Hacettepe University Institute of Social Sciences Department of English Linguistics AN EYE-TRACKING INVESTIGATION OF ATTACHMENT PREFERENCES TO RELATIVE CLAUSES IN TURKISH Cengiz Turan Ph.D. Dissertation Ankara, 2018 AN EYE-TRACKING INVESTIGATION OF ATTACHMENT PREFERENCES TO RELATIVE CLAUSES IN TURKISH Cengiz Turan Hacettepe University Institute of Social Sciences Department of English Linguistics A PhD Dissertation Ankara, 2018 KABUL VE ONAY Cengiz Turan tarafından hazırlanan “AN EYE-TRACKING INVESTIGATION OF ATTACHMENT PREFERENCES TO RELATIVE CLAUSES IN TURKISH” başlıklı bu çalışma, 05.06.2018 tarihinde yapılan savunma sınavı sonucunda başarılı bulunarak jürimiz tarafından Doktora Tezi olarak kabul edilmiştir. Prof. Dr. S. Nalan Büyükkantarcıoğlu (Başkan) Prof. Dr. Işıl Özyıldırım Prof. Dr. Özgür Aydın Doç. Dr. Çiler Hatipoğlu Doç. Dr. Emine Yarar (Danışman) Yukarıdaki imzaların adı geçen öğretim üyelerine ait olduğunu onaylarım. Prof. Dr. Musa Yaşar SAĞLAM Enstitü Müdürü BİLDİRİM Hazırladığım tezin/raporun tamamen kendi çalışmam olduğunu ve her alıntıya kaynak gösterdiğimi taahhüt eder, tezimin/raporumun kağıt ve elektronik kopyalarının Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü arşivlerinde aşağıda belirttiğim koşullarda saklanmasına izin verdiğimi onaylarım: · Tezimin/Raporumun tamamı her yerden erişime açılabilir. ( Tezim/Raporum sadece Hacettepe Üniversitesi yerleşkele​rinden erişime açılabilir. ( Tezimin/Raporumun 2 yıl süreyle erişime açılmasını istemiyorum. Bu sürenin sonunda uzatma için başvuruda bulunmadığım takdirde, tezimin/raporumun tamamı her yerden erişime açılabilir. 05.06.2018 İmza Cengiz Turan YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI Enstitü tarafından onaylanan lisansüstü tezimin/raporumun tamamını veya herhangi bir kısmını, basılı (kâğıt) ve elektronik formatta arşivleme ve aşağıda verilen koşullarla kullanıma açma iznini Hacettepe Üniversitesine verdiğimi bildiririm. Bu izinle Üniversiteye verilen kullanım hakları dışındaki tüm fikri mülkiyet haklarım bende kalacak, tezimin tamamının ya da bir bölümünün gelecekteki çalışmalarda (makale, kitap, lisans ve patent vb.) kullanım hakları bana ait olacaktır. Tezin kendi orijinal çalışmam olduğunu, başkalarının haklarını ihlal etmediğimi ve tezimin tek yetkili sahibi olduğumu beyan ve taahhüt ederim. Tezimde yer alan telif hakkı bulunan ve sahiplerinden yazılı izin alınarak kullanılması zorunlu metinlerin yazılı izin alınarak kullandığımı ve istenildiğinde suretlerini Üniversiteye teslim etmeyi taahhüt ederim. oTezimin/Raporumun tamamı dünya çapında erişime açılabilir ve bir kısmı veya tamamının fotokopisi alınabilir. (Bu seçenekle teziniz arama motorlarında indekslenebilecek, daha sonra tezinizin erişim statüsünün değiştirilmesini talep etseniz ve kütüphane bu talebinizi yerine getirse bile, teziniz arama motorlarının önbelleklerinde kalmaya devam edebilecektir) oTezimin/Raporumun …………………. tarihine kadar erişime açılmasını ve fotokopi alınmasını (İç Kapak, Özet, İçindekiler ve Kaynakça hariç) istemiyorum. (Bu sürenin sonunda uzatma için başvuruda bulunmadığım takdirde, tezimin/raporumun tamamı her yerden erişime açılabilir, kaynak gösterilmek şartıyla bir kısmı veya tamamının fotokopisi alınabilir) · Tezimin/Raporumun 01.01.2021 tarihine kadar erişime açılmasını istemiyorum ancak kaynak gösterilmek şartıyla bir kısmı veya tamamının fotokopisinin alınmasını onaylıyorum. o Serbest Seçenek/Yazarın Seçimi …… /………/…… İmza Cengiz Turan ETİK BEYAN Bu çalışmadaki bütün bilgi ve belgeleri akademik kurallar çerçevesinde elde ettiğimi, görsel, işitsel ve yazılı tüm bilgi ve sonuçları bilimsel ahlak kurallarına uygun olarak sunduğumu, kullandığım verilerde herhangi bir tahrifat yapmadığımı, yararlandığım kaynaklara bilimsel normlara uygun olarak atıfta bulunduğumu, tezimin kaynak gösterilen durumlar dışında özgün olduğunu, Doç. Dr. Emine YARAR danışmanlığında tarafımdan üretildiğini ve Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Tez Yazım Yönergesine göre yazıldığını beyan ederim. İmza Cengiz Turan ACKNOWLEDGEMENT During my time in Hacettepe University and in the process of writing this thesis, there have been a number of influential people I am grateful to and I feel obliged to thank. As my advisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emine Yarar has edited my thesis from top to toe and helped me improve it with her insights and guidance; thus, it is not possible to thank her enough. I hereby want to thank Prof. Dr. Özgür Aydın and Prof. Dr. Işıl Özyıldırım, who helped me make changes and shared their expertise on the field during our thesis monitoring boards. Many thanks are also reserved for jury members of my thesis defense: Prof. Dr. S. Nalan Büyükkantarcıoğlu and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiler Hatipoğlu. With their insights, final improvements to our thesis were made possible. Asst. Prof. Dr. Duygu İ. AKÇAYOĞLU is the director of School of Foreign Languages. She has always been so kind and tolerant to let me take days off and go to Ankara for meetings with my advisor. Also, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Fatih Havaioğlu and Şerife Kalaycı, who contributed a lot by proofreading this thesis. I would like to thank all my family. They always supported and encouraged me with their unconditional love and best wishes. If only my deceased father, Halit Turan, could be with me today and share my happiness. Finally, many special thanks are reserved for my wife Fatma Turan, who has never stopped supporting me during this time. Without her help, this thesis would not be possible. ÖZET Turan, Cengiz. Türkçede Ortaç Yapılarına Yönelik Ekleme Tercihlerinin Göz İzleme Tekniğiyle İncelenmesi, Doktora Tezi, Ankara, 2018. Bu çalışmada Türkçedeki ortaç yapılarına ilişkin ekleme tercihlerinin işlenmesi göz-izleme tekniği ve kavrama soruları ile çözümlenmiştir. Ayrıca çalışmada ortaç türlerinin (özne ortaçları ve nesne ortaçları) ekleme tercihleri (yüksek, düşük ve belirsizlik içeren düşük) üzerindeki olası etkileri ve ortaç bakışımsızlığının söz konusu olup olmadığı incelenmiştir. Çalışmada toplam altmış katılımcıdan elde edilen veriler kullanılmıştır. Çalışmada iki ortaç ve üç ekleme türüne (yüksek - düşük - belirsizlik içeren düşük) göre geliştirilen kırk iki tümce göz izleme tekniği kullanılarak incelenmiştir. Bu tümcelerin yanı sıra kırk iki adet dolgu tümce deneklerin çalışmada incelenen yapıları tanımasını önlemek amacıyla kullanılmıştır. Kolmogorow Smirnow testi sonuçları toplanan verilerin normal dağılım sergilediğini göstermiştir. Bu nedenle verilerin çözümlenmesinde ikili karşılaştırmalar için bağımsız t-testi, üçlü karşılaştırmalar için ise ANOVA (Varyans Analizi) testi kullanılmıştır. Çalışmada elde edilen bulgular yüksek ve düşük ekleme türleri arasında bazı farklar olduğunu göstermektedir. Yüksek ekleme şeklinin düşük ekleme ile karşılaştırıldığında istatistiksel olarak anlamlı olmasa da kısmen daha az bilişsel yük oluşturduğu görülmüştür Ancak yüksek ekleme tümcelerinin ortaç sonrasında gelen ikinci ad öbeğinde daha istatistiki olarak daha yüksek okuma sürelerine sahip olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Bu da ayrıştırıcının ilk işlemede dahi verilen tümcenin anlamsal özelliklerine duyarlı olduğunu göstermektedir. Ayrıca ana eylemin işlenmesi yüksek ve düşük ekleme türlerinde istatistiksel olarak anlamlı farklılıklara neden olmaktadır. Düşük ekleme türündeki tümcelerde ana eylemin işlenmesi için harcanan sürenin istatistiki olarak daha uzun olduğu görülmüştür. Bu bulgu söz konusu tümcelerde üstü kapalı da olsa anlam belirsizliğine yol açmaktadır. Belirsizlik içeren yüksek ekleme türündeki tümcelerde ayrıştırıcının belirsizliği ortadan kaldırmada birincil yolu ana eylemin temel üye yapısını kullanmaktır. Ana eylem tümce ayrıştırmada yanılgı işareti olarak işlev görmekte ve ayrıştırıcının sözdizimsel tercihlerini düzenlemesine yardımcı olmaktadır. Ayrıca ortaç içeren bölüme ilişkin okuma zamanları tüm ekleme türlerinde nesne ortaçları içeren tümcelerde özne ortaçları içeren tümcelere oranla daha yüksektir. Ancak bu fark istatistiksel açıdan anlamlı değildir. Diğer yandan tümcelerin bütünü göz önüne alındığında ise katılımcıların nesne ortacı tümcelerini istatistiksel açıdan daha anlamlı olarak daha uzun sürelerde okudukları görülmüştür. Tek başına incelendiklerinde ise, ayrıştırıcı için istatistiki olarak anlamlı bir şekilde özne ortaçlarının daha kolay işlendiği gözlemlenmiştir. Bunun nedeni baş adının ve çıkarma alanı arasındaki yapısal mesafenin nesne ortaçlarında daha fazla olmasıdır. Ayrıca, Türkçenin dilbilimsel bir özelliği olarak nesne ortaçları kişi ekleri ve dolayısıyla uyum ekleri içermektedir ve bunlar da fazladan işleme yüküne neden olmaktadır. Kavrama sorularına verilen cevaplar incelendiğinde elde edilen sonuçlar göz izleme tekniği kullanılarak elde edilen bulguları doğrular niteliktedir. Yüksek ekleme türündeki tümcelerden sonra gelen kavrama sorularına verilen cevaplar istatistiksel olarak en yüksek doğruluk oranına sahiptir. Belirsizlik içeren tümceler için sorulan soruların ise en düşük seviyede doğru cevaplanmıştır. Özne ortaçlarına sahip tümcelerinden sonra gelen kavrama sorularına verilen cevaplar ise Nesne ortaçlarına sahip tümcelerden istatistiki olarak daha yüksektir. Ayrıştırıcı için erken işlemede sözdizimsel işlemler ağır basar ancak anlam karmaşası olduğu durumlarda ana eylemin taşıdığı sözlüksel-anlambilimsel bilgi öne geçer. Yüksek ekleme tümceleri düşük ekleme tümcelerine kıyasla daha kısa sürelerde işlenir. Bu yüzden Türkçenin bir yüksek ekleme dili olduğu öne sürülebilir. Okuma zamanları göz önüne alındığında, düşük ekleme tümcelerinde sınırlı bir anlam karmaşası olduğu söylenebilir. Son olarak nesne ortaçlarının bilişsel yükü tüm ekleme türlerine ait tümcelerde özne ortaçlarından daha yüksektir. Ekleme türlerine bakmaksızın, nesne ortacı bakışımsızlığı Yapısal Uzaklık Varsayımı (O’Grady, 2003)’da ortaya konduğu gibi tüm tümce türlerinde gözlemlenmektedir. Anahtar Sözcükler Ortaç yantümceleri, özne ortaçları, nesne ortaçları, ekleme tercihleri, yüksek ve düşük ekleme, yanlış yorumlama, yapısal ve doğrusal aralık, belirsizlik çözümü, bilişsel yük ABSTRACT TURAN, Cengiz. An Eye-Tracking Investigation of Attachment Preferences to Relative Clauses in Turkish, PhD Dissertation, Ankara, 2018. In this study, the processing of attachment preferences to relative clauses (RC) in Turkish was analyzed through an eye-tracking technique and comprehension questions presented following each experimental sentence. Within this general framework, the possible effects of the RC types (subject - object) on the processing of attachment types (low – high – high with ambiguity) and whether there was any RC asymmetry were examined. The data obtained from a total of sixty participants were analyzed in the study. Forty-two experimental sentences were developed based on two RC types and three attachment types as low, high and high with ambiguity. Therefore, in the study six conditions were tested along with forty-two filler sentences which were employed to distract the participants’ attention away from the investigated structures. The Kolmogorow Smirnow test showed that the data exhibited a normal distribution. For two-way comparisons, an independent t-test was used and for three-way comparisons, the ANOVA (Analysis Of Variance) was employed. Certain differences between the two attachment types were observed. General direction of processing seemed to be that the High Attachment configuration caused slightly less cognitive load than the Low Attachment. However, the High Attachment sentences exhibited statistically significant longer reading durations on NP2 (the second noun phrase following the RC area). Therefore, it was assumed that the parser was sensitive to lexical/semantic properties of the incoming words of the given sentences during the initial processing. The processing of the main verb was another point of divergence. Significantly longer fixation durations on main verbs were observed in Low Attachment sentences, which also suggest that they included an implicit ambiguity. It was revealed that the main strategy of the parser to repair an ambiguity in High Attachment