@article{SalzmannWierzbaGeorgi2023, author = {Salzmann, Martin and Wierzba, Marta and Georgi, Doreen}, title = {Condition C in German A'-movement}, series = {Journal of linguistics : JL}, volume = {59}, journal = {Journal of linguistics : JL}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {London [u.a.]}, issn = {0022-2267}, doi = {10.1017/S0022226722000214}, pages = {577 -- 622}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A'-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A'-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that do not require defining thresholds of 'low' or 'high' coreference values. Instead, we focus on grammatical contrasts (wh-movement vs. relativization, subject vs. object wh-movement) and aim to identify and reduce confounds. The results show that reconstruction for A'-movement of DPs is not very robust in German, contra previous findings. Our results are compatible with the view that the surface order and non-syntactic factors (e.g. plausibility, referential accessibility of an R-expression) heavily influence coreference possibilities. Thus, the data argue against a theory that includes both reconstruction and a hard Condition C constraint. There is a residual contrast between sentences with subject/object movement, which is compatible with an account without reconstruction (and an additional non-syntactic factor) or an account with reconstruction (and a soft Condition C constraint).}, language = {en} } @article{Salzmann2009, author = {Salzmann, Martin}, title = {Variation in resumption requires violable constraints}, series = {Linguistics in Potsdam}, journal = {Linguistics in Potsdam}, number = {28}, issn = {1616-7392}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32251}, pages = {99 -- 132}, year = {2009}, abstract = {Variation in dative resumption among and within Alemannic varieties of German strongly favors an Evaluator component that makes use of optimality-theoretic evaluation rather than filters as in the Minimalist Program (MP). At the same time, the variation is restricted to realizational requirements. This supports a model of syntax like the Derivations and Evaluations framework (Broekhuis 2008) that combines a restrictive MP-style Generator with an Evaluator that includes ranked violable (interface) constraints.}, language = {en} } @article{HaendlerKlieglAdani2015, author = {Haendler, Yair and Kliegl, Reinhold and Adani, Flavia}, title = {Discourse accessibility constraints in children's processing of object relative clauses}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00360}, pages = {17}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Children's poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children's performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children's language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases.}, language = {en} } @article{HaendlerKlieglAdani2015, author = {Haendler, Yair and Kliegl, Reinhold and Adani, Flavia}, title = {Discourse accessibility constraints in children´s processing of object relative clauses}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, number = {860}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00860}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Children's poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children's performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children's language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases.}, language = {en} } @misc{HaendlerKlieglAdani2015, author = {Haendler, Yair and Kliegl, Reinhold and Adani, Flavia}, title = {Discourse accessibility constraints in children´s processing of object relative clauses}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-78694}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Children's poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children's performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children's language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases.}, language = {en} } @article{HaendlerAdani2018, author = {Haendler, Yair and Adani, Flavia}, title = {Testing the effect of an arbitrary subject pronoun on relative clause comprehension}, series = {Journal of child language}, volume = {45}, journal = {Journal of child language}, number = {4}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {0305-0009}, doi = {10.1017/S0305000917000599}, pages = {959 -- 980}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Previous studies have found that Hebrew-speaking children accurately comprehend object relatives (OR) with an embedded non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun (ASP). The facilitation of ORs with embedded pronouns is expected both from a discourse-pragmatics perspective and within a syntax-based locality approach. However, the specific effect of ASP might also be driven by a mismatch in grammatical features between the head noun and the pronoun, or by its relatively undemanding referential properties. We tested these possibilities by comparing ORs whose embedded subject is either ASP, a referential pronoun, or a lexical noun phrase. In all conditions, grammatical features were controlled. In a referent-identification task, the matching features made ORs with embedded pronouns difficult for five-year-olds. Accuracy was particularly low when the embedded pronoun was referential. These results indicate that embedded pronouns do not facilitate ORs across the board, and that the referential properties of pronouns affect OR processing.