Types Of Relative Clauses Research Articles

Second Language Acquisition of Complex Structures: The Case of English Oblique Relative Clauses

Previous works on English relative clauses (RCs) have tested subject and direct object RCs to find an asymmetrical pattern in L2 syntactic development. Studies on English native speakers and L2 learners of English have shown that both groups were better at subject RCs than any other types of RCs. However, these test items potentially involve compounding factors such as animacy effect and word order canonicity. To resolve this issue, the present study used an elicited production task to see how Korean-speaking adult learners of English perform two types of English oblique RCs. Forty Korean college students (18 high proficiency group; 22 low proficiency group) showed better performance at oblique RCs with a short filler-gap dependency (FGD) than oblique RCs with a long FGD. Both proficiency groups showed better accuracy rates when oblique RCs with a short FGD were elicited. In addition, patterns of non-targeted responses can explain how L2 learners differently process two oblique RCs with dissimilar distance between the filler and the gap. Overall, the test results demonstrated a clear linear distance effect between the filler and the gap in producing oblique RCs.

Production of English Oblique RCs with Different Distance

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.

Verbal working memory resources and comprehension of relative clauses in children with cochlear implants

Verbal working memory resources may impact syntax comprehension. Thirteen Italian children with cochlear implants (CIs) were assessed in relative clause (RC) comprehension, digit span and nonword repetition and compared to 13 chronological age peers (CA) and 13 younger controls (LA) with normal hearing (NH). The RC comprehension task tested subject relatives (SR), object relatives with preverbal (OR) and postverbal subjects (ORp) where number features were manipulated. Children with CIs show worse performance than controls in RC comprehension and nonword repetition. In the RC task, number features facilitated comprehension by children with NH, but not by children with CIs. The memory measure that predicted RC comprehension was digit span. In the LA group, backward digit span predicted comprehension of all RC types. Forward digit span predicted comprehension of ORs with number mismatch in the CA group, and comprehension of ORs with number mismatch and ORps in children with CIs. In these conditions, high memory resources are needed to exploit number features in theta-role assignment.

Research on the Cognitive Effort of Sight-Interpreting Complex English Sentences into Chinese: Evidence from Eye Tracking

It is widely known that sight-interpreting, one of the typical forms of conference interpreting, requires the interpreters to exert great effort in transforming one language into another. Due to the difference between Chinese and English, some sentence structures such as relative clauses prove to be even more difficult to render. Some experienced interpreters are able to do such strenuous task with ease. Uncovering what is going on during information processing is enlightening in that it would shed light on how human brain uses certain types of mechanism to process information, which is conducive to the artificial intelligence. Eye-tracking experiment is designed, 31 subjects are recruited with an average age of 22 and comparable linguistic competence to participate in a 40-50 min experiment, during which each subject is required to sight-interpret the self-designed, expert-proven sentences which differ only in the role of the relative pronoun in the relative clauses. Data analysis clearly indicates that the cognitive effort of processing complex sentences as evidenced by two types of relative clauses (one is called OR because the relative pronouns function as object in the relative clause, the other SB because the relative pronouns function as subject in the relative clause) are different, the former requiring more cognitive effort than the latter, as shown in several key eye-movement measures such as regression-in, regression-out, first fixation duration, gaze duration, regression duration, and total reading duration. These differences are statistically significant within the AOIs such as the antecedent, relative clause. The finding further substantiates the hypothesis that sight-interpreting is more strenuous and thus requires more cognitive effort than the common readers. Besides, different structure of the relative clauses also plays a role in consuming the cognitive effort of the interpreters. However, it remains unclear whether the length of the relative clause plays a decisive role in influencing the cognition of whole sentence while sight-interpreting. Besides, whether the research results are applicable to other types of complex structure remain unanswered. More data should be collected to incorporate more complex structure in order to uncover the possible cognitive effort during sight-interpreting.