sentences was using the argument structure of the main verb. It acted as an error signal prompting the parser to adjust its syntactic preferences. It was found out that for all attachment types, on the RC Area of Interest (AoI) the object RCs are read with longer durations. However, statistically significant differences were not found. Considering the whole sentences, on the other hand, statistically significant results were found where participants spent longer durations for the processing of the object RCs. When analyzed alone, the subject RCs was comparatively easier for the parser to process than the object RCs. This is attributed to longer structural distance between the head noun and the extraction site besides linguistic-specific properties of Turkish in which the ORCs were inflected for person agreement, which caused extra processing load. Regarding the answers to the comprehension questions, the data complements the findings from online processing. The answers to the comprehension questions following High Attachment sentences had statistically the highest accuracy level. On the other hand, the comprehension questions following the High Attachment with Ambiguity sentences had statistically the lowest accuracy rate. Considering the answers to the comprehension questions concerning the subject and object RC sentences, it was observed that the comprehension questions concerning the subject RC sentences were statistically answered more successfully. It is suggested that For Turkish parser, the early processing is dominated by syntactic operations. However, it is overridden by lexical-semantic information of the main verb when it is led into a Garden-path situation. High Attachment sentences take the parser shorter to process compared to the Low Attachment sentences. Therefore, it is suggested that Turkish is a High Attachment language. Considering the reading times, Low Attachment sentences also include a local ambiguity as in High Attachment with Ambiguity. Finally, Cognitive load of ORCs is heavier than SRCs in all attachment types except for RC AoI. ORC asymmetry is also observed across all the experimental items regardless of attachment types, which is predicted by Structural Distance Hypothesis (SDH) (O’Grady, 2003). Key words Relative clauses, subject relative clauses, object relative clauses, attachment preferences, high and low attachment, garden-path, structural and linear distance, ambiguity resolution, cognitive load TABLE OF CONTENTS KABUL VE ONAY………………………………………………..………………...…i BİLDİRİM……………………………………………………………………………...ii YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI……………..…..…iii ETİK BEYAN……….………………………………………..………...…………..….iv ACKNOWLEDGMENT…………………………………………………….………...v ÖZET…………………………………………………………………………………...vi ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………......viii TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………...…………………….x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………..……....xiii LIST OF TABLES …………………………………………………………………...xvi LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………….….xxi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………22 1.1. BACKGROUND………………………………………………………….22 1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM…………………………………....25 1.3. AIM OF THE STUDY…………………………………………………....26 1.4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS………………………………………………27 1.5. LIMITATIONS………………………………...…………………………27 1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY……………………………………28 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……………….………………………...…30 2.1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RELATIVE CLAUSES .…….30 2.2. TURKISH RELATIVE CLAUSES…………………………………...…34 2.3. RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING ………………..………………………..45 2.3.1. Models of RC Attachment Processing and Ambiguity Resolution…46 2.3.2. Processing of Subject/Object RCs…………….………………………60 2.3.3. RC Processing in Turkish……………………………………………...66 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY………………………………..………….……....72 3.1. PILOT STUDIES ...………………………………………………………72 3.1.1. Pilot Study I…………………………………………………..…73 3.1.1.1. Participants…...………………………………………..73 3.1.1.2. Materials………...……………………………………..73 3.1.1.3. Data Collection Tool…………………………………..74 3.1.1.4. Procedure……………………………..……………..…75 3.1.1.5. Data Analysis…………………………………………..75 3.1.1.6. Results / Suggestions…………………………………..75 3.1.2. Pilot Study II………………………………………………..…..76 3.1.2.1. Participants…………………………………………..…76 3.1.2.2. Materials……………………...……………………..…76 3.1.2.3. Data Collection Tool………………………………..…77 3.1.2.4. Procedure………………………………..…………..…77 3.1.2.5. Data Analysis………………………………………..…77 3.1.2.6. Results / Suggestions………………………………..…77 3.2. PARTICIPANTS……………………………………..…………………..78 3.3. MATERIALS…………………………………………………………..…78 3.4. DATA COLLECTION TOOLS………………………………………....83 3.5. PROCEDURE……………………………………………………….……83 3.6. DATA ANALYSIS…………………………………………………….….86 3.7. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK…………………………..…….…….87 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION………...……………………….…..89 4.1. ANALYSIS OF ATTACHMENT PREFERENCES TO RELATIVE CLAUSES……………………………………..……………………………………….90 4.1.1. Analysis of Answers to Comprehension Questions……….....118 4.2. ANALYSIS OF SRC/ORC ASYMMETRY EFFECT ON ATTACHMENT PREFERENCES TO RELATIVE CLAUSES………………....121 4.2.1. Analysis of the Answers to Comprehension Questions………………………………………………………....……..…….135 4.2.2 Analysis of the Subject and Object Relative Clause Asymmetry…………………………………………………………………...139 4.2.3. Analysis of theAnswers to Comprehension Questions…...….143 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION………….…………………………………………..146 5.1. ANSWERS OF THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS………………….…………150 5.2. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH……………………………..155 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………157 APPENDIX I…………...……………………………………………………….…....176 APPENDIX II………………………………………………………………………..188 APPENDIX III……………………………………………………………………….190 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1st SG First person Singular 3rd SG Third person Singular ABL Ablative case ACC Accusative case ADVP Adverb Phrase ANOVA Analysis Of Variance AoI Area of Interest CP Complementizer Phrase CPPM Current Partial Phrase Marker D Determiner DAT Dative case DCFH Discourse Context Function Hypothesis DECL Declarative DLT Dependency Locality Theory DP Determiner Phrase e Empty ERG Ergative Case ERPs Event-Related Potentials FF First Fixation (Duration) fMRI Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging fNIRS Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy GDP Grammar Dependency Principle GEN Genitive Case GER Gerund GP Genitive Possessive Construction High A. High Attachment Hz Hertz i Index L1 First Language (Mother Tongue) LDH Linear Distance Hypothesis LOC Locative case Low A. Low Attachment MEG Magnetoencephalography MS Microsoft MV Main Verb N Noun NOM Nominative Case NP Noun Phrase NPAH Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy NSPART Non-Subject Participle O Object OPART Object Participle ORC Object Relative Clause PART Participle PAST Past Tense PC Possessive Compound PET Positron Emission Tomography PFG Possessive-free Genitive Construction PL Plural POSS Possessive PP Prepositional Phrase PROG Progressive RC Relative Clause S Sentence SDH Structural Distance Hypothesis SG SGular Sig Significance SO Spillover SPART Subject Participle SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SRC Subject Relative Clause Std. Standard TF Total Fixation (Duration) TFT Thin-Film-Transistor  V Verb VP Verb Phrase w/A. with Ambiguity LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Syntax-Semantics Interaction (adapted from De Vries, 2001:7)…….………..33 Table 2. Word-order variations in RC (adapted from De Vries, 2001:8)……………...33 Table 3. Identification of Word Categories in the First Stage of Garden Path Theory of Sentence Procesing (Traxler, 2012: 144)….………………………………...………....47 Table 4. Identification of Word Categories in the First Stage of Garden Path Theory of Sentence Procesing……………………………………………………………………..92 Table 5. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 1 (RC) in First Fixation Duration………………………………………...……………………………………....93 Table 6. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 1(RC) in Total Fixation Duration……………………………………………………………..………………….94 Table 7. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 1(RC) in Total Fixation Duration……………………………………………………………………………...…94 Table 8. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 2 (NP1) in First Fixation Duration……………………………………………………………………..……….....97 Table 9. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 2 (NP1) in First Fixation Duration………………………………………………………………………...….…...97 Table 10. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 2 (NP1) in Total Fixation Duration………………………………………………………………………………...98 Table 11. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 2 (NP1) in Total Fixation Duration………………………………………………………………………………...99 Table 12. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 3 (NP2) in First Fixation Duration………………………………………………………….…………………....101 Table 13. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 3 (NP2) in First Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………….…101 Table 14. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 3 (NP2) in Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………….………....102 Table 15. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 3 (NP2) in Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………….....103 Table 16. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 4 (Spillover) in First Fixation Duration……………………………………………………………….…..…107 Table 17. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 4 (Spillover) in First Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………….....108 Table 18. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 4 (Spillover) in Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………..…108 Table 19. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 4 (Spillover) in Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………..…...109 Table 20. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 5 (MV) in First Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………..…...111 Table 21. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 5 (MV) in First Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………..…...111 Table 22. Descriptive Statistics on Attachment Types for AoI 5 (MV) in Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………….....112 Table 23. ANOVA Results on Attachment Types for AoI 5 (MV) in First Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………..…...112 Table 24. Summary of RC Processing Ranking through Attachment Types and Significances……………………………………………………………………..……115 Table 25. Descriptive Statistics and Normality Distribution on Attachment Types for Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions ……………………..…………..……119 Table 26. ANOVA Test Results on Attachment Types for Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions …………………………..……………………….………120 Table 27: Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Effect on Attachment Types Considering Total Fixation Duration in RC Area…………………….………..……..123 Table 28. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on Low Attachment Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration for RC Area…………………………...……….123 Table 29. Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Effect on Attachment Types Considering Total Fixation Duration for RC Area…………………..………………..125 Table 30. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment with Ambiguity Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration……………………..….…………….125 Table 31. Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Effect on Attachment Types Considering Total Fixation Duration…………………………………...……………..127 Table 32. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration For RC Area……………………………..….…128 Table 33. Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Effect on Attachment Types Considering Total Fixation Duration………………………………………..