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Updated: Jun 11, 2025
08:32
Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
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Discourse-based constraints on long-distance dependencies generalize across constructions in English and French.
Elodie Winckel1, Anne Abeillé2, Barbara Hemforth2
1Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Cognition
|September 28, 2024
Summary
The Focus-Background Conflict constraint accurately predicts sentence acceptability for long-distance dependencies in English and French. This study confirms its predictions for it-cleft constructions, showing they are harder than relative clauses.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Psycholinguistics
- Syntax
Background:
- Syntactic theories often struggle to explain variations in acceptability for long-distance dependencies.
- The Focus-Background Conflict constraint offers an alternative explanation based on information structure.
- Previous research has not experimentally tested this constraint on it-cleft constructions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate novel predictions of the Focus-Background Conflict constraint.
- To investigate the acceptability of long-distance dependencies in English and French it-clefts.
- To compare the Focus-Background Conflict constraint's predictions across different constructions (it-clefts vs. relative clauses).
Main Methods:
- Four acceptability judgment experiments were conducted.
- Participants rated the grammatical acceptability of sentences with long-distance dependencies.
- Data were analyzed to compare acceptability across constructions and languages.
Main Results:
- Experiment 1 demonstrated that elements in clefted clauses are not uniformly backgrounded.
- Experiments 2-4 revealed a significant cross-construction difference in acceptability.
- Extraction from subject NPs in it-clefts was significantly more difficult than in relative clauses.
Conclusions:
- The Focus-Background Conflict constraint's predictions are supported by experimental data for it-clefts.
- It-clefts exhibit unique processing difficulties not observed in relative clauses.
- The findings highlight the importance of information structure in explaining syntactic acceptability.
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