Abstract
This chapter explores the issue of garden-path in the comprehension of head-final relative clauses (particularly in Chinese and Japanese). Experimental data from two self-paced reading studies in Chinese are compared, showing the existence of a main-clause garden-path effect on the object-extracted relative clause modifying the object of the matrix clause. Different approaches adopted to indicate an upcoming relative clause (and thus to avoid a potential garden-path effect) are evaluated, including using internal relative-clause markers, classifier-noun mismatches, relativization-inducing contexts and providing specific instructions on the existence and position of relative clauses in the matrix clauses. The garden-path effect associated with a relative clause can be avoided by using a classifier-noun mismatch along with a carefully constructed referential context. Experiments giving specific instructions on the existence of relative clauses can also diminish the garden-path effect.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
REL stands for “relativizer.” HN stands for “head noun.” CL stands for “classifier.” Relative clauses involving subject extractions are abbreviated as SRCs; those involving object extractions as ORCs.
- 2.
In a sentence completion task, Hsu et al. (2005) found NV fragments predominantly solicited main-clause completions. See also Chapter 14 (Ng & Fodor) of this volume on the interpretation of empty categories in Chinese in relation to the left-edge ambiguity in head-final structures and its interplay with the existence of a plausible referent in the contexts.
- 3.
In this chapter, we focus on garden path associated with canonical relative clauses, namely simple relative clauses that involve subject or object extractions. Lin (2006, Experiment 5) investigated “movement-induced” garden path in head-final relative clauses, where topicalization inside a subject relative clause produces an apparent NVN sequence and an unrecoverable garden-path effect:
[nanyoui fangqiguo haoji wei ti] de nyuyanyuan conglai bu juede houhui
boyfriend abandoned many CL REL actress always not feel regretful
N V N
‘The actress who has abandoned many boyfriends never felt regretful.’
- 4.
Experiment 2 cited in this article was first reported in Lin and Bever (2006).
- 5.
Even though the reading time on the head noun in the object-modifying object relatives was long (over 1400 ms), the comprehension accuracies were over 95% and did not differ across conditions (Experiment 2: SRC-S modification 97%, ORC-S modification 95%, SRC-O modification 97%, ORC-O modification 96%), suggesting that after reanalysis, the parser was able to reach similar comprehension accuracies regardless of the garden path. Note also the possibility that the long reading time on this position may be due to the end-of-sentence wrap-up effect, thus enlarging the differences.
- 6.
Note that the study of Lin and Garnsey (this volume), which used topicalized object-modifying relative clauses with the head nouns missing, was additionally complicated by a garden-path effect. When the head nouns of these topicalized relative clauses were omitted, the subjects of the matrix clauses, which now follow these object-modifying relative clauses, can be taken as the missing head nouns. It is unlikely that the participants came to the correct parse since the only cues were matrix clauses with objects missing (which is not uncommon in Chinese). In their Experiment 2, where inanimate matrix subjects were used to help disambiguate, it is still unclear whether participants have successfully constructed a relative clause with head nouns omitted. Lin (2006, Experiment 5), for example, showed that animacy is not sufficient to indicate the existence of a relative clause. It is also noteworthy that relative clauses with missing head nouns are best motivated by contexts that supplied the missing heads. In Lin and Garnsey’s study, however, no context was provided.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Hsu et al. surmised that the longer reading times on the true head nouns in the mismatching condition may be due to the larger integration cost between a distant classifier and the real matching head noun in (16).
- 10.
Givón (1993, p. 108) summarized the referential properties of Restrictive Relative Clauses (RRCs) in terms of “referent tracking strategies” as the following:
-
a.
The speaker assumes that a certain state or event is known, familiar or mentally accessible to the hearer.
-
b.
The proposition corresponding to that familiar state/event is thus pragmatically presupposed.
-
c.
The referent to be identified is a participant – subject, direct object, indirect object, etc. – in the state or event coded in the proposition.
-
d.
The familiar proposition thus helps guide the hearer toward identifying the referent in his/her mentally stored knowledge. It grounds the referent in the hearer’s knowledge-base.
-
e.
The proposition used for such grounding is coded syntactically as a RRC.
-
a.
- 11.
The information status inside sentences with relative clauses also matters. Gibson et al. (2005) compared relative clauses that appeared early (e.g., modifying the subject of the matrix clause) and those that appeared late (e.g., modifying the object of the matrix clause) in a sentence. They showed that relative clauses are read with greater ease when they appear early in the sentence. The propositional content inside the relative clause serves as grounding information within the sentence, referring to knowledge already present in text or new information that is not likely to be challenged (i.e., Givón’s pragmatic definition of a restrictive relative clause). As relative clauses serve to ground the referent as old information in the sentence, they tend to appear early, e.g., in the subject position.
- 12.
Hsu and Chen (2007) adopted similar contexts and are subject to similar problems as those discussed below.
- 13.