…..…….129 Table 34. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on Low Attachment Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………...…..…129 Table 35. Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Effect on Attachment Types Considering Total Fixation Duration……………………………………………….…130 Table 36. T-test Results on Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment with Ambiguity Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration……………………………..……..…130 Table 37. Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Effect on Attachment Types Considering First and Total Fixation Duration………………………………..………131 Table 38. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration……………………………………..…...………132 Table 39. Significant ORC/SRC Asymmetries Observed in Attachment Types………………………………………………………………….………………133 Table 40. Descriptive Statistics on RC Effect on Attachment Types for Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions………………………………………….…...………….135 Table 41. T-test Results on RC Effect on Attachment Types for Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions…………………………………….………….………..….136 Table 42. T-test Results for RC Effect on Attachment Types for Correct Answers to Comprehension uestions………………………………….……………….………..…136 Table 43. T-test Results for RC Effect on Attachment Types for Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions……………………………………………….……………138 Table 44. Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Considering First Fixation Duration……………………………………………………………………………….140 Table 45. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Considering First Fixation Duration……………………………………………………………………..………...141 Table 46. Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Considering Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………….…142 Table 47. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Considering Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………….….……...142 Table 48. Descriptive Statistics and Normality Distribution on RC Asymmetry for Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions…………………………………….…144 Table 49. T-test Results on RC Asymmetry for Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions………………………………………………………………………..…….144 Table 50. Descriptive Statistics and Normality Distribution on Sentences Manipulated with RC and Attachment Types in terms of First Fixation Duration………………....190 Table 51. Descriptive Statistics and Normality Distribution of Sentences Manipulated with RC and Attachment Types in terms of Total Fixation Duration…………..…….191 Table 52. Descriptive Statistics and Normality distribution of sentences manipulated with RC in terms of First Fixation Duration…………………………….…………….192 Table 53. Descriptive Statistics and Normality distribution of sentences manipulated with Attachment types in terms of First Fixation Duration..………………………….193 Table 54: Descriptive Statistics and Normality distribution of correct answers to comprehension questions………………………………...……………………………194 Table 55: Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Considering First Fixation Duration……………………………………………………….………………………195 Table 56: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Considering First Fixation Duration……………………………………...………………………………………..195 Table 57: Descriptive Statistics on RC Asymmetry Considering Total Fixation Duration……………………………………………………………….………………196 Table 58: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Considering First Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………...…………………..196 Table 59: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on Low Attachment Sentences Considering First Fixation Duration………………………………………...………...197 Table 60: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on Low Attachment Sentences Considering First Fixation Duration…………………………………………….…….197 Table 61: Descriptive Statistics and Normality distribution of RC Asymmetry Effect on Low Attachment Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration………………………………………………………………...……………..198 Table 62: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on Low Attachment Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration………………………………………...………..198 Table 63: Descriptive Statistics and Normality distribution of RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment with Ambiguity Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration…………………………………………………………………………...…..199 Table 64: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment with Ambiguity Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration…………………………………..…..199 Table 65: Descriptive Statistics and Normality distribution of RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment with Ambiguity Sentences Considering First Fixation Duration…..200 Table 66: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment with Ambiguity Sentences Considering First Fixation Duration……………………………….………200 Table 67: Descriptive Statistics and Normality distribution of RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment Sentences Considering First Fixation Duration……...………………………………………………………………………..201 Table 68: T-test Results on RC Asymmetry Effect on High Attachment with Ambiguity Sentences Considering Total Fixation Duration……………………………...……….201 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Areas of Interests Used in the SRC Sentences………………………………74 Figure 2. Areas of Interests Used in the ORC Sentences……...………………………74 Figure 3. Design of Experimental Sentences…………………………………………...79 Figure 4. Sample Comprehension Question Item………………………………………82 Figure 5. An Example AoI…………………………………………………………….85 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. BACKGROUND Psycholinguistics is a field of linguistics that primarily investigates psychological factors in (whether first or second) language acquisition, use, processing and production (Pickering, Clifton, and Crocker 2000). Although the history of psycholinguistics is a long one, it is usually traced back to one of the leading figures in psychology from Leipzig, Germany: Wilhelm Wundt, who claimed that psychological principles possess the capacity to explain linguistic processes (Blumenthal, 1987). Influenced by Wundt’s principles, a new approach to linguistic studies was developed by Young Grammarians (Junggrammatiker) including Bloomfield, Mead, Saussure and Boas who contributed further to the field of psycholinguistics. Blumenthal (1987) also mentions Johann Herbart, philosopher-psycholinguist, as another figure of German academic community of the 19th century. Following a formalistic and mechanistic system of thought, Herbart suggested a cognitive psychology that is formed with a theory of mental associations. He proposed principles of accommodation, assimilation, fusion and other patternings that are used to explain dynamic mental schemata. Herbart’s psychological concepts are observed in considerable figures such as Piaget and more noticeably in Hermann Paul (1880, cited in Blumental, 1987). In a more modern sense, psycholinguistic studies are traced to a conference held at Cornell University, and Osgood and Sebeok’s (1965) book that described this conference. Their use of the term psycholinguistics is considered to be the milestone in embracing psychological methods and theories with linguistic concentration. In addition, their book is regarded as a crucial attempt to “reunite” linguistics and psychology (Garnham, Garrod and Sanford, 2006). The researchers state that despite the background of consecutive endeavors to fuse psychology and linguistics, it was not until mid-to late 1960s that studies in Psycholinguistic as accepted today initiated. The advent and efficiency of psycholinguistics were harshly criticized by Reber (1987), who stated that the Wundian ideas to psychology and language such as introspectionism, empiricism, laboratory-based Structuralism were presented to the linguistic circles in the USA. On the other hand, rationalism, non-laboratory-based Volkerpsychologie within the same program were neglected. For Reber (1987), the short life of psycholinguistics could also be attributed to the behaviorists’ use of the Wundian approach. Five factors, according to Reber (1987: 326-339), are identified for the demise of psycholinguistics: 1. Exceptionally firm version of nativism 2. Withdrawal of psycholinguistics from mainstream psychology 3. Inclination for a formal theory and rather than empirical data 4. Hasty alterations to Standard Theory in linguistics 5. Lack of dedication to functionalism, which in the core of experimental psychology. Despite the negative claims of the speration between linguistics and psychology, the approach to psycholinguistics today is consolidated as theoretical, and applicational trends in psychology and linguistics are interwoven. Sentence processing is one of these study topics in psycholinguistics. The field of sentence processing, as suggested by Papadopoulo (2006: 2), investigates the following central issues: 1. The architecture of the parser 2. Tendencies of the parser to process the structural analysis of the sentence 3. The existence of a clear-cut syntactic parser 4. The role of non-grammatical factors in sentence comprehension 5. Universality of human processor Studies on sentence processing analyze strictly controlled language properties (human or non-human host nouns, differing length and frequency of host nouns, prepositions in complex NPs, methods of disambiguation, preferentiality of hosts, number of nouns in complex NPs and so forth) through empirical methods to outline the mechanisms behind the language processing and reach conclusions about them (e.g., Traxler, Morris, and Seely, 2002; Traxler, Williams, Blozis and Morris, 2005; Just and Carpenter, 1992). Main trends in sentence processing have been to argue whether or not the human parser is universal (Abney, 1989; Crocker, 1996; Frazier, 1978, 1985, 1987; Frazier and Clifton, 1996, 1997; Frazier and Fodor, 1978; Frazier and Rayner, 1982; Philips, 1996; Weinberg, 2001) or parameterized (Bates and MacWhinney, 1982, 1987; Gibson et al., 1996; Gibson et al., 1999; Hemforth et al., 1998; MacWhinney, 1987, 1997; MacWhinney and Bates, 1989; Mazuka and Lust, 1990) and whether attachment preferences and methods of disambiguation are frequency-based or language-specific (MacDonald, 1993, 1994, 1997; MacDonald et al., 1994a, 1994b; Mitchell et al., 1995; Spivey-Knowlton et al., 1993; Spivey-Knowlton and Tanenhaus, 1994; Taraban and McClelland, 1990; Thornton et al., 1998; Thornton et al., 1999; Trueswell and Tanenhaus, 1994; Trueswell et al., 1994). With the technological advanves in data collection tools, a number of online and offline techniques have been developed to investigate the insights about the parser’s sentence processing such as Neuroimaging Techniques: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS); Behavioral Techniques: Self-Paced Reading and Eye Tracking. The field has improved its capability in gathering information to better testing psychological reality of linguistic theories through these techniques. 1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The research on relative clauses (RC) within the field of psycholinguistics is quite prolific. The RCs have been analyzed in terms of first and second language acquisition, language processing comprehension and production. The processing of the RCs focusing on English and other typologically-similar languages (head-initial languages) has been examined in a number of studies (e.g., Caplan et al., 2001; Gibson, Hickok, and Schutze, 1994; Gordon, Hendrick, and Johnson, 2001; King and Just, 1991; King and Kutas, 1995; Pickering, 1994; Traxler, Morris, and Seely, 2002; Weckerly and Kutas, 1999). On the other hand, the studies on head-final languages, including Turkish, are needed to test the widely accepted generalizations and create a framework for language processing specifically for these languages (Papadopoulou, 2006). Moreover, the studies on the RC attachment preferences in Turkish are scarce (Kırkıcı, 2004; Kaya, 2010 and Dinçtopal-Deniz, N., 2010). These studies analyzed certain linguistics structures of genetive possesive contructions ([NP1GEN+NP2] and prepositional phrases [[NP1 P]PP+NP2]) that were previously studied in other languages. However, possessive compounds [NP1+NP2POSS] and[NP1+NP2ACC] in the RC attachment have not been studied so far. Furthermore, an account of SRC/ORC asymmetry in the context of such attachment analysis using the online reading (for which an eye-tracker device was employed) data in tandem with the data from comprehension questions has not been analyzed. In addition, there is insufficient and also conflicting studies on Turkish SRC/ORC asymmetry (Kahraman, 2010; Bulut, 2012 and Ekmekçi, 1990) which require more studies on the topic. In addition, whether Turkish primarily prioritises high or low attachment to RCs has not been established. All these points make it clear that the RC attachment preferences should be analyzed in Turkish, and Turkish language should be described based on these features. 