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Animacy-Based Accessibility and Competition in Relative Clause Production in Hindi and Malayalam
Two studies investigated interaction of animacy-based accessibility and competi- tion processes with language specific constraints in shaping production preferences. Relative clause elicitation tasks (Gennari et al. in Cogn Psychol 65:141–176, 2012) were performed by two groups with 40 participants...
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| Format: | Printed Book |
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J Psycholinguist Research
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| Online Access: | http://10.26.1.76/ks/004529.pdf |
| Summary: | Two studies investigated interaction of animacy-based accessibility and competi-
tion processes with language specific constraints in shaping production preferences. Relative
clause elicitation tasks (Gennari et al. in Cogn Psychol 65:141–176, 2012) were performed
by two groups with 40 participants in each. Significantly more passives were produced with
animate question/focus and assigned subject function to them in Malayalam, while the dif-
ference was insignificant in Hindi with animacy not equating with grammatical function
assignment. Both languages produced active objects with OSV order significantly more with
animate question/focus. This indicates animacy effect on word order. Animacy also influ-
enced the expression of the agent phase in both languages as a tendency was found to omit
the agent by-phase or to delay its appearance, when the two animate nouns entering into the
structure are highly similar. The results point to language specific constraints in relative clause
production and variability in the role of animacy-based retrieval order across languages. |
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