CONSTRUCCIONES ESCINDIDAS EN MAZAHUA (OTOMANGUE)

RESUMEN El objetivo de este trabajo es describir la estructura de las construcciones escindidas en la lengua mazahua de San Pedro Potla (Temascalcingo, Estado de México). Este estudio se ha realizado bajo el planteamiento de Lambrecht (2001), quien considera que la construcción escindida es una estructura oracional compleja que está formada por una cláusula matriz y una cláusula relativa; esta cláusula binaria expresa una sola proposición semántica. Teniendo en cuenta esta consideración, se ha identificado una serie extensa de construcciones escindidas, éstas están formadas por la marca ŋɡè, la frase focalizada y la cláusula relativa. Para dar cuenta del objetivo ha sido necesario atender ciertos aspectos de la gramática de la lengua como orden de constituyentes, tipos de cláusulas de relativo, subordinantes y funciones gramaticales de ŋɡè. A través de las clases de construcciones escindidas se puede mostrar que, en ciertos contextos, igualmente, aparece escindida la información topicalizada. Los datos corresponden a historias de vida, narraciones y relatos.

Typology of Kimbeere Relative Clauses in Kimbeere

In this paper we explore the typology of Kimbeere- a Kenya Bantu language. The paper demonstrates that like in other languages, Kimbere has different types of relative clauses namely restrictive, non-restrictive, direct, indirect, appositive, headless among other. Kimbere also has a type of relative clause called ingi relative. The paper is descriptive and contributes typological data which is crucial for drawing principles and parameters in natural language. Key Words: Relative clause, direct, indirect, headless, restrictive, typology DOI : 10.7176/JLLL/62-09 Publication date: November 30 th 2019

Syntactic complexity development in the writings of EFL learners: Insights from a dependency syntactically-annotated corpus

This study investigates the syntactic complexity, as measured by both large-grained and fine-grained measures, of 410 narrative writings across four writing proficiency levels written by beginner and intermediate L2 English learners. By exploring the differences in syntactic complexity between writings at different proficiency levels, the study is purposed to find out the measures that can best discriminate and predict writing proficiency. The L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer and the dependency syntactically-annotated corpus are used respectively to collect the data for large-grained and fine-grained measures. With regard to large-grained measures, it is found that students with higher writing proficiency tend to produce longer language units, more subordinate clauses, more coordinate clauses, and more noun phrases in their writings; mean length of T-unit, mean length of sentence, and dependent clauses per clause can better predict writing proficiency than other traditional large-grained measures. As for fine-grained measures, it is found that three types of subordinate clauses, that is, adverbial clauses, complement clauses and relative clauses, and two types of noun modifiers, that is, prepositional phrases and adjectival relative clauses, occur more frequently in the writings of more proficient learners; the frequency of compound nouns correlates negatively with writing proficiency.

The Role of Animacy and Structural Information in Relative Clause Attachment: Evidence From Chinese.

We report one production and one comprehension experiment investigating the effect of animacy in relative clause attachment in Chinese. Experiment 1 involved a fill-in-the-blank task that manipulated the order of an animate noun phrase in a complex NP construction. The results showed that while low attachment responses exceeded high attachment responses overall (cf. Shen, 2006), a tendency exists to attach a relative clause to an animate NP in Chinese (cf. Desmet et al., 2002). Experiment 2 used a rating task to examine the interplay between animacy and structural information by manipulating the order of the animate NP as well as the relative clause type (i.e., subject vs. object relative clauses). The results showed that the animate NP modification tendency found in Experiment 1 was limited to subject-relative clauses and that no animacy-related effect was found with object-relative clauses. These results are incompatible with purely structural parsing strategies such as Late Closure (Frazier, 1987) and the Predicate Proximity Principle (Gibson et al., 1996). Instead, the current results suggest that attachment ambiguity resolution in Chinese relative clauses is sensitive to animacy as well as structural information.

