Lexico-Semantic Influence on Syntactic Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study with Spanish Relative Clauses

[EN] This paper investigates the interaction between lexicosemantic and syntactic information in sentence processing by examining the online comprehension of Spanish relative clauses (RCs) of both restrictive and non-restrictive types. A corpus study shows that, in Spanish, a RC may be introduced by...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Álvarez García, Esther, Igoa González, José Manuel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universidad de León
Repositorio:BULERIA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de León
OAI Identifier:oai:buleria.unileon.es:10612/17966
Acceso en línea:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/13/3/409
https://hdl.handle.net/10612/17966
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Lingüística
Language comprehension
Spanish relative clause
Eye-tracking
Interactive accounts
57 Lingüística
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] This paper investigates the interaction between lexicosemantic and syntactic information in sentence processing by examining the online comprehension of Spanish relative clauses (RCs) of both restrictive and non-restrictive types. A corpus study shows that, in Spanish, a RC may be introduced by different function words (called relativizers), which differ in lexical frequency, as well as semantic features. Based on these facts, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted with the aim of analyzing whether lexicosemantic information could influence sentence processing at the early stages. The results report an early influence of lexicosemantic information not only when activating a relativizer but also when integrating it within the syntactic structure. Additionally, the semantic role played by each RC type seems to constrain sentence processing at different regions. Our results favor an interactive view of language processing, according to which language comprehension is guided from the early stages by different kinds of linguistic information rather than syntactic information alone.