Another word on parsing relative clauses: Eyetracking evidence from Spanish and English

Abstract

Ambiguity as to what the relative clause modifies in phrases such as Someone shot the maid of the actress who was divorced/Alguien disparo contra la criada de la actriz que estaba divorciada tends to be resolved differently in different languages (and in different forms of complex noun phrases). In English, there is a weak but seldom significant tendency for the relative clause to be taken as modifying the second noun phrase, the actress, but in Spanish, several researchers have found a significant preference for the relative clause's modifying the first noun phrase, la criada. The present experiments compare Spanish and English readers' eye movements while reading exactly comparable sentences in their native languages and find a significant reading time advantage in Spanish when it is forced to modify the first noun phrase, but in English when the relative clause is forced to modify the second noun phrase. Theoretical implications of the findings for previous explanations of the phenomenon are discussed.