORCs cause persistent comprehension
problems.
Keywords:
relative clause, processing, Russian