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

ABSTRACT: 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

SUBMITTER: Alvarez-Garcia E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10046643 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature