Abstract
Previous research has shown subject relative clauses (RCs) are much easier to produce than direct object RCs in L1 acquisition field. However, many researchers have raised a point for a pure cause of processing English RCs because this traditional comparison had compounding factors such as animacy and word-order canonicity. The current study aims to test whether the distance between the filler and the gap has an effect on child’s production of English oblique RCs. Two types of oblique RCs, which have directional prepositional phrases, are compared in the present study. 21 English-native adults and 21 English-speaking children participated in the study. An elicited production task was used to measure whether they produce two oblique RCs differently. The results showed both English-speaking adults and children had more difficulty in producing English oblique RCs with longer filler-gap dependency (FGD) than with (relatively) shorter FGD. Both accuracy rates and the patterns of errors indicating the asymmetry among two oblique RCs strongly support the distance effect.
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