An Examination of Relative Clauses in Argumentative Essays Written by EFL Learners

Syntactic complexity has received a great deal of attention in the literature on second language writing. Relative clauses, which function as a kind of noun phrase post-modifier, are among those structures that are believed to increase the complexity of academic prose. This grammatical structure can pose difficulties for EFL writers even at higher levels of proficiency, and it is therefore important to determine the frequency and accuracy with which relative clauses are used by L2 learners; understanding learners’ strengths and weaknesses in using these structures can inform the process of their instruction in the writing classroom. This paper reports on a corpus-based comparison of relative clauses in a number of argumentative essays written by native and nonnative speakers of English. To this end, 30 argumentative essays were randomly selected from the Persian sub-corpus of the ICLE and the essays were analyzed with respect to the relative clauses found in them. The results were then compared to a comparable corpus of essays by native speakers. Different dimensions regarding the structure of relative clauses were investigated. The type of relative clause (restrictive/non-restrictive), the relativizer (adverbial/pronoun), the gap (subject/non-subject), and head nouns (both animate and non-animate) in our two sets of data were manually identified and coded. The Findings revealed that Iranian EFL writers tend to use a greater number of relative clauses compared to their native-speaker counterparts.

An Examination of Relative Clauses in Argumentative Essays Written by EFL Learners

Syntactic complexity has received a great deal of attention in the literature on second language writing. Relative clauses, which function as a kind of noun phrase post-modifier, are among those structures that are believed to contribute to the complexity of academic prose. These grammatical structures can pose difficulties for EFL writers even at higher levels of proficiency, and it is therefore important to determine the frequency and accuracy with which relative clauses are used by L2 learners since understanding learners’ strengths and weaknesses in using these structures can inform teachers on ways to improve the process of their instruction in the writing classroom. This paper reports on a corpus-based comparison of relative clauses in a number of argumentative essays written by native and non-native speakers of English. To this end, 30 argumentative essays were randomly selected from the Persian sub-corpus of the ICLE and the essays were analyzed with respect to the relative clauses found in them. The results were then compared to a comparable corpus of essays by native speakers. Different dimensions regarding the structure of relative clauses were investigated. The type of relative clause (restrictive/non-restrictive), the relativizer (adverbial/pronoun), the gap (subject/non-subject), and head nouns (both animate and non-animate) in our two sets of data were manually identified and coded. The findings revealed that the non-native writers tended to use a greater number of relative clauses compared to their native-speaker counterparts.

Analysis of Relative Clauses as Used in the Academic Writing of EFL Learners

English relative clauses (RCs) are structurally complex because they involve long distance dependencies. The present study examines 14 Korean university students’ production of English RCs in academic writing to see (1) what types of RCs they use; and (2) how often they use each type of RC. The results show that the learners produced only subject and direct object RCs, and far more of the former than the latter. These findings suggest that Korean EFL writers should be instructed in the usage of various types of RCs to build their linguistic repertoires and competence using structures appropriately to the situation of language use.

The Interplay of Relational and Non-relational Processes in Sentence Production: The Case of Relative Clause Planning in Japanese and Spanish.

Speech planning involves different steps in order to transform a conceptual message into speech. These include establishing structural relations among constituents (i.e., relational information), and selecting the appropriate lexical items to convey the intended message (non-relational elements). However, the precise way relational and non-relational information are computed when undertaking linguistic encoding is not clear. This paper explores how the pre-linguistic message undergoes linguistic encoding, and what kind of information (relational or non-relational) is prioritized in doing so. We analyze the production planning of Relative Clauses in Spanish (a head-initial language) and Japanese (a head-final language) by monolingual speakers, by means of the eye-tracking method while participants described colored pictures. Although in both Spanish and Japanese the structure under study is the same (with the same syntactic configuration), word order is entirely opposite between both languages. In Japanese, the head noun is not uttered until the end of the clause, thus making it possible to explore sentence planning in a structure where the syntactically most dominant element (the head noun, HN) is not the first element. Variables tested were type of relative clause, with either the agent or the patient as head noun, and the animacy of the agent and the patient of the event, the latter allowing the manipulation of the conceptual saliency of the elements involved. Results showed Japanese speakers focus extensively on the HN before directing their gazes to the element they are going to utter first, suggesting a speech planning process that prioritizes relational information, that is, structural scaffolding. Spanish monolinguals, in turn, showed a pattern in which both structural and linear information appear to be more closely related from the beginning. In both languages, the animacy of isolated elements had little effect on gaze patterns. Results point to a planning process that prioritizes structural relations over access to lexical elements in order in the planning of complex structures, with room for flexibility when the grammar of the language allows so.

