Comprehension of Turkish Relative Clauses: Evidence from Eye-tracking and Corpus Analysis

Talat Bulut Emine Yarar H.Wu

Abstract

Purpose: Previous studies in English revealed that it is easier to comprehend subject relative clauses (SRCs) compared to object relative clauses (ORCs). However, subsequent research into processing of relative clauses in typologically different languages produced conflicting results. The present study aimed to investigate relative clause processing in Turkish and to test the predictions of the accounts of relative clause processing. Method: Thirty-six Turkish adult monolinguals took part in an eye-tracking experiment. Eye movements of the participants were recorded while they read Turkish sentences with subject and object relative clauses. Results: Analyses of both comprehension scores and eye-movement measures indicated a disadvantage in processing Turkish ORCs as revealed by more comprehension errors and elevated total reading times as well as more regressions. Furthermore, a corpus analysis conducted using a balanced corpus of Turkish revealed that SRCs are more frequent than ORCs in Turkish. Conclusion: The results are discussed with respect to the predictions of the relative clause processing accounts. It is suggested that a combination of factors including syntactic structure, structural frequency and morphological information shapes and constrains processing patterns of relative clauses.

Keywords

Turkish, relative clause processing, eye-tracking, corpus analysis, syntax, frequency, morphology

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