1.3. AIM OF THE STUDY The present study aims to investigate Turkish native speakers’ attachment preferences to RCs. Within this broad scope, it is aimed at describing the processing differences between High and Low attachment to RCs considering online reading times and offline comprehension question-answer pairs. Another aim of the study is to describe Turkish parser’s reanalysis and disambiguating strategies when they are confronted with sentences with local ambiguities. Observing a possible RC asymmetry effect on two attachment types and investigating asymmetry in RC types within the context of attachment types are the aims of the study to be scrutinized. 1.4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS In parallel to the aims given above, the present study attempts to answer the following research questions. 1. What are the processing differences between High and Low Attachment to RCs in Turkish? 2. What strategies are used by the Turkish parser when confronted with a potential local ambiguity? 3. Is there a processing asymmetry between SRCs and ORCs in the context of attachment preferences? If so, does SRC/ORC asymmetry affect High and Low Attachment processing in Turkish? 1.5. LIMITATIONS Although Turkish employs a number of markers for relativization such as –(y)An (SRC), -DIK (ORC), -(y)AcAK (SRC/ORC) (olan (be - SRC)/olduK (be - ORC) ),-mIş (PAST) (olan (be - SRC)/olduK(be - ORC)/olacaK (be-)) and ki, only the RC markers of –(y)An (SRC) and -DIK (ORC) were chosen due to their being major markers of Turkish RCs (Hankamer and Knecht, 1976; Underhill, 1974; Göksel and Kerslake, 2005). Therefore, the first limitation of the study is that only two Turkish RC markers, namely –(y)An (SRC) and -DIK (ORC), are analyzed in the study. The second limitation of the study is that the study sampled undergraduate students in their first year, attending an English preparation program before continuing to study at their departments, which offer English as medium of instruction. Despite the small and probably trivial possibility, it could be stated that participants have higher linguistic awareness. One of the aims of the study is to observe the parser’s processing strategies in the event of a local ambiguity. Accordingly, a group of High Attachment sentences were manipulated so that the participants were led to process the given sentences with High Attachment parsing in the first reading. Despite the given arrangement for High Attachment sentence group, ambiguous High Attachment sentences were not configured with ambiguities due to limitations in Turkish. In order to obtain correct amount of data to analyze, 84 sentences, followed by comprehension questions, were presented to the participants to read. For a participant to complete the experiment, 9-11 minutes were required. It could exhaust participants towards the end of the experiment. To prevent unbalanced reading times between the first and the last sentences, two sets of sentences were used. On set 1, even number of participants read the sentences and answered the questions in the normal order. For set 2, the participants with odd number read and answered from the last to the first sentence. However, it is still a limitation to mention here. 1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY For the present study that comprises five chapters, an outline is presented below. In Chapter 1, the background provides a framework for psycholinguistics as a research area along with a short account of content of sentence processing. In this section, the statement of the problem is presented. In addition, the aim of the study, the research questions and limitation of the study are provided. Chapter 2 introduces properties of the RCs providing examples from a wide range of languages. Then, the structural properties of Turkish RCs are described based on the previous studies. The hypotheses of the RC processing and previous studies on processing of RCs are presented. In the final part of the chapter, the hypotheses of sentence processing in attachment preferences and ambiguity resolution are demonstrated. In Chapter 3, the methodology that was employed in this study is clarified. The pilot studies explain the process of developing the structure of the present study. The process of how participants were chosen and included into the experiment is demonstrated. The materials, which were presented to the participants to read and answer, were clarified. The procedure of conducting the experiment and how the obtained data were analyzed are illuminated in the chapter. In Chapter 4, the analysis and discussion of the data in the experiment are presented. This chapter has two parts each of which attempts to answer these questions. The reading times collected from preselected areas of interests (AoI) and participants’ correct answers to comprehension questions are analyzed in relation to hypotheses of RC asymmetry processing, attachment preferences and ambiguity resolution. Chapter 5 provides the answers to the research questions considering the findings from the experiment. In addition, the limitations of the study are explained a long with implications of the findings with regard to language processing. Finally, the suggestions for further research are suggested. CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, the first section is dedicated to a comprehensive account of relative clauses (RCs) by delving into their properties through a wide range of languages. Following this general introduction to RCs, the structural properties of Turkish RCs are illustrated. In the next section, a historical perspective on RC processing is given and a comparative account of models of parsing is presented. The models on ambiguity resolution in attachment operations are presented, and finally an account of SRC/ORC asymmetry is illustrated. 2.1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RELATIVE CLAUSES Whether cross-linguistically or within the same language, RCs vary considerably in terms of syntactic and semantic properties. As an embedded sentence structure, RCs possess an item that gains its meaning out of an antecedent on which it structurally and semantically depends on (Radford, 2009). An anaphoric relation lies between the relativized item in RC and the antecedent that it is attached to. Despite a wide range of variations, RCs mainly modify a noun or noun phrase, and they use a structural tool inside such as relative pronouns in English to refer to an element in the main clause. According to De Vries (2001), RCs are subordinate structures linked to peripheral items through essential constituents. (1) Please hand this over to the man who is wearing a red jacket. (De Vries, 2001: 1) Regardless of the relativized phrase’s theta role in the main clause, it is possible for the phrase to be licensed a different role in RC. (2) The mouse that I caught _ yesterday was hungry. (De Vries, 2001:2) As seen in example (2) above, although the relativized constituent is the experiencer (and also, subject) of main clause, the word mouse is the head of the RC and also, the object of verb in the embedded clause. De Vries (2005) states that all languages have RCs. Despite the fact that features and variations of RCs range considerably, it has been suggested that one of human language’s frequently utilized tools for recursion is relativization (Lehmann, 1984; Keenan and Comrie, 1977; Downing, 1978; Givón, 1984). Considering 231 relative strategies in 176 languages, De Vries (2002) claims that 32x29 = 4608 is the theoretical number of possible RCs that are estimated to exist. His argument is derived from the typological data collected by Comrie, (1981); Culy, (1990); Downing, (1978); Givón, (1984); Keenan, (1985); Keenan and Comrie, (1977); Lehmann, (1984); Peranteau et al., (1972); and Smits, 1988 and others. The sample patterns proposed by De Vries (2002: 17) are presented below. “a. kind of modification/relation: restrictive, appositive, degree b. hierarchical status of RC: embedded within DP (Determiner Phrase), correlative c. presence of head: headed/free relatives d. presence of relative pronoun: yes/no e. presence of complementizer: yes/no f. presence of resumptive pronoun: yes/no g. hierarchical position of head: externally/internally headed RCs h. linear order of head and RC: head initial/final relatives i. inflectional completeness of RC: finite/participial relatives j. position of Det with respect to N and RC: initial/middle/final k. position of (Case) markers, if any: on N, on N and RC” (De Vries, 2002: 17) Considering languages of the world, it is also suggested that four main types of RC can be observed. a. postnominal relatives [S-matrix… [N RC] …] b. prenominal relatives [S-matrix… [RC N] …] c. circumnominal relatives [S-matrix… [[ RC … N …]] …] d. correlatives [S-matrix [RC (…) N …] [ S-matrix… (Dem) …] (De Vries, 2002: 20) In his study, De Vries (2002) observed throughout languages that all four RC types include a headed and free variation as well. It is stated that post nominal RCs do not include internal heads but nominalization. Prenominal RCs, on the other hand, do have internal heads but no nominalization. Circumnominals both have internal heads and nominalization. Lastly, correlative RCs include internal heads but no nominalization. It is stated that prenominal constructions possess a high degree of nominalized relatives accompanied by an affix unlike correlatives which show relatively less nominalization. Besides, correlatives make use of relative pronouns while prenominals lack this feature. Considering postnominal RCs, they are observed to be the most frequent one. From a semantics point of view, it is stated by Grosu and Landman (1998) that head nouns and RC constructions are evenly important to resolve interpretation of a restrictive RCs. Table 1. Syntax-Semantics Interaction (adapted from De Vries, 2001:7) In Table 4 above, it is summarized that a plus indicates a combination of syntactic type and semantic type is plausible and observed in the languages of the world while a minus presents the vice versa. Possible arrangements for head nouns, determiners and RCs through post-nominal and prenominal relatives are presented in Table 2 below. Table 2. Word-order variations in RC (adapted from De Vries, 2001:8) The linear order between head noun, determiner and RC are illustrated in Table 2 above. It is also stated that all possible permutations are attested. De Vries (2001) also states that one of the heaviest struggles for a unified theory for relatives is the word order. According to him, “a theory must not only be able to represent a certain structure, but also be able to derive it in a plausible way.” (De Vries, 2001:11) Hence, a typologically wide range of data of possible variations is needed to create a unifying theory. Languages of the world consist of RCs with a wide range of variations. The configurations for RCs vary considerably regarding types of RCs and word order of elements and others. A formal approach to the topic brings an immense amount of data to deal with. Having presented a general description and properties of RCs observed throughout divergent languages, a description of Turkish RCs is provided in the following section. 