1 Introduction

There is considerable psycholinguistic evidence that object relative clauses (ORCs) (1b) are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses (SRCs) (1a): they give rise to higher latencies in reading times of critical regions, as well as higher reaction times and lower accuracy rates in comprehension tasks.

    1. (1)
    1. a.
    1. The reporter who attacked the senator admitted the error.
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. The reporter who the senator attacked admitted the error.

This asymmetry between SRCs and ORCs has been observed across different populations: (a) comprehension of ORCs is impaired in individuals with agrammatic aphasia (Grodzinsky 1989; Friedmann & Shapiro 2003; Garraffa & Grillo 2008; Sánchez et al. 2017; a. o.), (b) these structures are acquired later during language development (de Villiers et al. 1979; Mann et al. 1984; Friedmann et al. 2009; Adani et al. 2014; Guasti et al. 2018; in Spanish, Presotto & Torregrossa 2024, Torrens 2024; Llompart et al. 2025), and (c) even for adults with no language pathologies, the processing of ORCs is more costly than that of SRCs, as manifested in both online and offline measures (King & Just 1991; Gordon et al. 2001; Mak et al. 2002; Gibson et al. 2005; Fedorenko et al. 2012; Guasti et al. 2018; a. o.). Moreover, this asymmetry has been found in studies focusing on several languages: English (e.g., King & Just 1991; Gibson et al. 1994; Pickering 1994; Caplan et al. 2001; Gordon et al. 2001; Traxler et al. 2002), Dutch (e.g., Frazier 1987; Mak et al. 2002), German (e.g., Mecklinger et al. 1995; Schriefers et al. 1995), French (e.g., Holmes & O’Regan 1981; Cohen & Mehler 1996) and, of particular relevance for this article, in Spanish (e.g., del RÍo & López-Higes 2006; Betancort et al. 2009; del RÍo et al. 2012; Arancibia Gutiérrez et al. 2014; Reali 2014; Sánchez et al. 2017; Manoiloff et al. 2018; Murujosa et al. 2021; Dąbrowska et al. 2022; and see Murujosa & Sevilla 2022 for a revision).

A wide array of explanations has been proposed to account for this processing asymmetry. Most explanations can be grouped as based on (a) memory resources, (b) underlying structure, or (c) distributional patterns. Memory-based accounts assume that the language processor needs to hold the information of one end of the dependency in working memory until encountering the other end. In this view, the subject-object asymmetry is caused by the working memory cost of retrieving and integrating the relative pronoun and its co-indexed antecedent upon encountering the embedded verb (Gibson 1998; Grodner & Gibson 2005; Lewis & Vasishth 2005). Structure-based accounts, on the other hand, emphasize the underlying morphosyntactic structure of the sentences studied and propose explanations based on either universal parsing strategies (Frazier & Clifton 1989) or specific properties of the computational component of language (O’Grady 1997; Friedmann et al. 2009). Other structure-based accounts highlight the simultaneous influence of syntactic and non-syntactic information, such as lexical and semantic properties (Mak et al. 2002; 2006; Traxler et al. 2002; Bornkessel & Schlesewsky 2006; Gennari & MacDonald 2008; Dunagan et al. 2023). Finally, distribution-based accounts operate on the premise that frequently occurring structures in natural speech are processed more easily. Numerous studies have investigated how different distributional properties of RCs influence processing and acquisition (Hale 2003; Kidd et al. 2007; Reali & Christiansen 2007; Levy 2008; Diessel 2009; Reali 2014; Ambridge et al. 2015). Recently, studies on this processing asymmetry have shifted from studying the sentences as monolithic entities (e.g., SRC vs ORC) to studying how the fine-grained aspects of the semantic and morphosyntactic configurations of the sentences influence their processing. Research has focused, for example, on how animacy information and prominence of nominal phrases play a role during the processing of RC (Mak et al. 2002; Traxler et al. 2002; 2005; Mak & Vonk & Schriefers 2006; 2008; Betancort et al. 2009; Lin 2018) or on how different configurations of morphosyntactic features, such as case, gender and number, can impact the parsing of the sentence (Adani 2011; Belletti et al. 2012; Adani et al. 2014; Adani & Stegenwallner-Schütz & Niesel 2017; Adelt et al. 2017; Friedmann & Rizzi & Belletti 2017; Terzi & Nanousi 2018; Biondo et al. 2023). Furthermore, more studies have been carried out regarding the processing of RC in different languages, with special emphasis on the study of languages that have not always been in the focus of attention of psycholinguistic research and that manifest diverse typological variations in RC constructions (Blasi et al. 2022; Berghoff & Bylund 2025, for a discussion on the importance of cross-linguistic research). Some typological variations that have been studied include word order and headedness (e.g., in Chamorro: Wagers et al. 2018; in Tagalog: Pizarro-Guevara 2020; in Korean: Kwon et al. 2013; in Turkish: Bulut et al. 2019) and morphosyntactic alignment (e.g., in Basque: Carreiras et al. 2010; in Avar: Polinsky et al. 2012; in Tongan: Ono et al. 2020).

These studies have shed new light on the processing asymmetries and the overall nature of sentence parsing. In some instances, the previously well-established subject advantage of RCs has been questioned, giving rise to examples of languages where ORCs were found to be easier to process than SRC (Kidd et al. 2007; Chen et al. 2008; Lin & Garnsey 2011; Wagers et al. 2018) or examples of sentences in a given language in which the previously reported ORC disadvantage is ameliorated by a mismatch of relevant features (Kidd et al. 2007; Chen et al. 2008; Adani et al. 2010; Lin & Garnsey 2011; Belletti et al. 2012; Bentea & Durrleman & Rizzi 2016; Wagers et al. 2018; Bentea & Durrleman 2022; Papadopoulou & Douka & Paspali 2025). Overall, these antecedents have helped to focus on the analysis of the grammatical properties of languages and the fine-grained morphosyntactic configurations of the sentences under study, and their impact during comprehension.

