Abstract

This paper presents an off-line experiment we conducted to investigate theinfluence of referentiality on relative clause (RC) interpretation in BrazilianPortuguese. RCs associated with complex NPs seem to be preferentiallyattached to a referential noun. This referentiality effect can be treated indiscourse terms (Gilboy, Sopena, Clifton & Frazier, 1995) or in syntacticsemanticterms (Bezerra, 2017; this paper). Our questionnaire tested theseapproaches using two types of complex NPs (occupational and kinshipNPs) and the results showed that the syntactic-semantic structure ofthese complex NPs can account for the referentiality effect reported in theliterature by Gilboy et al. (1995). Based on our results, we argue in favorof the syntactic-semantic approach and show that the discourse-orientedapproach lacks explanatory power.

Highlights

  • The ultimate question of the Sentence Processing area is how human beings are able to attribute an interpretation to a sentence

  • The chi-squared results fully support Gilboy et al.’s (1995): in the conditions a non-referential N2 (ANRN2) and BNRN2, in which the N2 is not introduced by an overt determiner, there was a preference for N1 modification; and in the conditions a referential N2 (ARN2) and BRN2, in which both the N1 and the N2 are introduced by an overt determiner, there was not a significant difference in the number of N1 and N2 responses, showing that both nouns were available for the relative clause

  • These results are in line with what we expected, except for the result of the condition BNRN2: in the condition ANRN2 the preference for N1 modification would be motivated by the fact that it corresponds to the simpler analysis available, since modifying the N2 would imply a revision of the syntactic-semantic analysis attributed to the N2 from a more generic reading towards a more specific one; in the conditions ARN2 and BRN2, we would predict that both nouns would be available in syntactic-semantic terms for the relative clause; in the condition BNRN2, we were expecting a preference for N2 modification, since the N2 seems to carry a more specific reading, asking for a restrictive modification that would support it

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Summary

Introduction

The ultimate question of the Sentence Processing area is how human beings are able to attribute an interpretation to a sentence. Along with a solid body of experimental and theorical research on sentence processing (Frazier & Fodor, 1978; Frazier, 1979; Frazier & Rayner, 1982; Frazier, 1987; Frazier, 1990; Frazier & Clifton, 1996, 1997), that the process of interpretation is preceded by the development of a syntactic representation – the parser, a syntactic processor, is responsible for attributing a syntactic representation to the linguistic input, based on which an interpretation can be achieved.

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