2.2. TURKISH RELATIVE CLAUSES Turkish RCs have generally been considered in the context of gapping and movement (Kornfilt, 1997: 57). They are accepted to be complex nominal structures that modify noun phrases and thus functioning similar to adjectives. As in the case of adjectives, Turkish, which is a head-final language, also allows the RCs to the right of the noun they modify (Underhill, 1974). Kornfilt (2000) states that predicates are observed at the end of clauses and inflectional suffixes follow the predicate. Kornfilt (1997) argues that Turkish RCs are nominalized structures, which means that they are non-finite. Overt relativizers such as who, which, and that employed for English RCs are not used in Turkish RCs. Instead, RC participles suffixed to the RC verb serve the functions carried out by these relativizers. -(y)An and –DIK are the two mainly employed RC suffixes used in Turkish. Underhill (1974) stated that -(y)An type is used when the head noun is the subject of the underlying sentence and –DIK type is used when the head noun is not subject. Thus, verbs are inflected with -(y)An and –DIK to form subject and object RCs, respectively (Kornfilt, 2009). Kornfilt (2009) maintains that -(y)An suffix attaches to non-finite verbs, and it is not inflected for tense, case or person unlike English relatives. The lack of inflection for the verb in Turkish relatives poses possibility for ambiguity. (3) [[ei geçen yaz ada-da ben-i gör-en] kişi-leri] Last summer island-LOC I-ACC see-PART person-PL The people who saw me on the island last summer (Subject as target) (Kornfilt, 1997:58) However, in the case of headless RCs ambiguity in case of -(y)An is disappears. (4) [opera-yı sev-me-yen]-ler-e (şaş-ıyor-um). opera-ACC like-NEG-PART-PL-DAT (surprise-PROG-1stSG) (I am surprised) at those [who don’t like opera]. (5) [operayı sevmeyen] kişi-ler-e… person-PL-DAT …at people [who don’t like opera] (Kornfilt, 1997:58) Other examples for headless RCs are as follows: (6) [Biz-im dik-ecek]-ler-imiz-de (hata var). [we-GEN sew-PART]-PL-1st PL-POSS-LOC (mistake exist). (There is a fault) with the ones [that we will be making]. (7) [biz-im dik-eceğ-imiz] elbise-ler-de… [we-GEN sew-PART-PL-1st] cloth-PL-LOC …at the clothes [that we shall be making]. (Kornfilt, 1997:58) Lewis (1967) suggests that when the head of RC is nominative (subject), suffixes of -(y)An, –mIş (olan), –(y)AcAk (olan) are employed. (8) [şimdi konuş-an] adam now talk-PART man-NOM the man who is talking/talked (9) [dün gel-miş ol-an] mektup yesterday come-PART be-PART letter-NOM the letter which came yesterday (10) [yarın başla-yacak ol-an] kongre tomorrow start-PART be-PART congress the congress which will start tomorrow (Lewis, 1967: 261) It is stated that when RC pronoun is “whose” or object of “of” construction while the noun it governs is the complement of the verb in RC, the equivalent noun in Turkish takes third person suffix. (11) [hizmetçi-si bul - un- dug- um] adam servant-3rd SG find-PASS-PART-1st SG man-NOM the man for whom I am the servant (12) [vali-si ol-acağ- ınız] vilayet governor-3rd SG be-PART-2nd PL province-NOM the province of which you will be the governor (13) [muhtar-ı seç-il-diğ-i] köy chief-3rd SG choose-PASS-PART village-NOM the village for which he was chosen to be the chief (Lewis, 1967: 261) Lewis (1967) also points out that when RC is “whose” or object of “of” construction while the noun it governs is in the nominative as subject of the verb in RC, use the basibozuk construction with participle. (14) [baba-sı şimdi konuş-an] çocuk father-3rd SG POSS now talk-PART child-NOM the child whose father is now talking (15) [at-ı birinci gel-miş] cokey horse-3rdSG POSS first come-PART jokey-NOM the jokey whose horse came first (16) [kongre-si yarın yap-ıl-acak] cemiyet congress-3rd SG tomorrow do-PASS-PART community-NOM the community whose congress will be held tomorrow (Lewis, 1967: 261) It is also stated by Lewis (1967) that when RC pronoun is “whose” or object of “of” construction while the noun it governs is the object of the verb in RC or when the RC pronoun is the object of a preposition whose Turkish equivalent is a secondary position, use the basibozuk construction with participle. (17) [resim-ler-i-ni gör-mek-te ol-duğu-muz] ressam [painting-PL-3rd SG-ACC see-GER-LOC be-PART-3rd PL] painter-NOM The painter whose paintings we are seeing (18) [resim-ler-i-ne bak-mak-ta ol-duğu-muz] ressam [painting-PL-3rd SG-DAT look-GER-LOC be-PART-3rd PL] painter-NOM The painting whose paintings we are looking at (Lewis, 1967: 261, 262) Lewis (1967) finally states that when an impersonal verb is made into a qualifier, it can be either a participle or as a personal participle. (19) sağlık istatistiklerine göre Mart [en çok hastalanılan, health statistic-PL-POSS-DAT according to March the most many become sick-PASS-PART, hatta en çok ölünen] aydır. even the most many die-PASS-PART month. According to health statistics, March is the month in which people become sick and even die the most. (Lewis, 1967: 261, 262) The suffıx -(y)An can be used for subject relativization and possessor relativization. If the relativized constituent is the subject of the verb, RC is non-case marked, which means that regardless of the subject whether it is 1st sing or 3rd person plural, it is all marked by 3rd person singular (Underhill, 1974). (20) [araba-sı çal-ın-an] komşu-muz [car-3rd SG-POSS steal-PASS-PART] neighbour-1PL-POSS our neighbour [whose car was stolen] (21) [rolü büyük ol-ma-yan] oyuncu (cf. Oyuncunun rolü büyük değil.) [role-3rd SG big be-NEG-PART] actor-NOM the actor [whose part isn’t big] actor-NOM [who does not have a big part] In such sentences, when the possessor is not the subject of the sentence, it is non-definite. Because of that, the possessor can be part of any non-subject constituent, such as: A direct object: (22) [koyun-ların-ı kurt kap-an] köylü-ler [sheep-PL-3rd PL-POSS-ACC wolf catch-PART] villager-PL the villagers [whose sheep wolves caught] An adverbial: (23) [çatı-sın-dan birkaç küçük kiremit düş-en] ev [roof-3rd SG-POSS-ABL a few small tile fall-PART] house-NOM the house [from the roof of which a few small tiles fell] A possessive-marked postposition: (24) [arka-sın-da adam ol-an] çocuk [back-3rd SG-POSS-LOC man be-PART] child-NOM the child [behind whom there is a man] (Kornfilt, 1997:59) Göksel and Kerslake (2005) also state that although –(y)An is attached to uninflected verb stems for time and aspect, it usually states a non-future time situations. (25) [dün başla-yan] fırtına [yesterday start-PART] storm-NOM the storm [that started yesterday] (26) [iki yıldır sür-en] kuraklık [two year-be 3rdSG continue-PART] drought-NOM the drought [that has been going on for two years] (27) [şu anda çal-an] parça [now play-PART] piece-NOM the piece [that is playing at the moment] (Göksel and Kerslake, 2005: 390) Göksel and Kerslake (2005) state that just as in –(y)An, -DIK and –(y)AcAk is attached to non-finite verbs. On the other hand, although they are attached to uninflected verbs for tense and aspect, -DIK is usually used for past and ongoing verbs. Underhill (1974), on the other hand, argues that –DIK is employed when the head noun is non-subject whereas -(y)AcAk for future tenses: (28) [geçen hafta bitir-diğ-im] roman [last week finish-PART-1st SG-POSS] novel-NOM the novel [I finished last week] (29) [şu sırada oku-duğ-um] roman [lately read-PART-1st SG-POSS] novel-NOM the novel [I am reading at the moment] (30) [yarın oku-yacağ-ım] makale [tomorrow read-PART-1st SG-POSS] article-NOM the article [that I’m going to read tomorrow] (Göksel and Kerslake, 2005: 391) Kornfilt (1997) explains that unlike –(y)An, -DIK and –(y)AcAk are followed by person agreement morphology. (31) [[pro geçen yaz ada-da ei gör-düğ-üm] kişi-leri] [ last summer island-LOC see-DIK 1st SG person-PL] The people who(m) I saw on the island last summer (Non-subject as target) (Kornfilt, 1997:60) Underhill (1974) suggests that the head noun of an object participle is observed to be the object of the main clause. In addition, it could be in a variety of adverbial relations to the verb for instance, a directional dative, a directional ablative, a dative ablative, a noun in a locative or time adverbial phrase or a noun related to the verb with the postposition ile ‘with’ (Underhill, 1974: 88). It is also stated by Lewis (1967) that when the head noun is in accusative either as object of the verb in RC or object of a preposition or as one whose Turkish equivalent is a secondary post position. (32) [yaz-dığ-ım] mektup [write-PART-1st SG] letter-NOM the letter which I wrote (33) [seç-tiğ-i] avukat [choose-PART-3rd SG] lawyer-NOM the lawyer whom he chose (34) [gel-dik-ler-i] vapur [come-PART-3rd PL] ship-NOM the ship with which they came (35) [çık-tığ-ımız] kapı [exit-PART-1st PL] door-NOM the door through which we exited (36) [bak-tığı-nız] dilenci [look-PART-2nd PL] beggar-NOM the beggar that you looked at (Lewis, 1967: 261) Lewis (1967) claims that when the head noun is the object of “with”, “birlikte”, “beraber” (together) could be employed. (37) [birlikte içki iç-tiğ-i] arkadaşlar [together beverage drink-PART-3rd SG-POSS friend-PL The friends with whom he drank (Lewis, 1967: 261) Yarar (2005) points out that SRCs are constructed not only by -(y)An but also –mIş and –(y)AcAk. For non-subject relatives, the use of suffix -(y)AcAK bears similarities to -DIK; they are both observed forming ORCs, however in terms of tense suffixes they diverge. -(y)AcAK is observed to refer to future on the other hand, -DIK is used for past or progressive situations. -DIK causes local/temporal ambiguity in this case. The verb in RC might refer to a completed past action or an ongoing present action. Thus, it is heavily context-dependent. RCs in (38) below illustrate these suffixes and their functions. (38) [Uyuy-an/uyu-muş/uyu-yacak] çocuk (subject participles) [sleep-SPART] child-NOM The child who sleeps/is sleeping/slept (39) [Oku-duğ-u/oku-yacağ-ı] kitap (non-subject participles) [read-OPart-3rd SG-POSS] book-NOM The book which he/she reads/is reading/read (Yarar, 2005:132) The verb uyu- (sleep) is added subject relative participles as shown in (38) and in (39), object relative participles suffixed to the verb oku- ‘read’. Uyuyan is locally ambiguous as it might mean “who sleeps/is sleeping/was sleeping/has slept/slept”; uyumuş, on the other hand, is not so ambiguous and means “who has slept/slept”. Uyuyacak is not ambiguous either and refers to future; “who will sleep.” Concerning non-subject participles, okuduğu (which s/he is reading/was reading/read/has read) it is therefore temporally quite ambiguous. Finally, okuyacağı (which s/he will read) causes no temporal ambiguity. It is possible to express these relative constructions with the auxiliary ol-, which enables the addition of certain tense and aspect markers, as the examples below illustrate: (40) [Uyu-muş ol-an/uyu-yacak ol-an/uyu-makta ol-an] çocuk (subject participles) [sleep be-SPART] child-NOM The child who has slept-slept/will sleep/is sleeping-was sleeping (41) [Oku-yacak ol-duğ-u/oku-muş ol-duğ-u/oku-mak-ta ol-duğ-u] kitap (non-subject participles) [Read be-OPart-3rd SG] book-NOM (Yarar, 2005:132) The book which s/he will read/has read-read/is reading-was reading As illustrated in examples in (40) and (41) the relative participles -(y)An and -DIK cause temporal ambiguity Hence, in order to avoid the associated ambiguity, auxiliary ol- is added to the verb in the RC. It is argued by Yarar (2005) that along with -(y)An and –DIK, -(y)AcAK and -mIş are also observed to make use of this strategy to avert such ambiguity. Göksel and Kerslake (2005) state that Turkish RCs are underlying restrictive. However, if a proper noun is modified with the use of a RC then they are non-restrictive. On this point, it also needs to be noted that whether it is restrictive or non-restrictive, there is not a difference in the rule that is applied or an additional rule to specify the restrictiveness. (42) [Yaprak-lar-ı dökül-en] ağaç-lar [leaf-PL-POSS fall-RC] tree-PL trees that lose their leaves (Restrictive) (43) [Damad-ı(y)-la hiçbir zaman iyi Bridegroom-POSS-with anytime well geçin-me-miş ol-an] Hayriye Hanım get on well-NEG-PAST be-RC] Hayriye Hanım Hayriye Hanım, who had never got on well with her son-in-law (Non-restrictive) (Göksel and Kerslake, 2005: 388) The trees that only lose their leaves are interpreted from the sentence (42), on the other hand, “Hayriye Hanım”, a proper noun, does not require a restrictive relative to specify who she is in the context. The use of RC provides extra information to satisfy discourse-related points. Although the frequency of its use in daily life is quite limited and typologically rather different from the Turkish variants, ki is a complimentizer for relativization (not a suffix). The first difference of this RC word is that it comes from Persian and because Persian is considered to be in the same language family with English, ki also displays similar features compared to the use of English RC constructions. Furthermore, Göksel and Kerslake (2005) explain that unlike typical Turkish RC suffixes, this RC word does not follow the noun phrase it modifies and it is finite. (44) Bu araba [ki geçen sene satın al-dım] This car [that last year buy PAST 1st SG] henüz bir sorun çıkar-ma-dı. yet a problem cause-NEG-PAST-3rd SG This car which/that I bought last year has not caused any problem. (Göksel and Kerslake, 2005: 396) As stated above, due to its low frequency and distinct syntactical and typological features, ki will not be considered in this study. Except for very complex RCs in Turkish RCs mostly lack resumptive pronouns equal to the head noun in English (Kornfilt, 1997). Moreover, if the relativized constituent is the oblique object or the adverbial modifier of the verb in the RC, in certain cases, a resumptive pronoun kendisi in the case of 3rd person singular and kendileri in the case of 3rd person plural) can be observed in the RC (Göksel and Kerslake, 2005: 384 ), as in (45). (45) Ayşe’nin kendisiylei [anlaştığı kişii] Ayşe-GEN self-3rd SG-POSS-withi [agree-OPART-3SGi person] the person with whom Ayşe agreed The head-final nature of Turkish and its implication on RCs constitute a major point in the present study. The head-final RCs can be considered to be the mirror reflections of head-initial word order as observed in English and other typologically and structurally similar languages. In head-initial languages such as English, the head (i.e. the filler) comes before the gap that is relativized. As soon as the filler is detected, the human parser starts searching for the gap and hypothesizes its position at the earliest possible point as words of a certain sentence incrementally read (i.e., the Active Filler Strategy, Frazier and d’Arcais, 1989). On the other hand, in the case of head-final RCs, the head and the gap are both located to the right of the RC. That is, the relativized gap comes before the filler. Lin and Bever (2011) state that identifying the gap prior to the head noun challenges the parser. Lin and Bever (2011) also point out that the structural difference between the comprehension of head-initial and head-final RC is observed in the relative ordering between the filler and the gap. They explain that the left edge of a RC is marked by the relativizer without causing ambiguity when the filler precedes the gap in head-initial languages. Nonetheless, in head-final languages the filler comes after the gap in which the parser is additionally challenged by the structural ambiguity. As in Turkish, since the left edge of the RC is not clearly indicated, both main clause analysis and RC analysis are both probable at first reading. Having presented the general characteristics of Turkish RCs, the section below provides several psycholinguistic accounts of RC processing, including how Turkish RCs are processed. (49) head-initial relative clause head noun – relativizer – relative clause filler >>>>>>>>>>>>> gap e.g., the guyFILLER that you bumped into __GAP yesterday [English] (50) head-final relative clause RC – relativizer – head noun gap >>>>>>>>>>>>>> filler e.g., ni zuotian pengjian __GAP de nage renFILLER [Chinese] you yesterday bumped into __GAP relativizer that guyFILLER ‘the guy that you bumped into yesterday’ (Lin and Bever, 2011: 277) 2.3. RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING RCs are described to possess various syntactic and semantic features across languages. Besides typological divergences among individual languages and operations to construct them, psycholinguistics has also studied the phenomenon from a processing point of view (Betancort, Carreiras and Sturt, 2009; Caplan, et al., 2001; Gibson, Hickok and Schutze, 1994; Gordon, Hendrick and Johnson, 2001; King and Just, 1991; King and Kutas, 1995; Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers, 2002, 2006; Pickering, 1994; Schriefers, Friederici, and Kühn, 1995; Traxler, Morris, Seely, 2002). Unbounded dependencies as suggested by Trask (1999) predict that the theoretical distance between two elements can be as far from each other as it requires. In terms of dependency relations between a noun and the position it is extracted in an RC, a vivid example is presented below. (51) The boyi [thati saw the girl] went. (52) The boyi [that the girl sawi] went. As seen in sentences (51) and (52) above, a modified noun can be moved from its extraction site in a RC and there is no limit for the distance. Studies in verbal working memory have focused on unbounded dependencies in language processing in a number of ways (Just and Carpenter, 1992; King and Just, 1991; Wanner and Maratsos, 1978; Waters and Caplan, 1992). Unbounded dependencies have also been investigated focusing on psychological gaps and traces (Bever and McElree, 1988; McElree and Bever, 1989; Gibson, Hickok, and Schutze, 1994; Nicol and Pickering, 1993; Nicol and Swinney, 1989; Pickering and Traxler, 2001). 2.3.1. Models of RC Attachment Processing and Ambiguity Resolution Research on RCs in psycholinguistics has produced a considerable number of models and hypotheses that attempt to explain what stages the parser goes through and process sentences. It is postulated that human parser may be serial or parallel, modular or interactive. Regarding the method of processing, it could be universal, parameterized or dependent solely on frequency of the experienced incoming linguistic structures (Papadopoulou, 2006). A dominant view in sentence processing research is universal approach. Universal models hypothesize that the human parser across all the natural languages is configured in the same manner. Universal Grammar is the determinant factor considering the constraints posited on parsing routines (Abney, 1989; Crocker, 1996; Gorrell, 1995; Philips, 1996; Pritchett, 1988, 1992; Weinberg, 2001). Papadopoulou (2006) states that the locality principle lies in the core of most universal parsing theories. It is required that incoming linguistic elements are added into the phrase that is currently being processed. This assumption originates in grammatical (Philips, 1996; Weinberg, 2001) and computational constraints (Abney, 1989; Crocker, 1996; Frazier, 1978, 1987; Frazier and Fodor, 1978; Gorrell, 1995). One of the universal sentence processing models is the Garden Path Theory (GPT). First proposed by Frazier (1978 and 1987), and later revised by Frazier and Fodor (1978) and Frazier and Rayner (1982), the theory states that language processing and interpretation take place in two distinct stages. According to Frazier (1979, 1987), in the first stage of sentence processing, the human parser analyzes incoming sequence of words and identifies which part of speech the words belong to such as noun, verb, preposition, and so on. As soon as the licensing of words is complete, the parser builds a preliminary syntactic tree for the flow of words. Regardless of meaning (semantic aspect) of words, the parser only tags incoming words with the correct category (parts of speech) on this stage. For the illustration of the first stage analysis, below it can be seen how the lexical processor tags each word a word category. The sentence While Susan was dressing the baby played on the floor. (Frazier and Rayner, 1982 cited in Traxler, 2012: 144), is outputted with the sequence of categories below: Table 3. Identification of Word Categories in the First Stage of Garden Path Theory of Sentence Procesing (Traxler, 2012: 144) while Susan was dressing the baby played on the floor Conjunction Noun Auxiliary Verb Verb Determiner Noun Verb Preposition Determiner Noun As illustrated in Table 3 above, based only on word categories, a syntactic structure is drawn and the words in the sentence can be assigned positions in the tree. The initial syntactic tree is constructed by a self-governing syntactic part, which is not sensitive to semantic and thematic, pragmatic, discourse and general world-knowledge information sources (Frazier, 1987; Ferreira and Clifton, 1986). Later, the “draft” admitted by “thematic interpreter” for checking. The primary function of thematic interpreter is to apply set of rules that give roles to each element in the syntactic tree concerning their position in this tree and how these elements are connected to each other. If the produced draft from the interpreter goes in line with the parser’s prior knowledge or assumptions, the sentence can be integrated into the rest of the discourse. If there are semantic and structural problems concerning thematic assignment of the words, a revision is initiated, and interpretation of the sentence is revised taking lexical, syntactic and thematic roles of the words in the sentence. In this way, the meaning/sense of the sentence goes in line with the intended message and the final version of the tree diagram is produced. Other commonly observed Garden-Path Sentences include: NP/VP Attachment Ambiguity: (53) The cop [saw the burglar] [with binoculars.]] (54) The cop saw [the burglar [with the gun.]] NP/S (Sentence) Complement Attachment Ambiguity: (55) The athlete [realized [his goals]] last week. (56) The athlete realized [[his goals] were unattainable.] Clause-boundary Ambiguity: (57) Since Jay always [jogs a mile]] the race doesn’t seem very long.] (58) Since Jay always jogs [[a mile] doesn’t seem very long.] Reduced Relative-Main Clause Ambiguity: (59) [The woman [delivered the junkmail on Thursdays.]] (60) [[The woman delivered the junkmail] threw it away.] The Relative/Complement Ambiguity (61) The doctor [told [the woman] [that he was in love with her.]] (62) The doctor [told [the woman [that he was in love with]] [to leave.]] (Crocker, 2014:12) The GPT argues that the parser interprets sentences on a word-by-word basis. Instead of delaying a decision until the end of the sentence, the parser is forced to choose between alternative tree structures. As a whole, the GPT assumes that the parser begins to build a syntactic structure as soon as the lexical processor begins to deliver information about word categories. The thematic processor also works on a word-by-word principle as well, which means that semantic processor does not delay extraction of meaning of the sentence until it reaches the end. The attempt to construct structural and semantic interpretations of a given sentence as each word is delivered results in correct and sometimes incorrect choices, which requires the parser to revise their decision. The GPT describes sentence processing as a serial system as opposed to a parallel one. Another principle of the GPT is that the parser relies on overarching, which states that the structure to build is supposed to be as simple as possible (Frazier, 1987). In the event of a potential ambiguity, in which the parser is supposed to make a decision between two conflicting interpretation, the first purely syntactic analysis is completed through two models: Late Closure and Minimal Attachment (Frazier, 1987; Frazier and Fodor, 1978). It is required by Late Closure that the emerging linguistic elements be attached to the phrase that is being parsed. The Minimal Attachment commands that the incoming material be processed so that the least number of nodes are created also assuring the well-formedness of the utterance. These two principles are thought to explain the speed and efficiency of the parser in processing the linguistic input. It is claimed that