The processing of subject–object ambiguities in native and near-native Mexican Spanish

Abstract

This self-paced reading study first tested the prediction that the garden path effect previously observed during the processing of subject–object ambiguities in native English would not obtain in a null subject language like Spanish. The investigation then further explored whether the effect would be evident among near-native readers of Spanish whose native language was a non-null subject language like English. Twenty-three near-native and 33 native readers of Mexican Spanish read sentences like Cuando el escultor acabó/volvió la obra tenía tres metros de altura “When the sculptor finished/came back the piece was three meters in height”. The results suggest that (i) Spanish differs from English for this type of processing and (ii) native and near-native processing can be guided by largely similar principles, at least where lexical information like verb transitivity is concerned.