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Island effects in Spanish comprehension

  • A growing body of experimental syntactic research has revealed substantial variation in the magnitude of island effects, not only across languages but also across different grammatical constructions. Adopting a well-established experimental design, the present study examines island effects in Spanish using a speeded acceptability judgment task. To quantify variation across grammatical constructions, we tested extraction from four different types of structure (subjects, complex noun phrases, adjuncts and interrogative clauses). The results of Bayesian mixed effects modelling showed that the size of island effects varied between constructions, such that there was clear evidence of subject, adjunct and interrogative island effects, but not of complex noun phrase island effects. We also failed to find evidence that island effects were modulated by participants' working memory capacity as measured by an operation span task. To account for our results, we suggest that variability in island effects across constructions may be due to theA growing body of experimental syntactic research has revealed substantial variation in the magnitude of island effects, not only across languages but also across different grammatical constructions. Adopting a well-established experimental design, the present study examines island effects in Spanish using a speeded acceptability judgment task. To quantify variation across grammatical constructions, we tested extraction from four different types of structure (subjects, complex noun phrases, adjuncts and interrogative clauses). The results of Bayesian mixed effects modelling showed that the size of island effects varied between constructions, such that there was clear evidence of subject, adjunct and interrogative island effects, but not of complex noun phrase island effects. We also failed to find evidence that island effects were modulated by participants' working memory capacity as measured by an operation span task. To account for our results, we suggest that variability in island effects across constructions may be due to the interaction of syntactic, semantic-pragmatic and processing factors, which may affect island types differentially due to their idiosyncratic properties.show moreshow less

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Author details:Claudia PañedaORCiD, Sol LagoORCiD, Elena VaresORCiD, João Marques VeríssimoORCiDGND, Claudia FelserORCiDGND
DOI:https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1058
ISSN:2397-1835
Title of parent work (English):Glossa : a journal of general linguistics
Publisher:Open Library of Humanities
Place of publishing:London
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Date of first publication:2020/03/02
Publication year:2020
Release date:2023/10/04
Tag:Spanish; extraction islands; reading comprehension; sentence processing; working memory
Volume:5
Issue:1
Article number:21
Number of pages:30
Funding institution:Government of Asturias, Spain [PA-17-PF-BP16105]; Fundacion Banco; Sabadell; Spanish Government (FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y; Universidades -Agencia Estatal de Investigacion) [FFI2017-87699-P]
Organizational units:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik
DDC classification:4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik
Peer review:Referiert
Publishing method:Open Access / Gold Open-Access
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License (German):License LogoCC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International
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