Restricting the restrictive relativizer

Abstract We investigate internal and stylistic factors affecting binary and ternary relativizer choice in subject (that vs which) and non-subject (that vs which vs zero) relative clauses. We employ a novel methodological approach to predicting relativizers: Bayesian regression modeling with the dimensional reduction of model inputs via factor analysis. Our factor analysis is motivated by the high degree of redundancy and collinearity in natural language data, while Bayesian regression models are robust to effects of data sparseness and (near) separation. We find that in both types of relative clauses, the more marked variant (which) is preferred in complex contexts, while the unmarked variant (that, or zero in NSRCs) is favored in contexts where the relative clause is short and more fully integrated with the NP it modifies. We also find that use of which is somewhat more sensitive to stylistic considerations in subject than in non-subject relative clauses, and that which correlates most strongly with features associated with lexical density, e. g. ‘nouniness’, rather than those often associated with formality, e. g. passivization and sentence length.

On The Third Type of Headed Relative Clause in Post‐Classical and Early Byzantine Greek

AbstractIt has been claimed that Archaic and Classical Greek had two main types of headed relative clauses: (i) postnominal externally headed relative clauses; and (ii) internally headed relative clauses (Perna ; ; Fauconnier ; Probert ). In this article, we take a closer look at the semantic and syntactic properties of the second category in Post‐classical and Early Byzantine Greek (I–VIII ad). Analysing a corpus of documentary texts, we show that a good deal of the examples in this period do not correspond to the established properties of internally headed relative clauses in the history of Greek. This leads us to propose that at least some examples that are apparently internally headed should be revised as a third relative clause type, namely prenominal externally headed relative clauses. We hypothesise that such examples came into existence through form‐function reanalysis of internally headed relative clauses, a process which we suggest took place already in the Classical period (V–IV bc). In the last part of our article, we investigate the motivation for the choice of internally headed and prenominal externally headed relative clauses over the postnominal ones: we show that such examples occur strikingly frequently in formal texts such as contracts, petitions and formal letters. We propose that in such texts, internally headed and prenominal externally headed relative clauses, which are syntactically more complex, function as ‘transparent signifiers’ (Hodge & Kress ), serving as a marker of a higher social level.

The role of animacy and language proficiency in the comprehension of English restrictive relative clauses by Iranian EFL learners: an emergentist approach

Following an emergentist approach, the authors examined the comprehension of four different types of restrictive relative clauses (direct object/oblique vs. subject/indirect object) with animate/inanimate referents by Iranian EFL learners. To this end, an Oxford placement test and two sets of comprehension tests within a week’s interval were administered. Of the two comprehension tests, one was used to examine the comprehension of direct object/oblique RC’s with inanimate NP referents, and the other one investigated the understanding of subject/indirect object RC’s with animate referents. The results of the first comprehension test showed that there was no significant difference in the comprehension of direct/oblique RC’s with inanimate referents. But the result of the second comprehension test showed their better performance in the subject RC’s than indirect object RC’s with animate referents. The findings of the experiments showed that animacy influenced the processing difficulty of relative clauses which can be considered as a significant reasoning for these preferences or equalities. Current significant theories of relative clause processing can account for these results when additional assumptions are introduced showing that the possibility of semantically driven cues can be considered as a serious alternative.

Efl English major’ understanding of relative clauses

Relative clauses play a crucial role in improving students’ writing and speaking performances. In this study, a 20-question survey was delivered to 100 EFL seniors at a university in Vietnam to find out the extent to which they understood different types of relative clauses and different relative pronouns. Also, the frequency at which these relative clauses and pronouns were used in their written and spoken communication was investigated. The findings showed the participants’ lack of understanding of these aspects. They also preferred using restrictive relative clause over non-restrictive clause, and certain rel- ative pronouns were used significantly more frequently than the others. Recommendations for teachers to raise students’ understanding of relative clauses and relative pronouns, as well as to improve students’ performance were also made for teachers’ conventional teaching practice.

