Processing as a Source of Accessibility Effects on Variation

Abstract

A variety of factors are known to influence relativizer likelihood (see, inter alia Biber et al. 1999; Fox and Thompson in review; Tagliamonte, Smith, and Lawrence 2005; Temperley 2003; Tottie 1995). We present new evidence that the conceptual accessibility (Bock and Warren 1985:50) of an NSRC’s subject affects relativizer likelihood: The more accessible the referent of a NSRC’s subject is in working memory, the less likely the NSRC is to have a relativizer. We link this finding to research on the production and comprehension of relative clauses, and so integrate the observed accessibility effect into a uniform processing account of relativizer variation (Race and MacDonald 2003; Jaeger and Wasow 2005). In Section 1, we show that relativizer omission is sensitive to the derived accessibility (Prat-Sala and Branigan 2000) of the NSRC’s subject – that is, the subject referent's salience/givenness in discourse. In Section 2, we outline a processing-based account of the observed effects. In Section 3, we show that relativizer variation is also affected by the inherent accessibility of the NSRC’s subject, specifically number and referentiality. Section 4 concludes with the consequences for future research and a brief summary of the observed effects.