1.1 Grammar and Processing of Sentences with Dative-marked Object Experiencer Psych Predicates

Studies on the processing of RCs have focused mainly on sentences with transitive activity verbs that, for the most part, assign accusative case to their patient objects, e.g. attack. However, natural languages exhibit a wider range of predicate types, which have received less attention in this literature, including structurally and semantically distinct predicates such as psychological verbs.1

Psychological verbs are predicates whose argument structure includes an experiencer and a theme or stimulus/cause, typically encoding mental or emotional states such as fear, enjoyment, hatred, or irritation. The mapping of these arguments onto syntactic positions varies across predicate types, and psychological predicates have therefore been traditionally classified according to their mapping patterns. Psych verbs show different syntactic realizations of the experiencer argument; it can either surface as a subject (i.e., subject experiencer verbs, as in “John fears spiders”) or as an object (i.e., object experiencer verbs, as in “Spiders frighten John”) (e.g., Pesetsky 1995).

In languages such as Italian and Spanish, a third class is often distinguished, namely dative-marked object experiencer psychological verbs, such as gustar (Belletti & Rizzi 1988; Franco 1990; Dowty 1991; Torrego 1998; Cuervo 2003; Pujalte 2015; MarÍn 2015).2 So far, we have not found any research regarding the comprehension of RCs with dative-marked object experiencers (PSYs).

    1. (2)
    1. A
    2. dat
    1. la
    2. def.f.sg
    1. niña
    2. girl
    1. le
    2. dat.cl
    1. gustan
    2. like.prs.3pl
    1. las
    2. def.f.pl
    1. maestras.
    2. teachers
    1. ‘The girl likes the teachers’

These verbs are characterized for projecting the experiencer of the event as an object with dative case and the theme as the subject with nominative case. Moreover, in sentences with PSYs, the unmarked word order usually displays the object in word initial position (Arnaiz 1998; Gutiérrez-Bravo 2007). Evidence from psycholinguistics studies has also shown that the object-initial order is the one favored by Rioplatense Spanish adult speakers (Gattei et al. 2015a; Gattei et al 2015b; Gattei et al. 2017), although both orders are allowed. To illustrate, in (2) the object Determiner Phrase (DP) and experiencer a la niña (‘the girl’) is marked with dative case and in word initial position; the nominative subject DP and theme las maestras (‘the teachers’) is in a post verbal position.

Different formal syntactic approaches have been proposed to account for the structures of dative-marked object experiencer psychological verbs (i.e., PSYs). Focusing on the subject-like properties of the dative argument in PSYs some analyses have argued that these experiencers are “quirky subjects” (Masullo 1992; Montrul 1996; Fernández-Soriano 1999; Rivero 2004). Subsequent analyses, however, have contested the characterization of experiencer datives as “quirky subjects” in Spanish, and have proposed different structural positions for these arguments (Gutiérrez-Bravo 2007; Jiménez Fernández & Rozwadowska 2016; Fábregas et al. 2017).

It has been claimed that arguments with dative case in Spanish, which are headed by the dative case marker a, are introduced and licensed by applicative heads (Cuervo 2003; 2020; Pujalte 2012; 2015). Applicatives are divided into high and low; the former are assembled above the vP, while the latter are assembled below. Within this framework, it has been proposed that experiencer arguments of PSYs (3) are introduced by high applicatives (Cuervo 2003; Pujalte 2015), in a syntactic position higher than the theme.

Henceforth, the theme argument, bearing nominative case, will be referred to as the subject (in line with Cuervo 2003; 2020; Pujalte 2015; a.o.) as it is the argument that agrees in number and person with the verb –a distinctive feature of subjects in Spanish. For the experiencer dative argument, we adopt the traditional terminology and, although external to the vP and not internal, we refer to it as the object.

    1. (3)

In comparison, dative arguments of certain activity predicates (ACTs), e.g. yell, that project the agent with nominative case and the goal of the action with dative case, as in (4) and (5), are introduced by a low applicative functional head (Cuervo 2003), below the vP in the syntactic structure.

    1. (4)
    1. Las
    2. def.f.pl
    1. maestras
    2. teachers
    1. le
    2. dat.cl
    1. gritan
    2. shout.prs.3pl
    1. a
    2. dat
    1. la
    2. def.f.sg
    1. niña.
    2. girl
    1. ‘The teachers yell at the girl’
    1. (5)

As has been previously mentioned, no studies have examined the comprehension or production of RCs with PSY verbs. However, taking into consideration that, as some theories have proposed, structural differences may heavily influence the establishment of filler-gap dependencies, the study of these types of RCs may shed new light and help us understand better how long-distance syntactic dependencies are parsed and which factors may play a role.

1.2 Relativized Minimality and the Processing Cost of Object Relatives

Many explanations within different theoretical frameworks have been proposed to account for the SRC/ORC processing asymmetry. A theoretical account that aims to explain this asymmetry paying special attention to the morphosyntactic structure of sentences was proposed by Friedmann et al. (2009), following earlier work by Grillo (2005; 2009). This approach provides an explanation in terms of intervention locality, based on the syntactic principle of Relativized Minimality (RM; Rizzi 1990 and subsequent work). According to RM, movement dependencies must be local, i.e., they must be satisfied in the minimal configuration possible. RM is based on the configuration in (6), in which X is a constituent that moves from its original (gap) position Y crossing an intervening constituent Z.

    1. (6)
    1. X . . . Z . . . Y

According to the RM Principle, a local relation between X and Y is disrupted if Z is a potential candidate for that relation. Such a case occurs when Z intervenes between X and Y and when Z is structurally similar to X. These two co-occurring conditions give rise to a locality intervention effect and, thus, to difficulties in parsing the structure. Friedmann et al. (2009) show how this configuration and the conditions that create intervention effects apply to the structure of SRC and ORC. In the case of relative clauses, the authors identify the feature [+NP], or ‘lexical restriction,’ as the one that, when present on both X and Z, makes them structurally similar. However, it is important to note that the roles of other syntactic features, such as case, gender, number and animacy have also been studied under this approach in an array of languages as has been mentioned before. From this theoretical perspective, during the derivation of ORCs, the embedded subject DP intervenes in the displacement of the object DP to the left periphery of the sentence and hinders the establishment of the syntactic dependency and causes difficulties in the parsing of the structure; such an intervention effect is not present in the case of SRCs (cf. 7a-b).

    1. (7)
    1. a.
    1.  
    1. b.

