Reading morphologically complex clause structures in Finnish

Abstract

The study examined how morphologically complex clause constructions were processed during reading Finnish. Readers' eye fixation patterns were recorded when they read two alternative versions of the same linguistic construction, a morphologically complex converb construction and its less complex subclause counterpart. The complexity of the converb construction is apparent in the construction being marked by less perceivable bound morphemes, which make the clause subject and predicate morphologically more complex and more dense in information. Experiment 1 showed that more complex converb constructions produced longer gaze durations than the length- and frequency-matched subclause constructions. Experiment 2 showed that the complexity effect is reversed when the more complex clause form was clearly more common in the language than its less complex counterpart. It is concluded that both structural complexity and structural frequency influence the ease with which linguistic expressions are processed during reading.