Competing analyses and differential cost in the production of non-subject relative clauses

Abstract

The computational cost of restrictive non-subject relative clauses (RCs) in different processing conditions is discussed in relation to competing analyses of RCs. An elicited production experiment is reported in which adult speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) were asked to continue a preamble in such a way that a right-branching restrictive RC would enable a particular referent to be identified. Two processing conditions were contrasted: fully planned (FPlan), in which the speaker could plan the RC as the sentence production started; and partially planned (PPlan), in which production started before it was clear that a restrictive RC was the only option to encode the reference unambiguously. It was anticipated that the number of standard RCs would be lower in the PPlan condition, with an increase in the non-standard alternatives. This prediction is verified, with chopping standing as a cost reducing strategy in the production of indirect object RCs. It is argued that, for the standard strategy, RCs as complements (as conceived of in most raising analyses) suit an online model of RC computation in the fully planned condition; however, the possibility of RCs as adjuncts, as proposed by most head external and matching analyses, is required for the incremental computation of a restrictive RC in the partially planned condition.

Keywords

• relative clauses
• complementation
• adjunction
• incrementality
• computational cost
• elicited production