The merits of this approach are twofold. On the one hand, RM aims to explain the difference between what is difficult to process for the language parser and what is impossible —that is, completely ungrammatical structures, such as the well-known strong islands (Belletti & Rizzi 2013; Villata & Rizzi & Franck 2016; Rizzi 2018)— under one main grammatical principle, making their explanations more robust. On the other hand, as its main background and use are anchored in theoretical syntax, RM assumes a well-defined morphosyntactic structure of sentences, rooted in generative grammar studies and their main contributions to the description of grammar in general and, in particular, in a wide array of languages of diverse typologies. In this sense, by exploiting the grammatical possibilities of languages such as Spanish and focusing on RC sentences with PSY verbs, we can test empirical predictions of theoretical perspectives such as RM.

1.3 The Present Study: Aims and Hypotheses

This study seeks to investigate whether the asymmetry in the processing of RCs reflects the specific properties of the morphosyntactic configurations that underlie the sentences in question. By focusing on sentences with different syntactic configurations, such as the predicates PSY and ACT with dative arguments in Spanish, we can provide new evidence regarding the role of locality during sentence processing. Following the RM proposal, we expect RCs with dative arguments to be more difficult to process when an intervening element is found between the filler and the gap, and this intervention will be triggered by the inclusion of the +NP feature.

Considering that the syntactic configurations of dative arguments differ from those of the prototypical agentive predicates, the RM model predicts differentiated behaviors. In the case of ACTs, the asymmetry evidenced in the processing of ORCs will follow the same pattern shown by the prototypical agentive verbs, since the object is generated in a lower position than that of the subject, which will then behave as a relevant intervener (8). On the other hand, in the case of PSYs, the RM proposal predicts that the asymmetry will occur in the opposite direction. This is because the object is generated in a higher position than the subject and intervenes in the establishment of the syntactic dependency when the subject DP moves towards the sentence periphery (9).

    1. (8)
    1. a.
    1. ACT – SRC:
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. ACT – ORC:
    1. (9)
    1. a.
    1. PSY – SRC:
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. PSY – ORC:

To study the processing of RCs with dative predicates, we designed an auditory comprehension task in which participants were asked to listen to a sentence; then were shown an image and prompted to judge whether the image they saw faithfully reflected the content of the sentence heard or not. Our manipulation resulted in a 2 × 2 factorial design with Verb Type and Type of RC as fixed factors, each with two levels: ACT vs. PSY and SRC vs. ORC, respectively. The dependent variables considered to assess comprehension cost were the rate of success (accuracy rate) in the responses of the participants and their response time (RT). We predicted, then, that in the case of RCs with ACTs the accuracy rate would be higher in the case of SRCs, this structure also showing lower latencies. On the other hand, RM predicts that in the case of RCs with PSYs, the accuracy should be higher in the case of ORCs and the latencies lower.

2 Experiment

2.1 Methods

2.1.1 Participants

Fifty-one native speakers of Rioplatense Spanish participated in the experiment (40 female and 11 male; age range: 18–35 years; M = 24.35, SE = 0.54). All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and had no history of prior neurological disease, drug or alcohol abuse, psychiatric disorders, developmental speech/language disorders, or learning disabilities. All of them provided written consent prior to the study. One participant was excluded from the analysis due to low accuracy in answering sentence comprehension probes (lower than 75%), resulting in a total of 50 participants.

2.1.2 Materials

The auditory stimuli in this experiment consisted of relative clause sentences constructed with two verb lists with 20 items each. On the one hand, activity predicates were used that mark the agent with a nominative case and the event’s goal object with a dative case, e.g. ‘sonreÍr’ (‘to smile’). On the other hand, psychological predicates that mark the theme with a nominative case and the experiencer with a dative case, e.g. ‘gustar’ (‘to like’) were selected3. The predicates of both lists (ACTs and PSYs) were paired in frequency on a logarithmic basis, according to the EsPal database (Duchon et al. 2013; ACT: M = 1.97, SE = 0.43; PSY: M = 2.36, SE = 0.28). An independent samples t-test revealed that there were no significant differences between the two groups (t = –0.75, p > 0.05). The list of predicates can be found in the Appendix.

Forty nouns were selected (36 professions and 4 animals), of which 20 had masculine grammatical gender and 20 had feminine grammatical gender, and only nouns with the same gender were paired together. These nouns can be found in the Appendix. Each noun pair was used with an ACT predicate and with a PSY predicate. The sentences were constructed such that the roles of the arguments could alternate. Consequently, two versions of each event were created. The variable manipulated to construct target sentences was the argument that functioned as antecedent (subject or object) (cf. 10-11 with examples for one of each type of verbs).4 All sentences started with the preface ‘En la imagen aparece…’ (In the image appears…) followed by the RC.

    1. (10)
    1. ACT verbs: ‘sonreÍr’ (‘to smile’)
    1. En
    2. loc
    1. la
    2. def.f.sg
    1. imagen
    2. image
    1. aparece…
    2. appear.prs.3sg
    1.  
    1. a.
    1. SRC:
    1. el
    2. def.m.sg
    1. payaso
    2. clown
    1. que
    2. rel
    1. le
    2. dat.cl
    1. sonrÍe
    2. smile.prs.3sg
    1. al
    2. dat.def.m.sg
    1. bebé.
    2. baby
    1. ‘the clown that smiles at the baby’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. ORC:
    1. el
    2. def.m.sg
    1. bebé
    2. baby
    1. al
    2. dat.def.m.sg
    1. que
    2. rel
    1. le
    2. dat.cl
    1. sonrÍe
    2. smile.prs.3sg
    1. el
    2. def.m.sg
    1. payaso.
    2. clown
    1. ‘the baby that the clown smiles at’
    1. (11)
    1. PSY verbs: ‘gustar’ (‘to like’)
    1. En
    2. loc
    1. la
    2. def.f.sg
    1. imagen
    2. image
    1. aparece…
    2. appear.prs.3sg
    1.  
    1. a.
    1. SRC:
    1. el
    2. def.m.sg
    1. payaso
    2. clown
    1. que
    2. rel
    1. le
    2. dat.cl
    1. gusta
    2. like.prs.3sg
    1. al
    2. dat.def.m.sg
    1. bebé.
    2. baby
    1. ‘the clown that the baby likes’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. ORC:
    1. el
    2. def.m.sg
    1. bebé
    2. baby
    1. al
    2. dat.def.m.sg
    1. que
    2. rel
    1. le
    2. dat.cl
    1. gusta
    2. like.prs.3sg
    1. el
    2. def.m.sg
    1. payaso.
    2. clown
    1. ‘the baby that likes the clown’