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Haendler2016, author = {Haendler, Yair}, title = {Effects of embedded pronouns on relative clause processing}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-396883}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xvi, 186}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Difficulties with object relative clauses (ORC), as compared to subject relative clauses (SR), are widely attested across different languages, both in adults and in children. This SR-ORC asymmetry is reduced, or even eliminated, when the embedded constituent in the ORC is a pronoun, rather than a lexical noun phrase. The studies included in this thesis were designed to explore under what circumstances the pronoun facilitation occurs; whether all pronouns have the same effect; whether SRs are also affected by embedded pronouns; whether children perform like adults on such structures; and whether performance is related to cognitive abilities such as memory or grammatical knowledge. Several theoretical approaches that explain the pronoun facilitation in relative clauses are evaluated. The experimental data have been collected in three languages-German, Italian and Hebrew-stemming from both children and adults. In the German study (Chapter 2), ORCs with embedded 1st- or 3rd-person pronouns are compared to ORCs with an embedded lexical noun phrase. Eye-movement data from 5-year-old children show that the 1st-person pronoun facilitates processing, but not the 3rd-person pronoun. Moreover, children's performance is modulated by additive effects of their memory and grammatical skills. In the Italian study (Chapter 3), the 1st-person pronoun advantage over the 3rd-person pronoun is tested in ORCs and SRs that display a similar word order. Eye-movement data from 5-year-olds and adult controls and reading times data from adults are pitted against the outcome of a corpus analysis, showing that the 1st-/3rd-person pronoun asymmetry emerges in the two relative clause types to an equal extent. In the Hebrew study (Chapter 4), the goal is to test the effect of a special kind of pronoun-a non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun-on ORC comprehension, in the light of potential confounds in previous studies that used this pronoun. Data from a referent-identification task with 4- to 5-year-olds indicate that, when the experimental material is controlled, the non-referential pronoun does not necessarily facilitate ORC comprehension. Importantly, however, children have even more difficulties when the embedded constituent is a referential pronoun. The non-referentiality / referentiality asymmetry is emphasized by the relation between children's performance on the experimental task and their memory skills. Together, the data presented in this thesis indicate that sentence processing is not only driven by structural (or syntactic) factors, but also by discourse-related ones, like pronouns' referential properties or their discourse accessibility mechanism, which is defined as the level of ease or difficulty with which referents of pronouns are identified and retrieved from the discourse model. Although independent in essence, these structural and discourse factors can in some cases interact in a way that affects sentence processing. Moreover, both types of factors appear to be strongly related to memory. The data also support the idea that, from early on, children are sensitive to the same factors that affect adults' sentence processing, and that the processing strategies of both populations are qualitatively similar. In sum, this thesis suggests that a comprehensive theory of human sentence processing needs to account for effects that are due to both structural and discourse-related factors, which operate as a function of memory capacity.}, language = {en} } @article{AdaniStegenwallnerSchutzNiesel2017, author = {Adani, Flavia and Stegenwallner-Schutz, Maja Henny Katherine and Niesel, Talea}, title = {The Peaceful Co-existence of Input Frequency and Structural Intervention Effects on the Comprehension of Complex Sentences in German-Speaking Children}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {8}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01590}, pages = {11}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animate head (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). In contrast, the structural intervention approach predicts that object relative clauses with two full NP arguments mismatching in number (e.g., the man that the boys are scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with number-matching NPs (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). These approaches were tested in two steps. First, we ran a corpus analysis to ensure that object relative clauses with number-mismatching NPs are not more frequent than object relative clauses with number-matching NPs in child directed speech. Next, the comprehension of these structures was tested experimentally in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds respectively by means of a color naming task. By comparing the predictions of the two approaches within the same participant groups, we were able to uncover that the effects predicted by the input frequency and by the structural intervention approaches co-exist and that they both influence the performance of children on transitive relative clauses, but in a manner that is modulated by age. These results reveal a sensitivity to animacy mismatch already being demonstrated by 3-year-olds and show that animacy is initially deployed more reliably than number to interpret relative clauses correctly. In all age groups, the animacy mismatch appears to explain the performance of children, thus, showing that the comprehension of frequent object relative clauses is enhanced compared to the other conditions. Starting with 4-year-olds but especially in 5-year-olds, the number mismatch supported comprehension-a facilitation that is unlikely to be driven by input frequency. Once children fine-tune their sensitivity to verb agreement information around the age of four, they are also able to deploy number marking to overcome the intervention effects. This study highlights the importance of testing experimentally contrasting theoretical approaches in order to characterize the multifaceted, developmental nature of language acquisition.}, language = {en} }