On the Necessity of Determiner Phrases in Contexts: Subject Relative Preference Revisited

(Frequency-driven) experience-based and working-memory-based theories make contrastive predictions regarding whether subject relatives are easier to process than object relatives in Chinese.However, existing results yield inconsistent patterns.We note that most studies used two bare nominals within relative clauses (RCs), but this seems to violate the presuppositions of RC usage, that is, to single out one specific, identifiable entity out of a set.A determiner phrase containing the distal demonstrative na in Chinese is closest to the definite article in English, thus satisfying the functional/pragmatic premise for RC usage, particularly in the presence of RC-biasing discourse contexts.Building upon Gibson and Wu(2013), we crossed Determiner Phrase and RC Type, while taking care of two problematic aspects of their original stimuli.Results of our self-paced reading study showed a consistent subject-relative advantage at the critical head noun and spillover regions.Our findings are contrary to the predictions of memory-based integration-cost metric, but are consistent with experience-based theories.