Connectionist Modeling of Experience-based Effects in Sentence ...

2.4 The RC Extraction Preference in Mandarin
Lin and Bever (2006a)
Addressing the ambiguous verbs confound in Hsiao and Gibson (2003), Lin and Bever
(2006a) conducted a self-paced reading experiment with verbs that only took nominal
objects. They controlled for RC type and also if the RC was modifying the subject
or object of the matrix clause. In all conditions there was a subject preference on the
relativizer and the head noun. No effect was observed on the RC region. The result
contradicts the study of Hsiao and Gibson, as the overall preference is the opposite.
However, to be exact, it is not necessarily contradiction, since the locations of the effects
do not overlap in the two experiments. So, it may theoretically be possible that both
results are consistent.
Lin and Garnsey (2007)
The reading time study by Lin and Garnsey (2007) provided evidence that ORCs are
easier to comprehend. In addition they showed that animacy information is an important
factor in the comprehension process and is used very early by the reader. Their
stimuli were Mandarin RCs with another noun following the head noun. The head noun
could optionally be omitted. When dropping the head noun, the second noun could
ambiguously interpreted as the head noun. The confusability of the two nouns was
controlled for by animacy. The plausibility of an animate RC head noun compared to
an inamimate one was increased by semantic implications of the embedded verb. The
results show that animacy information was used immediately to solve the ambiguity in
both conditions (with and without head noun). Subject extraction was more difficult
than object extraction in all conditions. The conditions with missing head nouns were
most difficult. When the nouns were confusable, the differences between subject and object
extraction were also found in regions after the head noun pointing to an interaction
of RC type with similarity-baed interference (Gordon et al., 2006).
Kuo and Vasishth (2007)
Kuo and Vasishth (2007) conducted a self-paced reading experiment that used the singly
embedded stimuli of Hsiao and Gibson (2003). Additionally, Kuo and Vasishth added
two more conditions to further assess the validity of the Gap Assumption as assumed by
Hsiao and Gibson (2003) and of the Storage Cost predictions. The two extra conditions
are shown in example (2.4). In (14b) The ORC is fronted by the passivization marker
bei, which is ungrammatical in front of a main clause out of context. Thus, inserting
bei removed the main clause ambiguity in the ORC. On the other hand, inserting the
demonstrative zheige pre-verbally in the SRC (example 14a) makes the subject gap
obvious. The demonstrative in combination with the verb raises the expectation for a
relative clause because a noun is needed to fill the gap. Hence the possibility of the
structure continuing as a main clause with an elided subject is excluded.
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