Lourenço-Gomes, M. d. C. 1 , Costa, M. A. 1 & Maia, M. 2
1 University of Lisbon
2 Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
The attachment of ambiguous relative clauses (RCs) to complex nouns phrases, in which two hosts are candidates to the RCs' attachment, still occupies a prominent position in the field of sentence processing investigations, although it has been thoroughly scrutinized in diverse languages. The attention given to this structure is due to the fact that speakers/hearers of some languages exhibit the preference of attaching the RC to N1, while in others to N2, challenging the existence of a universal parser (Frazier, 1979). However, in this study we use the structure to examine more specifically integration of gender and number cues in European Portuguese, and to evaluate the role of this type of morphological information in two self-paced reading experiments. Twenty-four experimental items were manipulated in order to undo the ambiguity in a full paradigm of number (Experiment 1) and gender agreement (Experiment 2), as exemplified below. The sentences were presented to the subjects word by word in a computer screen. At the end of each sentence subjects should choose between two alternate interpretations − e.g. (1). Forty-eight native speakers of European Portuguese, graduate students from University of Lisbon, participated in the study. Results are discussed based on differences observed in previous works between European and Brazilian Portuguese when number agreement is involved (Maia et al., 2007), and in evidence that Brazilian speakers/listeners incur in less errors in the questions when the ambiguity is undone through gender agreement than when it is undone through number agreement (Lourenço-Gomes,2008).
(1) O detective procurou o vizinho[-sing/+sing] do criado que estava[-sing/+sing] implicado[-sing/+sing] em vários casos.
(A) O vizinho[-sing/+sing] estava[-sing/+sing] implicado[-sing/+sing].
(B) O criado[-sing/+sing] estava[-sing/+sing] implicado[-sing/+sing]
(2) O detective procurou o vizinho[-male/+ male] do criado que estava implicado[-male/+ male] em vários casos.
(The detective searched for the neighbor of the servant who was implicated in many issues)