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 attempt to account for crosslinguistic patterns regarding relative-clause processing. In this article, we argue that Hsiao and Gibson’s claim of an object preference in Mandarin was invalid. It was not supported by the experimental data they provided, as their experiment was confounded by a crucial factor. We cite two sets of experimental evidence from Mandarin–the self-paced reading of regular relative clauses and that of possessor relative clauses. Both experiments showed a preference for subject extractions in Mandarin. As the controversy caused by Mandarin is removed, we discuss an incremental minimalist parsing theory that accounts for this universal parsing preference.