It is important to note that dative ORCs in Rioplatense Spanish are unambiguous, because the relative pronoun is obligatorily marked with the dative case marker “a”. Moreover, ORCs show a second variation: subjects can appear before or after the verb, i.e., word order in ORCs can be either O[SV] or O[VS]. Previous studies have shown that the order O[VS] is more frequent when the subject is a full NP (Reali 2014) and it has been argued that the preverbal subject in ORCs with order O[SV] is topicalized (Gutiérrez-Bravo 2005; Ojea 2023). The implications of this change in the information structure are still under debate (del RÍo et al. 2012; Reali 2014; Manoiloff et al. 2018; Presotto & Torregrossa 2024). For this study, we chose the word order O[VS] as it follows the more canonical word order (for a thorough discussion on these topics and their possible empirical consequences see Murujosa & Sevilla 2022).

The resulting sentences were recorded by a female native speaker of Spanish, so that all stimuli were presented with uniform prosody and intensity, and edited using PRAAT (Boersma 2001). The sentences were further divided into four balanced lists according to a Latin Square design, so that each participant only heard one version of the four sentences containing each predicate. Each participant heard two sentences with each pair of nouns: one with an ACT verb and one with a PSY verb. The order in which these nouns appeared also alternated. Within each list the order of presentation of the stimuli was pseudorandomized, as well as the image selected to make the sentences either true or false. For each participant half of the target sentences they heard were true and the other half false. The 80 images of the experiment were black and white drawings of the 40 events in which the roles of the nouns also alternated (Figure 1). Two mirrored images of each of these 80 images were used, adding a total of 160 images.

In addition, 4 practice sentences were created, as well as 40 filler sentences that were used as distractors. These sentences differed from target sentences in syntactic complexity and length, so that participants would not be aware of the aim of the experiment.

Figure 1
Figure 1

Example of the visual stimuli presented during the experiment. The pictures correspond to the PSY verb ‘gustar’ (‘to like’), alternating the role of the nouns of the event. Participants only saw one version.

2.1.3 Procedure

Participants were asked to listen to a sentence; then were shown an image and were prompted to judge whether the image they saw faithfully reflected the contents of the sentence heard or not. At the beginning of the trial, participants were asked to look at the fixation cross that was in the center of the screen; 2000 ms later the audio of the sentence started to play. After the end of the audio, the fixation cross remained on the screen for 500 ms and then the image appeared. If the image was correct, they had to press the right arrow key on the keyboard; and, if the image was incorrect, the left arrow key. After they pressed the key, the image disappeared, and they were shown a blank screen for 2000 ms.

2.1.4 Data Analysis

For statistical analysis and data visualization, we used the R program version 4.2.1 in the R Studio interface (“R Core Team” 2022). We used the tidyverse (Wickham et al. 2019), lme4 (Bates et al. 2015), lmerTest (Kuznetsova & Brockhoff & Christensen 2017) and Sjplot (Lüdecke 2022) packages. To score the responses, we differentiated between correct and incorrect responses. Response times (RT) were calculated as the time needed to press the key after the image appeared. Trials longer than 10 seconds were excluded (affecting 1.7% of the data) from the analysis. Furthermore, outlier RTs (±3 SD away from the mean of each condition by participant) were calculated and none were found. Further analyses of RTs were restricted only to correct trials. A Linear Mixed Effects Model (LMM) was fitted to the RTs data, and a Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Model (GLMM) with a binomial function, to the dichotomous data of the comprehension task.

Accuracy or RTs were taken as dependent variables, the Verb Type (ACT vs. PSY) and the Type of RC (SRC vs. ORC) as fixed variables, the Verb Frequency as a control variable, and Subject and Item as random variables. The models also incorporated the interaction between the two fixed variables. We used an orthogonal contrast coding to test the interaction between verb type and type of RC. For the verb type contrast, sentences with ACTs were coded as 1 and sentences with PSY verbs were coded as –1. For the type of RC contrast, SRCs were coded as –1 and ORCs were coded as 1.

Maximal random effects structures were included; when the models did not converge or the correlation between the variance of the components could not be estimated, the correlations were removed to simplify the random effects structure. For data samples such as the one obtained, the distribution of t or z is close to the normal distribution, and an absolute value of the value of t or z greater than 2 indicates a significant effect at the value of α = 0.05. Whenever an interaction yielded significant effects, post hoc multiple comparisons with Tukey’s correction were performed on estimated marginal means, using the R package emmeans (Lenth 2024).

For the analysis of RTs, the times in milliseconds were transformed to values on a logarithmic scale (log), since RTs on a second or millisecond scale can lead to incorrect conclusions given the lack of normal distribution of their residuals (see Baayen & Milin 2010 for a discussion on this topic). However, to improve understanding of the data, RTs were reported and plotted in seconds (s.).

2.2 Results

2.2.1 Accuracy

Participants responded correctly to 82% of the stimuli (SE = 1.2%); Figure 2 shows the means and standard errors obtained for each type of condition. In the case of ACT sentences, 95.8% (SE = 1.28%) of the stimuli with SRCs and 81.5% (SE = 2.51%) of sentences with ORCs were answered correctly. In the case of PSY sentences, mean accuracy rate was 69.2% (SE = 2.9%) for stimuli with SRCs and 83.5% (SE = 2.4%) for sentences with ORCs. Table 1 shows the GLMM fitted to predict the percentage of correct answers according to the type of predicate and the type of relative clause. Results of this analysis showed a main effect of Verb Type, a main effect of Type of RC, and a significant interaction between Verb Type and Type of RC. Multiple comparisons analysis with Tukey’s correction (Figure 3) revealed that, for the ACT sentences, participants responded significantly better when the relative was a SRC (ACT ORC – ACT SRC: β = –1.762, SE = 0.365, z = –4.820, p < 0.001). In contrast, when the sentences had PSYs, participants responded better when the relative was an ORC (PSY ORC – PSY SRC: β = 0.913, SE = 0.232, z = 3.940, p < 0.001).

