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Processing Chinese relative clauses: evidence for the subject-relative advantage
Shravan Vasishth1, Zhong Chen, Qiang Li
1Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany ; School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
Plos One
|October 8, 2013
Summary
Subject relative clauses are generally easier to process than object relatives. However, recent studies on Chinese suggest the opposite, but our meta-analysis of fifteen studies confirms a strong subject-relative advantage in language processing.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Subject relative clauses are typically easier to process than object relative clauses in language.
- Recent studies on Chinese language processing have challenged this by suggesting object relatives may be easier.
Purpose of the Study:
- To replicate findings suggesting object relatives are easier in Chinese.
- To determine the overall evidence for subject-relative versus object-relative clause processing in Chinese.
Main Methods:
- Conducted three self-paced reading experiments to test relative clause processing.
- Performed a random-effects Bayesian meta-analysis of fifteen studies, including the new experiments.
Main Results:
- Two of the three new experiments found a subject-relative preference.
- The meta-analysis revealed strong evidence supporting a subject-relative advantage (78-80% probability).
Conclusions:
- The findings challenge retrieval/integration-based explanations for relative clause processing.
- The role of retrieval/integration costs in Chinese relative clause processing is limited.
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