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dc.contributor.authorPolinsky, Maria
dc.contributor.authorGallo, Carlos Gomez
dc.contributor.authorGraff, Peter
dc.contributor.authorKravtchenko, Ekaterina
dc.date.accessioned2011-07-20T18:19:48Z
dc.date.issued2011
dc.identifier.citationPolinksy, Maria, Carlos Gomez Gallo, Peter Graff, and Ekaterina Kravtchenko. 2012. Subject preference and ergavity. Lingua 122(3): 267-277.en_US
dc.identifier.issn0024-3841en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:5027957
dc.description.abstractThis paper presents the first-ever processing experiment on relativization in Avar, an ergative language with prenominal relatives. The results show no processing difference between the ergative subject gap and the absolutive object gap. The absolutive subject gap, however, is processed much faster. We propose a principled explanation for this result. On the one hand, Avar has a subject preference (cf. the Accessibility Hierarchy, Keenan and Comrie, 1977), which would make the processing of the ergative and the absolutive subject gap easier than the processing of the absolutive object gap. On the other hand, the ergative DP in a relative clause serves as a strong cue that allows the parser to project the remainder of the clause, including the absolutive object DP (cf. Marantz, 1991, 2000); such morphological cueing favors the absolutive object gap. Thus, two processing preferences, the one for subject relatives and the other for morphologically cued clauses, cancel each other out in terms of processing difficulty. As a result, reading time results for the ergative subject and absolutive object relative clauses are very similar. The overall processing results are significantly different from what is found in accusative languages, where subject preference and morphological cueing reinforce each other, leading to a strong transitive subject advantage.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipLinguisticsen_US
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherElsevieren_US
dc.relation.isversionofdoi:10.1016/j.lingua.2011.11.004en_US
dash.licenseOAP
dc.subjectergativityen_US
dc.subjectA-bar movementen_US
dc.subjectrelativizationen_US
dc.subjectAvaren_US
dc.subjectprocessingen_US
dc.titleSubject Preference and Ergativityen_US
dc.typeJournal Articleen_US
dc.description.versionAccepted Manuscripten_US
dc.relation.journalLinguaen_US
dash.depositing.authorPolinsky, Maria
dc.date.available2011-07-20T18:19:48Z
dc.identifier.doi10.1016/j.lingua.2011.11.004*
dash.authorsorderedfalse
dash.contributor.affiliatedPolinsky, Maria


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