Processing at-issue content part 4: investigating the effect of clause type

This fourth registration aims to fill in gaps that were identified after carrying out experiments affiliated with the third registration part of this project: 'Processing at-issue content part 3: disentangling recency from clause type (again)'. I will first review the findings of two experiments of the third registration (experiment 5 & 6) in order to set up the goals of the current registration. These self-paced reading experiments - experiment 5 with sentences containing an adverbial clause that starts with 'after', and experiment 6 with subject- and object-modifying relative clause constructions - were designed to investigate which factor had a greater impact on the at-issue status of the individual clauses of above-mentioned sentence types: clause type, or recency. This was tested by measuring how fast a {continuation sentence} was processed that had content that was coreferential with content present in only one of the clauses in the sentence it followed. In experiment 5 this was done by comparing the reading times of {continuation sentences} in two conditions: one in which the {continuation} had content that was coreferential with content that was coreferential with content in a sentence-final adverbial clause (1a), and one in which the {continuation} had content that was coreferential with content in a sentence-early matrix clause (1b): Experiment 5 - adverbial clauses: (1a) They went to a violin concert after they had dinner at a French bistro. It was {a very small cosy restaurant.} (1b) They had dinner at a French bistro after they went to a violin concert. It was {a very small cosy restaurant.} In experiment 6 this was done by comparing the reading times of {continuation sentences} in three conditions: one in which the {continuation} had content that was coreferential with content in a sentence-early matrix clause (2a), one in which the {continuation} had content that was coreferential with content in a sentence early relative clause (2b), and one in which the {continuation} had content that was coreferential with content in a sentence-final matrix clause (2c): Experiment 6 - relative clauses: (2a) My dad opened a bottle of wine for my uncle, who was having a snack of chips and dip. It was {a dry white wine from Italy.} (2b) My dad, who opened a bottle of wine for my uncle, was having a snack of chips and dip. It was {a dry white wine from Italy.} (2c) My dad, who was having a snack of chips and dip, opened a bottle of wine for my uncle. It was {a dry white wine from Italy.} Experiment 5 yielded no significant differences in reading times for the continuations, leaving the question as to which factor - recency or clause type - is more important in assigning at-issue status to clauses, open. In experiment 6 we found that the continuation in (2c) was read faster than in (2b), but no differences were found between (2a) and any of the other conditions. This also means we cannot draw any conclusions about which factor - recency or clause type - is more important in assigning at-issue status to clauses, because in the fastest condition (2c), the {continuation} connected with a clause that was both a main clause and recent; both of these contribute to making said clause more at-issue. In fact, so far across all studies we have conducted, all instances where we found a continuation to be read significantly faster were when it was coreferential with a clause that was a recent matrix clause, or a recent relative clause (object-modifying). The current follow-up studies aim to investigate if clause type contributes to the at-issue status of clauses when these clauses are not recent. I.e., we will hold constant position (sentence-early), to try and isolate an effect of clause type. Theories predict that matrix clauses can always be at-issue, also when they are sentence-early. Our experiments so far have not been able to evidence this. Therefore, we have designed two follow-up experiments in which the at-issue status of a sentence-early matrix clause is compared to the at-issue status of other clauses in this same position that theories predict are not likely to be at-issue. In experiment 7 this will be done by comparing the reading times of {continuations} when their content is coreferential either with content in a sentence-early matrix clause (3b) or a sentence-early adverbial clause (3a): Experiment 7 - adverbial clauses: (3a) After they had dinner at a French bistro, they went to a violin concert. It was {a very small cosy restaurant.} (3b) They had dinner at a French bistro after they went to a violin concert. It was {a very small cosy restaurant.} In experiment 8 this will be done by comparing the reading times of {continuations} when their content is coreferential either with content in a sentence-early matrix clause (4b) or a main clause that is followed by another main clause (i.e.: two free-standing units/sentences). The point is to compare the same content when the intervening material is either a subordinate clause, leaving the matrix clause accessible, or a free-standing sentence, making the main clause before that harder to access. The goal for the condition with two main clauses, was to have them both answer the same Question Under Discussion of 'what was happening?', which is compatible with a coordinating relation. This makes this first main clause less accessible (not-at-issue): Experiment 8 - relative clauses: (4a) My mom opened a bottle of wine for my uncle. He was having a snack of chips and dip. It was {a dry white wine from Italy.} (4b) My mom opened a bottle of wine for my uncle, who was having a snack of chips and dip. It was {a dry white wine from Italy.} For experiment 8, the items underwent some additional changes. In the condition where there are two main clauses (4a), the wh-pronoun is replaced by a personal pronoun. To make sure that this pronoun can only refer to one of the participants in the preceding main clause, we made sure that all items contained at least one participant with an explicitly clear gender, so that the pronoun always only had one possible referent. This was done to avoid any slowed-down reading times possibly arising because of issues with ambiguous pronoun resolution.