Abstract

MURUJOSA, Marisol  and  SEVILLA, Yamila. THE ASYMMETRY IN THE COMPREHENSION OF RELATIVE CLAUSES IN SPANISH: AN EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW. Lingüística [online]. 2022, vol.38, n.1, pp.47-68.  Epub June 01, 2022. ISSN 2079-312X.  https://doi.org/10.5935/2079-312x.20220004.

In this article we present a critical overview of the various investigations carried out to date on the subject/object asymmetry in the comprehension of relative clauses in Spanish. We review the findings reached so far through different experimental techniques and offer an overview of what these discoveries contribute to the discussion of the main theoretical proposals on sentence comprehension. We focus on four aspects of relative clauses in Spanish that can enrich the hypotheses that we have so far: (i) the structural ambiguity, (ii) the variety of relative types in Spanish (headed, false-free and free), (iii) the order of constituents and (iv) the animacity information and the gender, number and case of the nominals of the relatives. Thus, we try to identify what we know, what remains to be understood, and what are the most relevant directions of research in Spanish in order to inform contemporary theoretical models.

Keywords : sentence comprehension; relative clauses; ambiguity resolution; memory; syntactic configurations.

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