Figure 2
Figure 2

Average percentage of correct answers (± SE). ACT = Activity predicate; PSY = Dative-marked Psychological predicate; SRC = Subject Relative Clause; ORC = Object Relative Clause.

Table 1

Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Model fitted to the accuracy data. Model estimates are expressed in log odds and significant effects at the α = .05 level are bolded.

Accuracy
Predictors Log-Odds Std. Error CI Statistic p
(Intercept) 2.06 0.20 1.66 – 2.45 10.19 <0.001
Type of Verb 0.60 0.14 0.33 – 0.88 4.25 <0.001
Type of RC –0.21 0.11 –0.42 – –0.00 –1.97 0.048
Verb Freq. –0.00 0.00 –0.01 – 0.01 –0.72 0.472
Type of Verb × Type of RC –0.67 0.11 –0.88 – –0.46 –6.15 <0.001
Random Effects
σ² 3.29
τ₀₀ suj 0.37
τ₀₀ indverbo 0.31
ICC 0.17
N indverbo 40
N suj 50
Observations 970
Marginal/Conditional R² 0.180/0.321
Figure 3
Figure 3

Tukey’s corrected contrasts of the GLMM fitted to accuracy data. Error bars show the estimated 95% confidence interval. ACT = Activity predicate; PSY = Dative-marked Psychological predicate; SRC = Subject Relative Clause; ORC = Object Relative Clause.

2.2.2 Response Times (RTs)

The mean of response time was 2.66 s. (SE = 0.05 s.). Figure 4 shows the means and standard errors obtained for each condition. In the case of sentences with ACTs, the mean RT was 2.14s. (SE = 0.07s.) in the stimuli with SRCs and 2.64 s. (SE = 0.10 s.) in stimuli with ORCs. In the case of PSYs, the mean RT was 3.07 s. (SE = 0.13 s.) in the stimuli with SRCs and 2.64 s. (SE = 0.10 s.) in stimuli with ORCs. Table 2 shows the results of LMM fitted to predict response times according to the type of predicate and the type of relative clause. A main effect of Verb Type and a significant interaction between Verb Type and Type of RC were found. Multiple comparisons analysis with Tukey’s correction (Figure 5) revealed that, for the ACT sentences, participants responded faster when the relative was a SRC (ACT ORC – ACT SRC: β = 0.172, SE = 0.0335, t = 5.140, p <0.001). In contrast, when the sentences had PSYs, participants responded faster when the relative was an ORC (PSY ORC – PSY SRC: β = –0.124, SE = 0.0360, t = –3.440, p = 0.0030). Lastly, a main effect of Verb Frequency was also found.

Figure 4
Figure 4

Mean response times (RT) for correct answers (± SE), in seconds (s) according to Type of Relative Clause (RC). ACT = Activity predicate; PSY = Psychological predicate; SRC = Subject Relative Clause; ORC = Object Relative Clause.

Table 2: Linear Mixed Effects Model fitted to the RT data. Model estimates are expressed on the log scale and significant effects at the α = .05 level are bolded.

RTs
Predictors Estimate Std. Error CI Statistic p
(Intercept) 0.89 0.05 0.79 – 1.00 17.02 <0.001
Type of Verb –0.09 0.02 –0.13 – –0.05 –4.45 <0.001
Type of RC 0.01 0.01 –0.01 – 0.04 0.98 0.328
Verb Freq. –0.00 0.00 –0.00 – –0.00 –2.60 0.010
Type of Verb × Type of RC 0.07 0.01 0.05 – 0.10 6.02 <0.001
Random Effects
σ² 0.12
τ₀₀ suj 0.10
τ₀₀ indverbo 0.01
ICC 0.50
N indverbo 40
N suj 50
Observations 800
Marginal / Conditional R² 0.072/0.53
Figure 5
Figure 5

Tukey’s corrected contrasts of the LMM fitted to RT data. Error bars show the estimated 95% confidence interval. ACT = Activity predicate; PSY = Psychological predicate; SRC = Subject Relative Clause; ORC = Object Relative Clause.

3 Discussion

Several studies on RCs comprehension and the subject/object processing asymmetry have shown that underlying morphosyntactic structures play an important role in the processing of complex sentences across languages. While different explanations have been proposed to account for this asymmetry, approaches focusing on the role of morphosyntactic structure, such as Relativized Minimality, have explained the observed difficulty in ORCs comprehension as a syntactic intervention effect (e.g. Friedmann et al. 2009). However, this processing difficulty has mostly been examined with prototypical transitive nominative-accusative verbs.

A main aim of the present study was to extend the empirical domain of the psycholinguistic literature on RCs by exploring a new type of structure: RCs with dative-marked object experiencer psychological predicates in Spanish. To do so, we took advantage of some properties of this language and used a specific set of sentences that allow an almost one-to-one comparison: activity dative assigning verbs (ACT) vs object experiencer psychological dative assigning verbs (PSY). The contrast between PSY and ACT verbs in Spanish in both subject and object RC comprehension was useful for testing (a) how the underlying different syntactic structures of superficially identical sentences affect their comprehension; and (b) whether, and to what extent, syntactic intervention can account for processing evidence obtained from a larger sample of types of filler-gap dependencies. To this end, an auditory comprehension task was carried out in which the processing of SRCs and ORCs (the Type of RC variable) with dative-marked object experiencer psychological verbs, in contrast to dative assigning activity verbs (Verb Type variable), was tested in native speakers of Rioplatense Spanish.

Two novel results emerged: First, a main effect of Verb Type was found in both accuracy and RTs, showing that RC sentences with PSY verbs were overall more difficult than RC sentences with ACT verbs. Second, there was an interaction between Verb Type and Type of RC in both accuracy and RTs, and this interaction showed a mirrored pattern effect of the Type of RC variable in sentences with different verb types.