the nature of the parser is identical across all human languages and the principles are thus universal. Possible differences in parsing are only attributed to unique grammatical properties of individual languages. Considering the sentence (63) given below, the principle of the Late Closure predicts that the constituent to Mary is attached to “the letter”, which is last DP constituent not the previous DPs or the VP. (63) John read the note, the memo, and the letter to Mary. (Papadopoulou, 2006: 12) Various studies have contributed to the predictions and principles that the Late Closure holds so far with numerous studies (Ferreira and Henderson, 1991; Frazier and Rayner, 1982; Kennedy and Murray, 1984; Mitchell, 1987). The Late Closure and Minimal Attachment were challenged by the seminal study of Cuetos and Mitchell (1998). They dealt with the RC attachment preferences of English and Spanish speakers. The first NP the servant, in sentence (64) is accepted as high. Because in the syntactic tree it is poisitioned further away from the RC. On the other hand, the NP the actress is termed as low due to its closer poisition to the RC. As for the Late Closure, the RC is to be attached low to the constituent the actress. (64) Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony. (Papadopoulou, 2006: 12) Findings from several experiments confirm the predictions the Late Closure such as in English (Cuetos and Mitchell, 1988; Frazier and Clifton, 1996; Gilboy et al., 1995; Traxler et al.,1998), Swedish (Ehrlich et al., 1999), Norwegian (Ehrlich et al., 1999), Romanian (Ehrlich et al., 1999), Brazilian Portuguese (Miyamoto, 1998), and Arabic (Abdelghany and Fodor, 1999). Given the preference of low attachment in the languages summarized above, the Late Closure fails to explain high attachment preference in Spanish (Carreiras and Clifton, 1993, 1999; Gilboy et al., 1995). As for the GPT framework, it is assumed that the Late Closure is still the explanatory force for high attachment preference in which the parser is initially inclined to attach argument low to RC but this preference is reanalyzed considering discourse based reasons and repaired to attach RCs high as suggested in the Relativized Relevance (Frazier, 1990). Concerning the principle of Relativized Relevance, DeVincenzi and Job (1993, 1995) also conducted two studies that supported the prediction of Relativized Relevance. They implemented a self-paced reading task on RC attachment preferences of Italian speakers. They tested how participants responded in two linguistic cases. In the first case, non-theta assigning preposition (di _ of) was used and for the second case, con=with, which has the opposite feature. In order to stop participants from falling into ambiguity regarding high or low attachment, gender information on the past participle in RC was manipulated. DP1 – di (of) – DP2 – RC (65) L’ avvocato diffida / del padre / della ragazza / che si e tradita-o / al processo. The lawyer suspects the father of the girl who betrayed herself/himself at the trial. DP1 – con (with) – DP2 – RC (66) Nessuno invito / il regista / con la bella amica / che era rimasta-o /a bere. Nobody invited the movie director with the beautiful girlfriend who remained-fem/masc to drink. (Papadopoulou, 2006: 13,14) The participants initially preferred low attachment to RCs for both conditions however, when they were asked comprehension questions, they revealed low attachment for the first case (preposition con) ad high attachment for the second case (preposition di). Researchers claimed that the results support Relativized Relevance in that this principle operates and overrides prior low-attachment preference as the first DP is available in di-sentences. However, in the con-sentences, the last DP is the only position for attaching to the last thematic domain. Thus, the initial DP is not a suitable location for RC and Relativized Relevance cannot interfere. Papadopoulou, (2006) states that same findings are also observed in the study of Baccino et. al (2000) in French in which the Late Closure determines initial preferences to low attachment preferences in RCs, and final decisions are made considering pragmatic and thematic aspects. It is also claimed by Papadopoulou, (2006) that vast high attachment preference in a number of other languages such as Afrikaans (Mitchell et al., 2000), Dutch (Brysbaert and Mitchell, 1996; Mitchell and Brysbaert, 1998; Mitchell et al., 2000 Wijnen, 1998), French (Frenck-Mestre and Pynte, 2000; Zagar et al., 1997), German (Hemforth et al., 1996; Hemforth et al., 1998, 1999; Walter et al., 1999), Russian (Kempe and Radach, 1993) and Spanish (Carreiras and Clifton, 1993, 1999; Gilboy et al., 1995). cannot be explained by the principle in the GPT framework. The doubt on the Relativized Relevance principle is due to the methodology used in these studies. Online data collection tools such as self-paced reading tasks or eye-tracking experiments reveal reliable initial high attachment preferences which contradict the principle. Along with the Late Closure and Minimal Attachment, a refinement to the GPT model is formulated by Fodor and Inoue (1998, 2000). They postulated a three-stage model to account for garden-path sentence recoveries. Attach: On receiving a word of the input sentence, connect it to the current partial phrase marker (CPPM) for the sentence in such a way that the resulting CPPM is syntactically well-formed though possibly incomplete at its right edge. (Fodor and Inoue, 1998:103) The principle of Attach requires incoming input be attached into the phrase that is being parsed. The fact that the node already opened for previous elements includes the new materials is also in line with the Minimal Attachment (Frazier, 1987; Frazier and Fodor, 1978), the Right Association (Kimball, 1973), or the Late Closure (Frazier, 1978). Having followed the Attach principle, the parser might be led through the garden path in processing the sentence structures. In this case, the principle Attach Anyway is employed. This principle is similar to Attach in that syntactic priorities take precedence and parsing is continued according to structural relations of the incoming elements. However, the parser on this point might detect that the material is maladjusted with CPPM and is not possible to be attached to it. The principle of Attach Anyway commands to the parser to integrate the material into the node already opened and ignores any issues with semantics and others. The principle briefly states: Attach Anyway: Having established that there is no legitimate attachment site in the CPPM for the current input word, attach the input word into the CPPM wherever it least severely violates the grammar, and subject to the usual preference principles that govern Attach. (Fodor and Inoue, 1998:105) Following purely syntactic integration of input into sentence processing with Attach and keeping this initial analysis despite maladjustments with Attach Anyway, the last principle Adjust takes place. Adjust: When a grammatical conflict has been created between two nodes or features X and Y in the CPPM, by either Attach or Attach Anyway, eliminate the problem by altering minimally (i.e., no more than is necessary for conflict resolution) whichever of X and Y was less recently acted on, without regard for grammatical conflicts thereby created between that node and other elements in the CPPM. (Fodor and Inoue, 1998:106) In accordance with Minimal Everything (Frazier, 1990; Inoue and Fodor, 1995), Adjust requires changes to parsing to be as minimal as possible. For example, rather than creating a new node or attaching the ill-formed node to a further node in the three, feature values are adjusted, and the outcome is checked if the problem is solved. To illustrate all three principles, an example sentence from Ferreira and Henderson (1991:4) is given as follows: (67) While Anna dressed the baby [that was small and cute] spit up on the bed. Without punctuation marks when written or without required intonation patterns when listened to, the sentence above includes a garden-path for the parser. As the principle, Attach (Anyway), goes, the parser integrates the incoming word ‘the baby’ into the node opened for the verb dressed and assigns it the patient role. However, when the main verb spit up is presented to the parser, the garden-path situation is created and thus, the principle of Adjust, in accord with Grammatical Dependency Principle (GDP) (Fodor and Inoue, 1998), is employed to correct the conflict as minimally as possible. On this point, although it is a violation of the GDP, a reanalysis operation called “theft” as described by Fodor and Inoue (1998) takes place. The example from Ferreira and Henderson (1991, 1998: 6) illustrates the principles of the garden-path case detection and operation of reanalysis. (68) While Anna dressed the baby that was small and cute spit up on the bed. the head of the misanalysed phrase the error signal The source of the garden-path (the head of the misanalysed phrase) is the baby. Upon reaching the verb of the subordinate clause, the incoming words (that, was, …) are added into the node opened for the noun “the baby” as dictated by the principle of Attach. It is assigned to be the direct object/patient of the main verb of the first clause. Once the main verb spit up, which is termed as the head of the misanalysed phrase, is presented the parser realizes to have been led down the garden path and feels the need to reanalyze the given sentence. However, the parser forces the initial interpretation of the sentence and finishes the given sentence as required by the Attach Anyway. For reanalysis, parsing of the phrase “the baby” is adjusted to be the subject of the main clause and reanalysis is completed. Fodor and Inoue (1998) claims that the Attach Anyway principle describes a solid scenario of parsing steps unlike other open-ended approaches. Dependence on the grammar is suggested to be the driving force for the parser to check whether the newly attached input is compatible with the rest of the sentence. In case of a parsing problem, the grammar indicates the exact location and the type of the problem. Checking and repairing mechanisms are described to be interwoven processes. In their study on a literature review on sentence processing models on English and Japanese, Kess and Miyamoto (1999) indicate that theoretical claims of Universal Grammar is reflected on universal processing model that presumes all languages to follow an absolute uniformity. However, the results of the psycholinguistic studies on sentence processing produce some models that should allow for variability. They claim that there are undeniable similarities in the global strategies. However, the informative strategies in natural language processing are language-specific. Sekerina et al. (2004) studied the RC attachment preferences in Bulgarian using multiple methods. In the first experiment, paper-and-pencil format was preferred. In the experiment, the length and order of RCs were manipulated. Seventy four participants were made to read fifty-five items which consisted of three practices, thirty-six fillers and sixteen experimental sentences, which included globally ambiguous sentences where it was possible to attach RC to either of the two nouns in the complex NP. The result of the study indicated that Bulgarian speakers prefer to attach RC to NP1 (low). It is stated by the researchers that this constitutes a resemblance to other Slavic languages such as Croatian (Lovric, 2003), Polish (Nowak, 2000) and Russian (Sekerina, 2002). In order to assess the role of semantic/pragmatic complexity on RC attachment preferences, Sekerina et al. (2004) conducted the second experiment in the study. Instead of including using NPs such as the brother of the teacher, the NPs of abstract geometric shapes were used such as the tip of the triangle. Twenty-one native speakers of Bulgarian were given twenty-one items which consisted of two practice, nine experimental and ten filler sentences to read. Each item was presented with a biasing context and a comprehension question. The results of the study indicated that the disambiguation towards