Thanks to those who came to our Zoom meeting! If you'd like to get in touch, feel free to leave a comment or email us!
Authors: Shota Momma & Michael Wilson
Abstract: We examine the optionality of English *that* complementizers in
sentence production, and find that it is sensitive to non-local
environments. In particular, *that* is produced less often selectively when
the complementizer position is in the hierarchical movement path of a
*wh*-argument
or *wh*-adjunct (exp. 1), but not when it is merely in the linear movement path of a
*wh*-word (exp. 2), and that when a *wh*-word crosses multiple clause
boundaries, *that* production is most reduced in the most embedded clause
(exp. 3). Taken together, these results show that speakers encode and
maintain a detailed syntactic representation over time, such that they
distinguish between clauses where a *wh*-word originated and ones where
they did not.
[1]: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/147164624