The main effect of Verb Type obtained shows that sentences with PSY predicates were generally more difficult to understand than sentences with ACT verbs in terms of lower accuracy and higher latencies. Previous studies have shown that object experiencer psych verbs in simple declarative sentences lead to greater processing difficulty according to various metrics, such as increased reading times (Cupples 2002; Brennan & Pylkkänen 2010), and decreased comprehension accuracy in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (Manouilidou et al. 2009) and aphasia (Beretta & Campbell 2001; Piñango 2009; Thompson & Lee 2009). Results from studies that used ERPs (Bornkessel et al. 2003) and neuroimaging techniques (Bornkessel et al. 2003) also found differential brain activity after the presentation of sentences containing each type of verb. This added difficulty has been attested as well for dative-marked object experiencer verbs in Spanish declarative sentences (Gattei et al. 2015a; Gattei et al. 2015b; Gattei et al. 2017; Gattei et al. 2021; Taboh et al. 2024).

Among the factors that have been proposed to account for this effect in declarative sentences, differences in the semantic structure of psychological predicates have been pointed to as a source of increased processing load. In particular, distinctions between stative and eventive readings, as well as variation in the internal semantic composition of experiencer events, have been argued to give rise to richer or less prototypical event representations, which in turn affect comprehension (e.g., Gennari & Poeppel 2003; Brennan & Pylkkänen 2010). Such semantic properties are closely related to well-known difficulties at the syntax–semantics interface, insofar as psychological verbs frequently involve non-canonical patterns of argument linking, including configurations in which the experiencer is semantically prominent but not realized in a canonical subject position. These mismatches between semantic prominence and syntactic realization have been shown to challenge standard thematic hierarchies and to incur additional processing costs (Gennari & MacDonald 2009; Gattei et al. 2015a).

In addition, evidence from corpus-based and experimental studies suggests that speakers exploit distributional regularities linking verb classes and word-order configurations to generate predictive expectations during sentence comprehension. Corpus analyses of Spanish psychological predicates indicate systematic associations between verb type and surface order, which can be taken as a source of probabilistic expectations (e.g., Mateu 2022). Experimental work further shows that readers use these distributional cues online, and that deviations from expected verb–structure pairings—such as psychological verbs occurring in less frequent configurations—can modulate both accuracy and response times (Gattei et al. 2015b). In our specific study, an additional factor may be contributing to this Verb Type effect: the greater difficulty in extracting relevant information (i.e., the psychological states of the depicted participants) from the images used in the comprehension task.

Interestingly, our results show that the difficulty observed in simple declarative sentences remains during the comprehension of RCs with psychological verbs, a structural context in which it has not been fully investigated. While consistent with prior evidence from declaratives, the exact nature of this effect is far from being clarified through our manipulation. In this sense, accounting for the exact cause of this phenomenon exceeds the aim of this work and should be examined separately in future research, as the adult comprehension and production of sentences with psychological predicates is still an understudied field, especially regarding Spanish and other Romance languages.5 It is important to note, however, that while RM provides a precise account of the subject/object asymmetry in RCs by linking processing costs to the reconfiguration of featural intervention induced by the verb’s underlying syntactic structure, the theory, as a model of locality in A-bar dependencies (Rizzi 2004; Friedmann et al. 2009), does not directly predict or explain the main effect of Verb Type itself. This main effect seems to reflect more general processing costs associated with object experiencer psychological predicates independent of filler-gap dependencies. This is not a shortcoming of RM, which is not designed as a comprehensive sentence processing model, but rather a strength of its targeted scope: it successfully captures how verb-induced syntactic differences modulate intervention in relative clauses, yielding the observed reversal of the classic asymmetry –which is discussed below.

The results obtained from RCs with activity verbs in this experiment replicate previous studies comparing subject and object RC with prototypical accusative-nominative verbs in Spanish. Thus, RCs with ACT verbs showed the already known processing asymmetry: sentences with ORCs, in comparison to SRCs, led to more mistakes in the comprehension task. SRCs were answered almost at ceiling level (95.8%, SE = 1.28%), which could also explain the marginally significant main effect of Type of RC, where SRCs were globally answered more accurately than ORCs. The observed asymmetry was also found in reaction times: ORCs yielded higher latencies than SRCs. This shows that, although our experimental sentences with ACT dative-assigning verbs are different from the previously studied prototypical nominative-accusative sentences, both structures are comparable in terms of relevant properties: both types of verbs (dative-assigning vs accusative-assigning ACTs) project a canonical word order (SVO) and a sentence structure with the object in a lower syntactic position than the subject.

Importantly, RCs with PSY verbs showed a mirrored pattern: as predicted by RM, ORCs led to fewer mistakes and lower latencies, in comparison to SRCs. Accuracy rates and RTs for each experimental condition showed that, in Spanish, ORCs are not always more difficult to process than SRCs. These results suggest that the difficulty associated with the processing of RCs is specific to underlying syntactic configurations rather than monolithic structure types.

Our data regarding RCs with PSY verbs and ACT verbs align with the hypothesis of syntactic intervention by inclusion of features proposed by RM, presented in §1. The establishment of the syntactic dependency between filler and gap becomes more difficult when there is an intervening element, and this translates into a decrease in the performance of the participants in experimental comprehension tasks and higher response times. In the case of the ACTs (8), effects of syntactic intervention are triggered during the derivation of the ORC, as shown in (8b), since the embedded subject DP intervenes in the establishment of the syntactic dependence. In the case of the PSYs (9), it is during the derivation of the SRC (9a) that syntactic intervention effects are triggered since the embedded object DP functions as an intervener.

Overall, these results are consistent with previous findings showing that not all RCs in all languages behave in the same way and that the behavior in each language depends, to a large extent, on its grammatical properties (e.g., Hsiao & Gibson 2003; Carreiras et al. 2010; Kwon et al. 2013). In Spanish, for example, the results obtained show structural differences between the syntactic configurations of PSY and ACT verbs with dative arguments and argue in favor of a syntactic description in which the experiencer argument of PSY is generated in a higher position than the theme argument.

Our results, and this syntactic description of PSY, are consistent with the research carried out by Mateu (2022). The author studied the comprehension of wh-questions with dative-assigning ACTs and PSYs in both Spanish speaking adults and children; and found that PSY dependencies were harder to comprehend when the wh-questions were subject-extracted. Also, within the RM framework, and assuming the high applicative proposal to account for PSYs, the author explains these results in terms of syntactic intervention. The subject-extracted wh-questions with PSYs involve moving the subject wh-phrase past an intervener, the experiencer DP, which hinders the establishment of the syntactic dependency. Mateu’s results, like ours, are in line with the predictions of RM.

As we have argued, under the proposed analysis for both types of dative assigning verbs, ACTs and PSYs (Cuervo 2003; 2020; Pujalte 2015), the structures used in this study can be considered parallel (and opposite) in configurational terms. However, even under this analysis, they differ in other fundamental features, including the thematic properties of their arguments. The extent to which the intervention effects found can be explained solely by the position of the +NP intervener or can be modulated by other features remains a valid question, as has been mentioned in the Introduction section. For example, it could be hypothesized that differences in the feature configurations involved in (12a) and (12b), driven by thematic features, may give rise to distinct intervention effects.

    1. (12)
    1. a.
    1. En la imagen aparece [el bebé[+R, +NP, +Goal] al que le sonrÍe el payaso[+NP, +Ag] __ [+R, +NP, +Goal]].
    2. ‘In the picture appears the baby that the clown smiles at.’
    1.  
    1. b.
    1. En la imagen aparece [el payaso[+R, +NP, +Th] que le gusta al bebé[+NP, +Exp] __ [+R, +NP, +Th]].
    2. ‘In the picture appears the clown that the baby likes.’

Within the RM framework, studies have investigated whether other features, other than the lexical restriction of the +NP feature, play a role during syntactic intervention (Adani et al. 2010; Adani 2011; Belletti et al. 2012; Bentea et al. 2016; Adani et al. 2017; Friedmann et al. 2017; Terzi & Nanousi 2018; Papadopoulou et al. 2025; Pettenon & Sanfelici & Mateu 2026). In this line, RM argues in favor of a hierarchical configuration of features relevant during the establishment of syntactic dependencies. Following Rizzi (2018), the first distinction is between criterial and non-criterial features: the intervention of criterial features, like the +Q feature, gives rise to grammatically degraded sentences, such as weak islands like (13); while the intervention of non-criterial features, like +NP, gives rise to derivational and processing difficulties (but not to agrammaticality).

    1. (13)
    1. ??/* What book[+Q, +NP] do you wonder who[+Q] could buy __[+Q, +NP]?

Research has focused on the role that other non-criterial features, besides the +NP, may play. For example, in some languages a match of animacy, case, number or gender features of the DPs can magnify the intervention effect, while a mismatch ameliorates it. For example, in the above-mentioned study, Mateu (2022) also manipulated the number feature of the constituents, creating both number match and mismatch conditions between subject and object, and found that a mismatch in number improved children’s performance only for object wh-questions with ACTs and subject wh-questions with PSYs (but not for ACTs subject wh-questions nor PSYs object wh-questions).

Moreover, the size of this ameliorating effect may be different for each feature: Adani et al. (2010) found that number mismatch had a bigger facilitating effect than a gender mismatch in Italian RCs. However, more studies are needed to determine what features are relevant or not for the establishment of filler-gap dependencies in different languages (see Belletti et al. 2012, for a discussion) and whether different values of the features may behave differently as well. Evidence from research on the establishment of local dependencies, such as subject-verb agreement, has found that certain values of the number or gender features have a stronger hindering effect, for example, the plural value (Bock & Cutting 1992; Bock & Miller 1991; Fayol et al. 1994; Sánchez et al. 2018) and feminine value (Badecker & Kuminiak 2007; Slioussar & Malko 2016; Sánchez et al. 2016; 2018) act as stronger attractors in agreement production.

As it can be observed in Figures 2 and 4, the extent to which comprehension is more costly for participants according to the Verb Type and Type of RC variables does not seem to be different between ACT and PSY predicates and the intervention effect appears to be mirrored in ACTs and PSYs. These results are consistent with the featural RM claim that only morphosyntactic features that trigger movement enter into the computation of intervention (e.g., Belletti et al. 2012; Bentea et al. 2016; Rizzi 2018). While thematic features may have structural repercussions, they do not trigger movement and, according to the featural RM claim, should not be computed.

Therefore, our results are consistent with the predictions of RM regarding intervention effects. However, as noted in the Introduction, other theoretical accounts have been proposed that could explain the subject-object processing asymmetry in sentences with activity verbs. Some of these theories could also account for the data obtained in this study. According to memory-based accounts, the difficulties observed in the processing of ORCs have been explained as (a) a distance effect, generated by the additional cost of intervening material between the antecedent and its integration point (e.g., Gibson 1998; 2000) or by the decay in activation of the stored representation (Lewis & Vasishth 2005), or/and an interference effect, generated by the similarity between competing stored representations (e.g., Gordon et al. 2001; 2004, and also Lewis & Vasishth 2005). These proposals focus on possible processing effects of retrieval and integration at the embedded verb and the main verb of the sentence. While these theories could explain the general processing asymmetry effect, the RCs used in this study raise a new question, as the embedded subject appeared in a post-verbal position. Explanations based on integration/retrieval effects at the embedded verb as the main source of additional processing load and/or retrieval difficulty are challenged by the word order exhibited by Spanish (for a discussion of this aspect of RCs in Spanish, see del RÍo et al. 2012).

Given the type of verb manipulation performed, our results may be of interest for structure-based interactive models that consider both morphosyntactic and semantic features of noun phrases, such as the extended Argument Dependency Model (eADM). In this direction, Bornkessel & Schlesewsky (2006) propose that morphosyntactic (e.g. word order, case marking) and semantic (e.g. animacy, definiteness) features of NPs are extracted to compute the relative prominence of one argument over others and to assign a plausible thematic role. The model proposes that the sentence parser will assign the first NP the highest possible thematic role aligned with those features and predict a verb type with a lexical-semantic structure that matches such thematic role. This model might predict higher cognitive costs for SRCs with psych verbs compared to SRCs with activity verbs, and conversely, greater costs for ORCs with activity verbs compared to ORCs with psych verbs, which is not the comparison of interest in this paper. However, the eADM derives its predictions primarily from studies examining electrophysiological and neurobiological changes during online comprehension of simple sentences6 (but see Dunagan et al. 2023 for a recent work on ORCs processing in English and Chinese).

