AUTHOR=Frazier Michael , Ackerman Lauren , Baumann Peter , Potter David , Yoshida Masaya 

TITLE=Wh-filler-gap dependency formation guides reflexive antecedent search

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=6

YEAR=2015

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01504

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01504

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Prior studies on online sentence processing have shown that the parser can resolve non-local dependencies rapidly and accurately. This study investigates the interaction between the processing of two such non-local dependencies: <italic>wh</italic>-filler-gap dependencies (WhFGD) and reflexive-antecedent dependencies. We show that reflexive-antecedent dependency resolution is sensitive to the presence of a WhFGD, and argue that the filler-gap dependency established by WhFGD resolution is selected online as the antecedent of a reflexive dependency. We investigate the processing of constructions like (1), where two NPs might be possible antecedents for the reflexive, namely <italic>which cowgirl</italic> and <italic>Mary</italic>. Even though <italic>Mary</italic> is linearly closer to the reflexive, the only grammatically licit antecedent for the reflexive is the more distant <italic>wh</italic>-NP, <italic>which cowgirl</italic>.</p><p><italic>(1). Which cowgirl did Mary expect to have injured herself due to negligence</italic>?</p><p>Four eye-tracking text-reading experiments were conducted on examples like (1), differing in whether the embedded clause was non-finite (1 and 3) or finite (2 and 4), and in whether the tail of the <italic>wh</italic>-dependency intervened between the reflexive and its closest overt antecedent (1 and 2) or the <italic>wh</italic>-dependency was associated with a position earlier in the sentence (3 and 4). The results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicate the parser accesses the result of WhFGD formation during reflexive antecedent search. The resolution of a wh-dependency alters the representation that reflexive antecedent search operates over, allowing the grammatical but linearly distant antecedent to be accessed rapidly. In the absence of a long-distance WhFGD (Experiments 3 and 4), <italic>wh</italic>-NPs were not found to impact reading times of the reflexive, indicating that the parser's ability to select distant <italic>wh</italic>-NPs as reflexive antecedents crucially involves syntactic structure.</p>