See Lin and Bever (2006) for critiques on the object-extraction advantage reported by Hsiao & Gibson (2003). Lin and Bever argued that the reported advantage resulted from nested dependencies being more difficult than serial dependencies. In a self-paced reading experiment focusing on doubly-embedded relative clauses (Lin & Bever, 2007), it was demonstrated that the effect of dependency types (nested dependencies being harder than serial dependencies) actually contributed to the advantage of object extractions reported by Hsiao and Gibson.
- 14.
The participants were provided with examples of relative clauses in the instructions. All the sentences with subject-modifying relative clauses were presented in one block. All sentences with object-modifying relative clauses were presented in a separate block. Sentences with single layers of relative clauses and those with double layers of relative clauses were tested separately.
References
Abney, S. P. (1989). A computational model of human parsing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18, 51–60.
Bader, M., & Lasser, I. (1994). German verb-final clauses and sentence processing: Evidence for immediate attachment. Hillsdale, NJ and England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bever, T. G. (1970). Cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In J. R. Hayes (Ed.), Cognition and the development of language (pp. 279–362). New York: Wiley.
Chiu, B. (1995). An object clitic projection in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 4, 77–117.
Cohen, L., & Mehler, J. (1996). Click monitoring revisited: An on-line study of sentence comprehension Memory and Cognition, 24, 94–102.
Crain, S., & Steedman, M. (1985). On not being led up the garden path: The use of context by the psychological parser. In D. R. Dowty, L. Karttunen & A. M. Zwicky (Eds.), Natural language parsing: Psychological, computational, and theoretical perspectives (pp. 320–358). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ferreira, F. (2003). The misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 47, 164–203.
Ford, M. (1983). A method for obtaining measures of local parsing complexity throughout sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 203–218.
Frauenfelder, U., Segui, J., & Mehler, J. (1980). Monitoring around the relative clause. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 328–337.
Frazier, L. (1987a). Sentence processing: A tutorial review. In M. Coltheart (Ed.), Attention and performance XII: The psychology of reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Frazier, L. (1987b). Syntactic processing: Evidence from Dutch. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 5, 519–559.
Frazier, L., & d’Arcais, F. G. (1989). Filler-driven parsing: A study of gap-filling in Dutch. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 331–344.
Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68, 1–76.
Gibson, E., Desmet, T., Grodner, D., Watson, D., & Ko, K. (2005). Reading relative clauses in English. Cognitive Linguistics, 16, 313–353.
Givón, T. (1993). English grammar: A function-based introduction (Vol. 2). Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Philadelphia, PA.: John Benjamins.
Gouvea, A. C. (2003). Processing syntactic complexity: Cross-linguistic differences and ERP evidence. College Park, MD: University of Maryland.
Hirose, Y. (2006). Processing relative clauses in Japanese: Coping with multiple ambiguities. In M. Nakayama, R. Mazuka & Y. Shirai (Eds.), The handbook of East Asian psycholinguistics, Volume II: Japanese (pp. 264–269). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holmes, V. M., & O’Regan, J. K. (1981). Eye fixation patterns during the reading of relative-clause sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 417–430.
Hsiao, F., & Gibson, E. (2003). Processing relative clauses in Chinese. Cognition, 90, 3–27.
Hsu, C.-C. N., & Chen, J.-Y. (2007). A new look at the subject-object asymmetry: The effects of linear distance and structural distance on the processing of head-final relative clauses in Chinese. Paper presented at the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Relative Clauses (REL07), Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
Hsu, C.-C. N., Hurewitz, F., & Phillips, C. (2006). Contextual and syntactic cues for processing head-final relative clauses in Chinese. Paper presented in the 19th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York: City University of New York.
Hsu, C,-C. N., Phillips, C., & Yoshida, M. (2005). Cues for head-final relative clauses in Chinese. Poster presented at the 18th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.
Ishizuka, T. (2005). Processing relative clauses in Japanese. UCLA working papers in Psycholinguistics, 2, 135–157.
Ishizuka, T., Nakatani, K., & Gibson, E. (2006). Processing Japanese relative clauses in context. Paper presented at the 19th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, CUNY Graduate Center, New York.
Kang, S., & Speer, S. R. (2003). Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic clause boundaries in Korean. In G. Garding & M. Tsujimura (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.
Kang, S., Speer, S. R., & Nakayama. M. (2004). Effects of prosodic boundaries on ambiguous syntactic clause boundaries in Japanese. Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing Proceedings, Jeju, Korea.
King, J., & Just, M. A. (1991). Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 580–602.
King, J. W., & Kutas, M. (1995). Who did what and when? Using word- and clause-level ERPs to monitor working memory usage in reading. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 376–395.
Kwon, N., Polinsky, M., & Kluender, R. (2004). Processing of relative clause sentences in Korean. Poster presented at Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP).
Kwon, N., Polinsky, M., & Kluender, R. (2006). Subject preference in Korean. In D. Baumer, D. Montero & M. Scanlon (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 1–14). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Lin, J-W. (2003). On restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese. Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Studies, New Series, 33, 199–240.
Lin, C.-J. C. (2006). Grammar and parsing: A typological investigation of relative-clause processing. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Lin, C.-J. C. (2008). Distinguishing linguistic and processing explanations of grammar. Manuscript. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.
Lin, C.-J. C. (2009a). Chinese relative clauses in corpus: Processing considerations. Paper presented at the 2009 International Conference on Applied Linguistics & Language Teaching (ALLT), Taipei, April 16–18, 2009.
Lin, C.-J. C. (2009b). Thematic patterns and comprehending Chinese relative clauses in context. Talk given at Southern Taiwan Psycholinguistic Circle, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan, June 5, 2009.
Lin, C.-J. C., & Bever, T. G. (2006). Subject preference in the processing of relative clauses in Chinese. In D. Baumer, D. Montero & M. Scanlon (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 254–260). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Lin, C.-J. C., & Bever, T. G. (2007). Processing doubly-embedded head-final relative clauses. Poster presented at Interdisciplinary Approaches to Relative Clauses (REL07), Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
Lin, Y., & Garnsey, S. M. (this volume). Animacy and the resolution of temporary ambiguity in relative clause comprehension in Mandarin. In H. Yamashita, Y. Hirose & J. Packard (Eds.), Processing and producing head-final structures. Berlin: Springer.
Mak, W. M., Vonk, W., & Schriefers, H. (2002). The influence of animacy on relative clause processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 50–68.
Mecklinger, A., Schriefers, H., Steinhauer, K., & Friederici, A. D. (1995). Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials. Memory and Cognition, 23, 477–494.
Miyamoto, E. T. (2002). Case markers as clause boundary inducers in Japanese. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31(4), 307–347.
Miyamoto, E. T., & Nakamura, M. (2003). Subject/object asymmetries in the processing of relative clauses in Japanese. In G. Garding & M. Tsujimura (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd west coast conference on formal linguistics (pp. 342–355). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Ng, S., & Fodor, J. D. (this volume). Use your headedness: An exercise in psycholinguistic exploitation. In H. Yamashita, Y. Hirose & J. Packard (Eds.), Processing and producing head-final structures. Berlin: Springer.
O'Grady, W. (1997). Syntactic development. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Packard, J., Ye, Z., & Zhou, X. (this volume). Filler-gap processing in Mandarin relative clauses: Evidence from event-related potentials. In H. Yamashita, Y. Hirose & J. Packard (Eds.), Processing and producing head-final structures. Dordrecht: Springer.
Pritchett, B. L. (1991). Head position and parsing ambiguity. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 20, 251–270.
Pritchett, B. L. (1992). Grammatical competence and parsing performance. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Qiao, X., & Forster, K. I. (2008). Object relatives ARE easier than subject relatives in Chinese. Poster presented at the 14th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP).
Schriefers, H., Friederici, A. D., & Kuhn, K. (1995). The processing of locally ambiguous relative clauses in German. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 499–520.
Ting, J. (2003). The nature of the particle suo in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 12, 121–139.
Townsend, D. J., & Bever, T. G. (2001). Sentence comprehension: The integration of habits and rules. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Traxler, M. J., Morris, R. K., & Seely, R. E. (2002). Processing subject and object relative clauses: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 69–90.
Ueno, M., & Garnsey, S. M. 2008. An ERP study of the processing of subject and object relative clauses in Japanese. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 646–688.
Wu, H. I., & Gibson, E. 2008. Processing Chinese relative clauses in context. Poster presented at the 21th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Wu, F., Kaiser, E., & Andersen, E. (this volume). Subject preference, head animacy, and lexical cues: A corpus study of relative clauses in Chinese. In H. Yamashita, Y. Hirose & J. Packard (Eds.), Processing and producing head-final structures. Dordrecht: Springer.
Yoshida, M., Aoshima, S., & Phillips, C. (2004). Relative clause prediction in Japanese. Paper presented at the 17th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, College Park, MD.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to participants at the International Conference on Processing Head-Final Structures at Rochester Institute of Technology, for their comments and discussions and especially to the organizers/editors and reviewers for their valuable suggestions on previous versions of this chapter. We also thank Natalie Hsu for useful discussions. Research hereby presented has been supported by research grants from the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC 95-2411-H-003-056 & NSC 96-2411-H-003-035). Research assistance from Paul Chang, Li-Hsin Ning and Larry Hong-Lin Li is gratefully acknowledged.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lin, CJ.C., Bever, T.G. (2010). Garden Path and the Comprehension of Head-Final Relative Clauses. In: Yamashita, H., Hirose, Y., Packard, J. (eds) Processing and Producing Head-final Structures. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 38. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9213-7_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-9212-0
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-9213-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)