Resumptive pronouns, structural complexity, and the elusive distinction between grammar and performance: evidence from Cantonese

The use of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses appears to be governed by structural complexity in grammar and usage. Resumptive pronoun distributions across languages typically follow the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan and Comrie, 1977): if the grammar allows resumptive pronouns in one position, it also allows them in more deeply embedded positions. Hawkins (2004) predicts a parallel effect in usage: when the grammar permits the option of either resumptive pronoun or gap, resumptive pronouns should be used more often as structural complexity increases. Results of two experiments, an elicited production task and an acceptability judgment task, affirm Hawkins’ prediction for Cantonese: resumptive pronouns were used more often and rated as more acceptable as the complexity of the relative clause increased from subject to direct object to coverb object and from non-possessive to possessive. Furthermore, resumptive pronoun use was apparently not governed by any categorical grammatical constraints on filler-gap dependencies. Resumptive pronouns were sometimes omitted in coverb object relatives, contrary to a proposed adjunct island condition. Implications for theories of grammatical competence are considered.

[1]  Y. Zhao,et al.  Resumptive pronouns in English-Chinese and Arabic-Chinese interlanguages , 2005 .

[2]  Sam Featherston,et al.  That-trace in German , 2005 .

[3]  Sam Featherston,et al.  Three types of exceptions – and all of them rule-based , 2011 .

[4]  Y.-H. Audrey Li,et al.  The Syntax of Chinese , 2009 .

[5]  Carol Lord,et al.  Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions , 1993 .

[6]  John Hitz.  A study of the constraints affecting resumption in Turkish and Mandarin Chinese relative clauses, and the transfer of these constraints to English as a second language , 2012 .

[7]  M. Kutas,et al.  Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses: Evidence from ERP data , 2013 .

[8]  Peter W. Culicover,et al.  Grammar and Complexity: Language at the Intersection of Competence and Performance , 2013 .

[9]  Janet Dean Fodor,et al.  Use Your Headedness: An Exercise in Psycholinguistic Exploitation1 , 2010 .

[10]  Ur Shlonsky,et al.  Resumptive pronouns as a last resort , 1992 .

[11]  Ash Asudeh,et al.  The Logic of Pronominal Resumption , 2012 .

[12]  Edith A. Moravcsik.  An Introduction to Syntactic Theory , 2006 .

[13]  Virginia Yip,et al.  Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar , 1994 .

[14]  James McCloskey,et al.  Resumptive pronouns, A-binding,and levels of representations in Irish , 2011 .

[15]  Susan Dunlap,et al.  Chinese subject-relative clauses are more difficult to process than the object-relative clauses. , 2008, Acta psychologica.

[16]  Edward Gibson,et al.  Processing relative clauses in Chinese , 2003, Cognition.

[17]  M. Polinsky,et al.  Resumption in English , 2013 .

[18]  E. Keenan,et al.  Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar , 2008 .

[19]  Cecilia Yuet Hung Chan,et al.  The partial availability of Universal Grammar in second language acquisition: the ‘failed functional features hypothesis’ , 1997 .

[20]  E. Gibson.  Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies , 1998, Cognition.

[21]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  Experience and generalization in a connectionist model of Mandarin Chinese relative clause processing , 2013, Front. Psychol..

[22]  V. M. Holmes,et al.  Eye fixation patterns during the reading of relative-clause sentences. , 1981 .

[23]  Cecile McKee,et al.  Resumptive Pronouns in English Relative Clauses , 2001 .

[24]  M. Just,et al.  Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory , 1991 .

[25]  Nayoung Kwon,et al.  Cognitive and linguistic factors affecting subject/object asymmetry: An eye-tracking study of prenominal relative clauses in Korean , 2010 .

[26]  Ronnie Cann,et al.  Data at the grammar-pragmatics interface: the case of resumptive pronouns in English , 2005, Lingua.

[27]  Morten H. Christiansen,et al.  The need for quantitative methods in syntax and semantics research , 2013 .

[28]  Wayne Cowart,et al.  Experimental evidence for a minimalist account of English resumptive pronouns , 1999, Cognition.

[29]  Joan L. Bybee,et al.  From Usage to Grammar: The Mind's Response to Repetition , 2007 .

[30]  Hagit Borer,et al.  Restrictive relatives in modern Hebrew , 1984 .

[31]  M. Polinsky,et al.  Resumption Still Does Not Rescue Islands , 2011, Linguistic Inquiry.

[32]  Susan M. Garnsey,et al.  An ERP study of the processing of subject and object relative clauses in Japanese , 2008 .

[33]  Yi-Ching Su.  Relatives of Mandarin Children , 2004 .

[34]  Elisabeth Norcliffe,et al.  Does Resumption Facilitate Sentence Comprehension , 2013 .

[35]  P. Sells.  Syntax and Semantics of Resumptive Pronouns , 1984 .

[36]  Angela D. Friederici,et al.  The Processing of Locally Ambiguous Relative Clauses in German , 1995 .

[37]  Inbal Arnon,et al.  The source ambiguity problem : Distinguishing the effects of grammar and processing on acceptability judgments , 2011 .

[38]  Xiaoling Hu,et al.  Restrictive relative clauses in English and Korean learners' second language Chinese , 2007 .

[39]  Ellen F. Prince,et al.  Syntax and Discourse: A Look at Resumptive Pronouns , 1990 .

[40]  F. Ferreira,et al.  The Production and Comprehension of Resumptive Pronouns in Relative Clause “Island” Contexts , 2017 .

[41]  Frank Keller,et al.  Locality, Cyclicity, and Resumption: At the Interface between the Grammar and the Human Sentence Processor , 2007 .

[42]  S. Vasishth,et al.  Processing Chinese Relative Clauses: Evidence for the Subject-Relative Advantage , 2013, PloS one.

[43]  Mira Ariel,et al.  Cognitive Universals and Linguistic Conventions: The Case of Resumptive Pronouns , 1999 .

[44]  Thomas G. Bever,et al.  Subject Preference in the Processingof Relative Clauses in Chinese , 2006 .

[45]  Hintat Cheung,et al.  Spoken relative clause processing in Chinese: Measure from an alternative task , 2011 .

[46]  Yip,et al.  Relative clauses in early bilingual development: transfer and universals , 2000 .

[47]  Edward L. Keenan,et al.  DATA ON THE NOUN PHRASE ACCESSIBILITY HIERARCHY , 1979 .

[48]  Elaine J. Francis,et al.  Categoriality and Object Extraction in Cantonese Serial Verb Constructions , 2006 .

[49]  Charles Chien-Jer Lin,et al.  The Processing Foundation of Head-Final Relative Clauses , 2008 .

[50]  J. Hawkins.  PROCESSING COMPLEXITY AND FILLER-GAP DEPENDENCIES ACROSS GRAMMARS , 1999 .

[51]  Robin K. Morris,et al.  Processing Subject and Object Relative Clauses: Evidence from Eye Movements , 2002 .

[52]  Twenty First Century Psycholinguistics: Four Cornerstones Lawrence Erlbaum Associates , 2005 .

[53]  Michiko Nakamura,et al.  Subject/Object asymmetries in the processing of relative clauses in Japanese , 2003 .

[54]  Charles N. Li,et al.  Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar , 1989 .

[55]  Toshiaki Imada,et al.  Theta brain rhythms index perceptual narrowing in infant speech perception , 2013, Front. Psychol..

[56]  J. Hawkins.  Efficiency and complexity in grammars , 2004 .