Abstract
The present corpus study aimed to examine whether Basque (OV) resorts more often than Spanish (VO) to certain grammatical operations, in order to minimize the number of arguments to be processed before the verb. Ueno & Polinsky (2009) argue that VO/OV languages use certain grammatical resources with different frequencies in order to facilitate real-time processing. They observe that both OV and VO languages in their sample (Japanese, Turkish and Spanish) have a similar frequency of use of subject pro-drop; however, they find that OV languages (Japanese, Turkish) use more intransitive sentences than VO languages (English, Spanish), and conclude this is an OV-specific strategy to facilitate processing. We conducted a comparative corpus study of Spanish (VO) and Basque (OV). Results show (a) that the frequency of use of subject pro-drop is higher in Basque than in Spanish; and (b) Basque does not use more intransitive sentences than Spanish; both languages have a similar frequency of intransitive sentences. Based on these findings, we conclude that the frequency of use of grammatical resources to facilitate the processing does not depend on a single typological trait (VO/OV) but it is modulated by the concurrence of other grammatical features.
Highlights
A central question in contemporary linguistic theory is to what extent the properties of language result from conditions imposed by processing demands
The present paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the interplay between grammar and the conditions imposed by the externalization of linguistic expressions, and it does so by exploring the hypothesis that facilitation of processing in real time guides the preferences with which languages with different basic word orders resort to certain grammatical phenomena
In Spanish, pro-drop is used in 42.5% of transitive sentences compared to 28.8% in intransitive sentences [X2 (I) = 28.626, p < .001]
Summary
A central question in contemporary linguistic theory is to what extent the properties of language result from conditions imposed by processing demands. A decade later, Bever (1970) argued that the form of language reflects general cognitive laws, in such a way that mechanisms of language processing are one of the factors determining grammatical phenomena. This issue has been investigated from different perspectives by many researchers, mostly in psycholinguistics, and it continues to be a muchresearched area among linguists and psycholinguists; MacDonald (2013), for instance, currently argues that production demands heavily constrain linguistic output and typological choices.
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