Potentially ambiguous object relative clause

Part of language Spoken Peninsular Spanish
Meaning of the construction Identificatory NP: Someone carries out a transitive action that affects someone else. The function of the object relative clause is to identify the affected.

Construction elements

Examples

Example 1

Text El abuelo al que el niño abraza
hasGlosses The grandpa to:the that the kid hugs
hasTranslation The grandpa that is being hugged by the kid
comment a-variant verb-final

Example 2

Text El abuelo que el niño abraza
hasGlosses The grandpa that the kid hugs
hasTranslation The grandpa that is being hugged by the kid
comment plain-variant verb-final

Example 3

Text El abuelo al que abraza el niño
hasGlosses The grandpa to:the that hugs the kid
hasTranslation The grandpa that is being hugged by the kid
comment a-variant verb-medial

Example 4

Text El abuelo que abraza el niño
hasGlosses The grandpa that hugs the kid
hasTranslation The grandpa that is being hugged by the kid
comment plain-variant verb-medial

Links

inherits from Object relative clause Spanish
inherits from Relative clause Spanish
inherits from Transitive construction Spanish

Research

Research Question Finding
The relative role of verb position and additional morphological markers in comprehension The late disambiguation of verb-medial plain-variant (no a + article) object relative can lead to shallow processing. This in combination with high phonetic similarity with a canonical SR could lead to predictive processing overriding perceptual information (at the point of the last NP an object is expected so it’s more likely to hear "al" rather than "el"). In more general terms, expectations of canonical linguistic input in locally ambiguous structures can override acoustic perception.

Evidence

Artefact Publication Repository
Behavioral experiment Fernández Santos, Sara, Miquel Llompart & Ewa Dąbrowska. 2025. Predictive processing can override perceptual information: evidence from Spanish object relative clauses. Language and Cognition 17. e59. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2025.10015. https://osf.io/4x6pz/
Behavioral experiment Llompart, Miquel, Sara Fernández Santos & Ewa Dąbrowska. 2025. Comprehension of object relatives in Spanish: the role of frequency and transparency in acquisition and adult grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 36(1). 31–57. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2024-0016. https://osf.io/f7ymg/

Metadata

creationDate 2024-11-25
Annotator Sara Fernández Santos
References Reali, Florencia. 2014. Frequency Affects Object Relative Clause Processing: Some Evidence in Favor of Usage-Based Accounts. Language Learning 64(3). 685–714. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12066.
References Del Río, David, Ramón López-Higes & MaríaTeresa Martín-Aragoneses. 2012. Canonical word order and interference-based integration costs during sentence comprehension: The case of Spanish subject- and object-relative clauses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 65(11). 2108–2128. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2012.674951.
References Llompart, Miquel, Sara Fernández Santos & Ewa Dąbrowska. 2025. Comprehension of object relatives in Spanish: the role of frequency and transparency in acquisition and adult grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 36(1). 31–57. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2024-0016.
References Llompart, Miquel & Ewa Dąbrowska. 2024. Explicit instruction improves the comprehension of Spanish object relatives by young monolingual children. Language and Cognition 16(4). 986–1006. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2023.69.
References Presotto, Giacomo & Jacopo Torregrossa. 2024. Intervention and amelioration effects in the acquisition of Spanish object relative clauses: the role of word order and DOM. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.11254.

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