low attachment was higher than high attachment. The difference between the two experiments was claimed to be a pragmatic consideration. It is suggested that attachment preferences are initially low in line with the universal principle of the Late Closure. However, when non-syntactic factors come into play, as in the first experiment, the parser prefers high attachment depending on the pragmatic principles or prosodic phrasing preferences. In their study of the RC preferences in Japanese, Miyamoto et al. (1999) investigated attachment preferences of three possible NPs to RCs. The example below shows the word order characteristics of the head final RCs in Japanese. (69) RC N3 postposition N2 postposition N1 (Miyamoto et al., 1999:665) Thirty-nine native speakers of Japanese participated ın the study. Thirty-six sentences were randomized and presented to the participants. They were read on a computer screen in a self-paced presentation with button-box. Following each sentence, the comprehension questions were asked. The results of the experiment indicated that the low attachment condition was significantly more frequent than middle and high attachment. The high attachment preference was also higher than middle condition. However, it was not significant. Miyamoto et al. (1999) claim that attachment preferences are influenced by certain factors. The first factor is locality as the percentage of correct answers to the comprehension questions backs preference of RC attachment to the nearest noun. The other factor is a preference toward high attachment which is supported by predicate proximity and anaphor resolution. It is assumed that discourse complexity is another factor that may influence processing . Hemforth et al. (2015) studied the effect of the position and length in the RC attachment in German, English, Spanish and French. In their experimental sentences, both SRC and ORC clauses were used. For both RC types short and long RCs were created as can be seen in the example below. (70) a. The son of the colonel [who died] had written five books on tropical diseases. (SRC/Short) b. The son of the colonel [who tragically died of a stroke] had written five books on tropical diseases. (SRC/Long) c. The doctor met the son of the colonel [who died]. (ORC/Short) d. The doctor met the son of the colonel [who tragically died of a stroke]. (ORC/Long) (Hemforth et al., 2015:46) Twenty-two experimental sentences were arranged and then translated into the aforementioned languages. Forty-eight undergraduate students were included in the study. The procedure of the experiment involved a paper-based sentence list to be read by the participants. Upon reading each sentences, a sentence completion task was presented in order to gather the participants’ RC attachment preferences. For instance, the following sentence is presented. (71) The boss of the woman [who had a long gray beard] was on vacation (Hemforth et al., 2015:47) Following this sentence, the sentence that contains a blank is given and the participants are asked to fill it with one of the NPs given in the sentence above. (72) The _______________________ had a long gray beard. (Hemforth et al., 2015:47) Baseline attachment preference in these languages is that German and French possess more high attachment than Spanish and English. Hemforth et al. (2015) attributes this result to the fact that the former languages include case-marked RC that are interpreted following binding principles on the other hand, the latter languages are non-case-marked languages and they are interpreted following attachment preferences (e.g., Late Closure). A conclusion on the length of RCs, it is confidently stated that longer RCs caused more high attachment preferences than shorter RCs. It is attributed to the Balanced Sister Hypothesis, (Fodor, 1998) which briefly predicts that longer RCs result in longer high attachment preferences. About the position of RCs, Hemforth et al. (2015) suggest that the ORCs possess higher degree of high attachment preferences than the SRCs. It is claimed that focus properties in the ORCs is generally observed while it is not the case in the SRCs. The next section provides a review of the literature on how the SRCs and ORCs are processed. The asymmetry of processing is described and hypotheses on the asymmetry are provided. 2.3.2. Processing of Subject/Object RCs Numerous studies on SRCs and ORCs conclude that cognitive difficulty is more in processing ORCs than SRCs in English (Caplan et al., 2002; Gibson, Hickok, and Schutze, 1994; Gordon, Hendrick, and Johnson, 2001; King and Just, 1991; King and Kutas, 1995; Pickering, 1994; Traxler, Morris, and Seely, 2002; Weckerly and Kutas, 1999), in Dutch (e.g., Frazier, 1987; Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers, 2002, 2006), French (e.g., Cohen and Mehler, 1996; Frauenfelder, Segui, and Mehler, 1980; Holmes and O‘Regan, 1981), in German (e.g., Mecklinger, Schriefers, Steinhauer, and Friederici, 1995; Schriefers, Friederici, and Kühn, 1995), Spanish (Betancort, Carreiras and Sturt, 2009), Portuguese (Gouvea, 2003), French (Frauenfelder, Segui and Mehler, 1980; Cohen and Mehler, 1996; Holmes and O’Regan, 1981). The ORC disadvantage has also been presented in typologically distant languages to English and other Indo-European languages, for instance, Basque (Carreiras et al., 2010), Chinese (e.g., Chien-Jer and Bever, 2006; Hsiao and Gibson, 2003; Lin and Bever, 2006; Lin and Garnsey, 2011), Japanese (e.g., Ishizuka, 2005; Ueno and Garnsey, 2008), and Korean (e.g., Kwon, Polinsky, and Kluender, 2006; Kwon, Lee, Gordon, Kluender, and Polinsky, 2010). However, unlike the common ground in English and other typologically related languages, this head-initial group of languages include conflicted results too, for instance, Hsiao and Gibson (2003) and Carreiras et al. (2010). In order to explain the SRC/ORC asymmetry, there are hypotheses that focus on distance. The definition of distance is accepted in two distinct approaches as described by Carreiras et al. (2010). Among them, the Linear Distance Hypothesis (LDH), suggested by Gibson (1998, 2000) in the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT), predicts the difficulty of the RC processing based on the intervening words/terminal nodes in the syntactic tree. The Structural Distance Hypothesis (SDH), on the other hand, proposed by O‘Grady, Miseon, and Miho (2003) suggests that the difficulty of the RC processing can be predicted considering the number of intervening syntactic nodes/projections. An overall assumption of the SDH is that structural distance is bound to be further in the ORCs than in the SRCs whether it is a head-initial or head-final language (Carreiras et al., 2010). Hence, for the SDH, the ORCs imposes a universal asymmetry in which the SRCs are processed in a shorter period. The sentences (73a) and (73b) given below illustrate the structural distance discrepancies between the SRCs and ORCs. In sentence (73a), the gap position e is coindexed with the head noun “the man” within the same IP. However, in sentence (73b), the gap is out of the IP that it is extracted from and embedded deeper within the IP. Hence, the SDH predicts that regardless of the properties of a given language, SRCs are preferred and they cause less of a cognitive burden for the parser. (73) a. The mani [CP thati [IP ei kissed the lady]] b. The mani [CP thati [IP the lady [VP kissed ei]]] (O‘Grady, Miseon, and Miho, 2003:434) On the other hand, the LDH computes complexity of RC structures in terms of linear distance between filler and gap. The assumption in the LDH is that potential processing difficulties occur within unbounded dependencies, such as the ones in RCs, due to the fact that the removed entity must be kept in memory until the location where the integration occurs is observed. Integration in this context refers to the integration of head-dependencies in phrase structure; that is, connecting an incoming word to its head. Considering the above sentences in the LDH account, the word “the man” is extracted from the site it is located however no discourse referent, which is the defining factor for complexity, is observed in (73a). On the other hand, in (73b), the intervening elements between the head “the man” and the gap, “the girl” are seen. For the LDH, the SRCs are easier to process than ORCs as the intervening elements between the head and the gap is bound to be more in ORCs. In their study, Hsio and Gibson (2003) support ORC preference. In their experiment, the participants of Chinese native speakers were given the subject and object extracted RCs. In this self-paced reading experiment, the participants read singly- and doubly-embedded RCs, both of which were subject and object extracted. It is stated that in Chinese RCs, the empty category is closer in the ORC to head than in SRC. The LDH and SDH were tested considering these two relatives. Using the data from the self-paced reading task and true-false comprehension questions after each experimental sentences, the findings from comprehension questions reveal that sentences with ORC is comprehended better than SRC sentences. Reading time analysis also supports their data. They state that their results are in the same direction with the LDH. On the other hand, they argue that the SDH and NPAH cannot explain their results. Following Hsio and Gibson (2003), Lin and Bever (2006) investigated the SRC/ORC asymmetry with two self-paced reading tasks. In the first one, the participants read sentences with the ORC and SRC sentences. The reading times gathered from relativizer and head noun regions suggested that more time was spent on the ORC than the SRC. The first task, therefore, concluded a preference fort the SRC compared to the ORC. For the second task, the possessor RCs, corresponding to “whose” relativizer in English, was employed in the self-paced reading task. To test the effect of distance between the filler and gap, sentences were controlled with varying distances. Depending on the results they gathered, they argued that locality of dependencies does not play a certain role in reading times. Structural distance was claimed to be the factor to explain the ORC difficulty, which contradicts the findings of Hsiao and Gibson (2003). They also statistically supported their results stating that regardless of typological differences, studies on the SRC/ORC asymmetry reveal a SRC advantage. Chen et al. (2008) concluded the ORC preference over SRC in their study on Chinese relatives. They included a self-paced reading task accompanied by another variable, which was comparing low working memory and high working memory span readers. The comprehension questions after each experimental sentence was also considered and analyzed. As for comprehension questions, the results revealed that ORCs were easier than SRCs for both groups. However, in terms of the reading times, it took low working memory span readers longer to read sentences with the SRC than ORC. For high working memory span readers, a significant difference between RC types was not reached. It is concluded that universal tendency towards SRC advantage is not the case and nor is structural distance hypothesis. The SRC/ORC asymmetry was examined on Basque by Carreiras et al. (2010). Basque is a head-final language and an ergative language with prenominal RCs. In their experiment, two self-paced reading tasks and an ERP task were employed. Two of the SRC and ORC sentences that were given to read are exemplified below. (74) SRC: [ei Irakasleak aipatu dituen] ikasleaki lagunak ditu. [ei teacher-PL mentioned has-RC] student-SG-ERGi friend-PL has. The student that mentioned the teachers has friends (75) ORC: [Irakasleak ei aipatu dituen] ikasleaki lagunak dira. [teacher-SG-ERG ei mentioned has-RC] student-PLi friend-PL are. The students that the teacher mentioned are friends. (Carreiras et al., 2010:83) For both of the self-paced reading tasks, similar results were collected, in which SRCs were observed to have been read longer than ORCs. In the third part of the experiment, ERP times were evaluated. The electrodes were placed on certain regions on participants’ scalps. Higher amplitude was foun