TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wu, Fuyun
A1  - Kaiser, Elsi
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
T1  - Effects of early cues on the processing of chinese relative clauses
BT  - evidence for experience-based theories
JF  - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society
N2  - We used Chinese prenominal relative clauses (RCs) to test the predictions of two competing accounts of sentence comprehension difficulty: the experience-based account of Levy () and the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT; Gibson, ). Given that in Chinese RCs, a classifier and/or a passive marker BEI can be added to the sentence-initial position, we manipulated the presence/absence of classifiers and the presence/absence of BEI, such that BEI sentences were passivized subject-extracted RCs, and no-BEI sentences were standard object-extracted RCs. We conducted two self-paced reading experiments, using the same critical stimuli but somewhat different filler items. Reading time patterns from both experiments showed facilitative effects of BEI within and beyond RC regions, and delayed facilitative effects of classifiers, suggesting that cues that occur before a clear signal of an upcoming RC can help Chinese comprehenders to anticipate RC structures. The data patterns are not predicted by the DLT, but they are consistent with the predictions of experience-based theories.
KW  - Storage cost
KW  - Experience
KW  - Relative clause
KW  - Chinese
KW  - Classifiers
KW  - BEI
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12551
SN  - 0364-0213
SN  - 1551-6709
VL  - 42
SP  - 1101
EP  - 1133
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -