Discussing High Attachment Preference in Spanish: Position Effects of the Relative Clause

Abstract

In the last decades, several studies have suggested that, in Spanish, there is a preference for high attachment or early closure to solve the interpretation of sentences with ambiguous relative clauses. In this paper, we present the results of a sentence comprehension task with speakers of Rioplatense Spanish. All target sentences presented structural ambiguity and we varied the position of the relative clause (in the subject and in the object). We analyzed the response type and the time that each subject took to respond. From the analysis of both dependent variables, a preference for low attachment emerges, which becomes clearer for relative clauses in the subject position. This contradicts previous results in Spanish, particularly for relative clauses in object position. We discuss different sources of variation and possible explanations for the observed differences. We especially consider the impact of methodological factors that have been overlooked in previous studies. Finally, we interpret the results considering models that propose two parallel paths during sentence processing.