@article {6617, title = {Subject object asymmetries in the production of relative clauses in Cantonese}, journal = {Studies in Chinese Linguistics}, volume = {40}, year = {2019}, pages = {168-202}, abstract = {

\ In the literature about processing of relative clauses (RCs), subject relatives (SRs) are reported to be easier than object relatives (ORs) in a number of languages, but the status of prenominal ORs in languages where the object follows the verb (SVO) is still partly controversial. This study explores the production of RCs in Cantonese in two elicited production experiments and two corpus studies. In the first elicited experiment, an overwhelming preference for SRs was observed. In two corpus studies where the context and the feature of arguments were uncontrolled, the reverse pattern was observed. In order to reconcile the two datasets, we speculate that what counts in object dependencies is the featural endowment of the subject, as in the intervention hypothesis implemented in Friedmann et al. 2009. A second elicited experiment was run to test this hypothesis. The results suggest that production of RCs in Cantonese displays a subject preference in general and that object dispreference is modulated by featural mismatch.\ 

}, keywords = {adult production, Cantonese, relative clauses, syntax}, author = {Jiaying Huang and Caterina Donati} } @conference {5625, title = {Relative clause processing, structural and linear distance matter - Evidence from Mandarin, Cantonese and English Visual World experiments}, year = {2017}, month = {04/2017}, address = {Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston }, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Jiaying Huang and Barbara Hemforth} } @conference {4718, title = {Competition of linear and structural distance in relative clause processing - Evidence from Mandarin and Cantonese Visual World experiments}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, abstract = {

RC processing confronts three major theories: linear distance theories versus frequency/structure based theories. Languages such as English don\&$\#$39;t allow to decide between them since all predict a Subject Relative preference, while linear distance predicts an Object Relative preference for Mandarin.\ 
In three VW-Eye-Tracking experiments we found a slight but not robust SR preference consistent with the proposition that RC processing involves a competition between linear distance and frequency/structure based factors. Cantonese has prenominal RCs as Mandarin but is different in that it has two major RC-types: one similar to Mandarin with a relativizer (ge3), and one without relativizer. It has been argued that linear distance doesn\&$\#$39;t play a role in structures without relativizer which may be analysed as adjoined. For Cantonese, RCs with relativizer show a slight (marginal) SR preference, however for RCs without relativizer, there is a strong (significant) advantage for SRs. Moreover, RCs without relativizer are generally easier to process than RCs with relativizer. Since for RCs without relativizer only frequency/structure based factors should be at work, the significant SR advantage is predicted, and so is the lack of difference between SRs and ORs in RCs with relativizer, in which the factors are in competition.

}, author = {Pozniak, Celine and Jiaying Huang and Barbara Hemforth} }