Processing Chinese Relative Clauses in Context Accessed Terms of Use Detailed Terms Processing Chinese Relative Clauses in Context

The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Abstract This paper presents a self-paced reading experiment comparing the processing of subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) and object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) in supportive contexts in Chinese. It is argued that lack of a consistent pattern in the literature for the comparison between Chinese SRCs and ORCs is due to potential temporary ambiguity in these constructions in null contexts. By placing the materials in contexts biased towards a relative clause interpretation, we limit the effects of temporary ambiguity. The results of the experiment demonstrate that SRCs are read more slowly than ORCs in supportive contexts. These results provide evidence for working-memory-based sentence processing theories whereby processing difficulty increases for connecting sentence elements that are further apart. Some convergent evidence that strengthens these conclusions comes from recent research on aphasic populations where a dissociation between English and Chinese relative clause processing has been revealed: whereas English aphasic patients have more difficulty with ORCs, Chinese aphasic patients have more difficulty with SRCs (Su et al., 2007; Brain and Language). Taken together, these results support the idea that sentence processing is constrained by working memory limitations.