Subject preference in Ixcatec relative clauses (Otomanguean, Mexico)

Subject Preference in the Processing of Relative Clauses in Chinese

A controversy in the sentence processing literature regarding relative-clause processing was raised by Hsiao and Gibson’s (2003) study of Chinese relative clauses. Their study suggested that, contrary to the patterns found in all other languages, Chinese relative clauses showed a processing preference for object extractions. This result posed a challenge to sentence processing theories that att...

Processing Chinese Relative Clauses: Evidence for the Subject-Relative Advantage

A general fact about language is that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. Recently, several self-paced reading studies have presented surprising evidence that object relatives in Chinese are easier to process than subject relatives. We carried out three self-paced reading experiments that attempted to replicate these results. Two of our three studies fou...

Ixcatec ethnoecology: plant management and biocultural heritage in Oaxaca, Mexico

BACKGROUND Studying motives of plant management allows understanding processes that originated agriculture and current forms of traditional technology innovation. Our work analyses the role of native plants in the Ixcatec subsistence, management practices, native plants biocultural importance, and motivations influencing management decisions. Cultural and ecological importance and management co...

Relative Clauses

In this chapter, we examine the typology of relative clauses. We will define relative clauses as follows: (1) A relative clause (RC) is a subordinate clause which delimits the reference of an NP by specifying the role of the referent of that NP in the situation described by the RC. Since the NP whose reference is being delimited is in the matrix clause, we will call it NP mat , and we will call...

Factive Relative Clauses in Pulaar