The syntactic-semantic structure of complex NPs and its influence on relative clause processing
This article presents the results of a theoretical-experimental study that investigated the influence of the type of complex NP on relative clause processing. We conducted a theoretical discussion on occupational complex NPs (“the masseur(N1) of player(N2)”) and relational complex NPs (“the nephewN1...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | Brasil |
| Institución: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) |
| Repositorio: | Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos |
| Idioma: | portugués |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ojs.periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br:article/8679864 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/cel/article/view/8679864 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Complex NPs Relative clauses Semantic processing NPs complexos Orações relativas Processamento semântico SNs complejos Oraciones relativas Procesamiento semántico |
| Sumario: | This article presents the results of a theoretical-experimental study that investigated the influence of the type of complex NP on relative clause processing. We conducted a theoretical discussion on occupational complex NPs (“the masseur(N1) of player(N2)”) and relational complex NPs (“the nephewN1) of player(N2)”) and showed that they present distinct syntactic-semantic structures: the bare noun (N2) of the occupational NP would be an NP (type <e,t>) and would form a compound with the N1; while the N2 of the relational NP would be a DP (type e), with a kind reading, and would act as an argument of the N1. Based on this proposal, we hypothesized that in a structure such as “The nurse calmed the masseur/the nephew of player who was run over on the road”, the N2 would receive a generic interpretation in the occupational NP and a more referential interpretation in the relational NP (resulting from a costly process of changing from a kind reading to an existential reading), with such readings affecting the interpretation of the relative clause: there would be a preference for N1 modification in the occupational NP and for N2 modification in the relational NP. We conducted a self-paced reading experiment to investigate the real-time interpretation of these complex NPs and the relative clauses associated with them, and the results we found were in line with the general hypothesis presented above: the processing of the N2 was more costly in the relational NP than in the occupational NP, and there was a preference for N1 modification in sentences with an occupational NP and for N2 modification in sentences with a relational NP. These results suggest that semantic processing occurs incrementally and that the syntactic-semantic differences proposed for the complex NPs under discussion have psychological repercussions, evidencing the productivity of the dialogue between Experimental Psycholinguistics and Formal Semantics. |
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