Subject prominence and processing dependencies in prenominal relative clauses: The comprehension of possessive relative clauses and adjunct relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese

This article investigates how dependencies are constructed in prenominal relative clauses of Mandarin Chinese by comparing the comprehension of two types of relative clauses: possessive relative clauses (PRCs), where the head noun is associated with a dependent noun phrase in the embedded clause, and adjunct relative clauses (ARCs), where the head noun takes the whole embedded clause as its complement. The results of a naturalness-rating experiment and two self-paced reading experiments showed distinctive reading patterns of PRCs and ARCs. The comprehension of a PRC is sensitive to the grammatical position of the dependent noun in the prenominal clause: retrieval of a dependent noun at the subject position is less costly than that of a dependent noun at VP-internal nonsubject positions. The comprehension of an ARC reflects the structural frequency of the whole prenominal clause: more-canonical structures like SVO sentences were read faster than less frequent structures such as disposal and passive sentences. These results support the importance of structural locality and subject prominence for constructing gap-filler dependencies in prenominal relative clauses.

Multiple Relative Clauses: Ordering and Derivation*

There are three types of multiple relative clauses (RCs) in Korean; that is, prenominal, right-dislocated, and split RCs. In this paper, I offer plausible derivations of them and attempt to account for ordering restrictions they display. I propose a couple of distinct ways of forming RC constructions in Korean, for example, adjunction of RC(s), complementation of RC(s), and combination of the two. Concomitantly, the proposal resorts to the head-first hypothesis instead of the usual head-final hypothesis for Korean. In the prenominal and split RCs, a stage level RC precedes an individual level RC in Larson and Takahashi’s (2007) term, but in the right-dislocated RCs, free order obtains. An individual level RC may precede a stage level RC if the former is preceded by a determiner like ku ‘the’. I show that different orders of RCs follow from the proposal that to restrict the relative head noun, a deictic quantifier in the relative head noun be activated by a determiner or a stage level RC in the prenominal position.

More appositives in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your Linguistics

In this paper I lay out a proposal for a typology of appositive relative clauses. By studying the characteristics of appositive relative clauses in five languages (Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian and English), I identify three types of appositive relative clauses: non-integrated, semi-integrated and (fully)-integrated. The empirical investigation leads to the following findings: 1. Mandarin Chinese and Japanese appositive relative clauses belong to the class of fully integrated appositives; 2. English appositive relative clauses are diametrically different from the fully integrated ones. I classify them as non-integrated appositives; 3. Italian and French have two types of appositives: semi-integrated and non-integrated; 4. Reduced relative clauses can also be appositive: if pre-nominal, they are fully integrated; if post nominal, they are semi-integrated.The empirical data is accounted for by a proposal that is based on the following elements: 1. the syntax of non-integrated and semi-integrated appositive relative clauses involves a CommaP projection and/or a ForceP projection; fully integrated appositives lack both of these projections; 2. the non-integrated appositives’ relative pronoun is E-type; 3. the syntax of prenominal appositive relative clauses prevents them from licensing an overt relative pronoun, and therefore an E-type pronoun; 4. the CommaP triggers the intonational break at PF and, following Koev (2013) in spirit, it introduces a variable for the content of the constituents in its scope, thereby preventing such constituents from being bound from operators and quantifiers in the host clause. The empirical data analyzed and the account proposed leave us with an interesting fine-grained typology of appositives, thereby confirming a trend in the research on appositives pointing to the conclusion that we are dealing with a more variegated set of constructions than previously thought.

An ERP Study of the Object Preference in Processing Chinese Relative Clauses

Through an event-related potential (ERP) study, we examined the processing mechanisms of four types of Chinese (Mandarin) relative clauses (RCs), namely subject subject-extracted relative clause (SSR), subject object-extracted relative clause (SOR), object subject-extracted relative clause (OSR), and object object-extracted relative clause (OOR) to test the universality and language specificity of RC comprehension processes. The results of this study support a preference for object-extracted RCs modifying both the subject and object of a sentence, i.e., SORs and OORs. In particular, ERP results showed stronger P600 effects in the RC region for SSRs compared with SORs, which we argue reflects a canonical word order theory. Stronger N400 effects were observed for verbs compared with nouns, reflecting easier understanding for nouns. ERP results from the matrix clause object and the relativizer ' de” showed stronger P600 effects in SSRs compared with SORs, suggesting thematic structure effects on syntactic construction and the processing preference of the whole sentence.