Finally, with regard to usage-based approaches (Reali & Christiansen 2007; Diessel 2009; Tomasello 2009; Reali 2014; Ambridge et al. 2015), the explanation for the difficulty associated with ORC is related to its low frequency in spoken and written language. These studies mostly explain the behavioral data obtained by taking into account the distribution patterns of the sentences under study, found in corpus analyses or sentence completion (cloze) tasks. However, no corpus studies have been carried out to investigate the frequency of RCs with dative assigning verbs in Spanish. There has been, nonetheless, some data reported regarding the frequency of word order with PSYs. For example, Mateu (2022) examined the frequency of sentences with the verb gustar ‘to like’ produced by both children and adults interacting with children in Spanish CHILDES corpora (MacWhinney 2000). The results showed that children begin to produce the Exp-V-Theme (OVS) order earlier than the Theme-V-Exp (SVO) order; and that both adults and children produce more instances of the Exp-V-Theme (OVS) order than Theme-V-Exp (SVO) utterances.7 Furthermore, in a study conducted by Gattei et al (2015b), Rioplatense Spanish adult speakers were asked to complete a sentence completion task in which critical items began with either a nominative or a dative phrase, and both phrases were followed by the dative clitic le. Participants therefore had to complete the sentences with a verb. The authors report that when the sentences began with a nominative phrase, participants responded more often with an activity verb; but when the sentence began with a dative phrase, participants responded with a dative-marked object experiencer psychological verb (with gustar ‘to like’ being the most common). If this distribution pattern were to be replicated in RCs, the data obtained in this study could also be explained.

While assessing the applicability of such models is beyond the scope of the present investigation, broadening the theoretical scope beyond RM raises interesting avenues for future research and merits further in-depth exploration.

4 Final remarks

In this study we set out to revisit the subject/object asymmetry in the comprehension of sentences with relative clauses in Spanish. The RCs contained either a dative-marked object experiencer psychological predicate or a dative assigning activity predicate. This contrast allowed us to manipulate the relative structural positions of the subject and object within the clauses. The results of the current experiment show that subject relatives are not always easier to comprehend than object relatives in Spanish. When the RC contained a dative-marked psychological predicate the traditional subject/object pattern was inversed: object-extracted RCs elicited a higher accuracy rate and lower reaction times.

Our results are in line with accounts of the processing asymmetry that take into consideration the fine-grained aspects of the morphosyntactic structural configurations that underlie sentence comprehension, such as the RM framework. Moreover, our work highlights the importance of carrying out experimental studies in a wide array of languages, with diverse grammatical properties, and exploring how different morphosyntactic aspects affect language processing.

Appendix

Verb – ACT P1 P2
apunta monja bailarina
canta nieta abuela
chifla bruja maestra
chilla nadadora fotógrafa
chista millonario mendigo
cocina hada princesa
discute policÍa esquiadora
grita director violinista
gruñe león perro
guiña niño enfermero
lee presidente cura
murmura cocinero mozo
plancha nena mujer
protesta médica luchadora
ruega mono oso
silba hechicera reina
sonrÍe bebé payaso
suplica soldado marinero
susurra jugador árbitro
tararea pianista cantante
Verb – PSY P1 P2
aburre presidente cura
agrada policÍa esquiadora
apena nieta abuela
asombra jugador árbitro
asusta mono oso
atrae león perro
avergüenza nadadora fotógrafa
desagrada pianista cantante
disgusta millonario mendigo
divierte cocinero mozo
encanta nena mujer
fascina bruja maestra
gusta bebé payaso
importa monja bailarina
interesa hada princesa
molesta hechicera reina
preocupa soldado marinero
repugna médica luchadora
simpatiza director violinista
sorprende niño enfermero

Abbreviations

acc – Accusative (grammatical case)

act – Activity Predicate

dat – Dative (grammatical case)

dat.cl – Dative Clitic (e.g., le)

def – Definite

dp – Determiner Phrase

eadm – Extended Argument Dependency Model

f – Feminine

glmm – Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Model

lmm – Linear Mixed Effects Model

loc – Locative

m – Masculine

np – Noun Phrase

pl – Plural

psy – Dative-marked Object Experiencer Psychological Predicate

rm – Relativized Minimality

sg – Singular

src – Subject Relative Clause

orc – Object Relative Clause

svo, ovs – Word orders: Subject-Verb-Object, Object-Verb-Subject

Data availability/Supplementary files

Data and supplementary files can be found in: https://osf.io/gw6ku/?view_only=b1011f804e2e4f8a98d50724890ed519.

Ethics and consent

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee of the Facultad de FilosofÍa y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. The research was approved by said committee (CE-018/2020).

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The consent form was previously approved by the Ethics Committee of the Facultad de FilosofÍa y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. The participants were volunteers who were informed that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. Data were only used for research purposes.

Funding information

This work was supported by the grant PIP11220200101289CO financed by Argentina’s National Research Council (CONICET).

Acknowledgements

The first author received a PhD scholarship from the Argentina’s National Research Council (CONICET). This research was supported by the grant PIP11220200101289CO also financed by CONICET. The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments.

Competing interests

The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.

Notes

  1. We note, however, that some work has addressed the processing of relative clauses with theme–experiencer predicates, albeit mostly in connection with the animacy of the nominal arguments (e.g., Traxler et al. 2005; Gennari & MacDonald 2008). [^]
  2. In Spanish, verbs that are restricted to this configuration—that is, verbs that obligatorily assign dative case to the experiencer— constitute a small and well-defined set of verbs (e.g., Di Tullio 1997). Other object experiencer verbs display a particularly striking form of syntactic variation: nearly all of them allow both an accusative realization (a) and a dative realization (b), such as preocupar. In those cases, the accusative variant is interpreted as causative (e.g., Franco 1990; Fábregas et al. 2017; Fritz-Huechante et al. 2020); in contrast to the variant in which the experiencer receives a dative case, which does not trigger a causative interpretation; some of these alternating predicates also allow for pronominalization.
      1. (i)
      1. La
      2. def.f.sg
      1. niña
      2. girl
      1. preocupa
      2. worry.prs.3sg
      1. a
      2. acc
      1. la
      2. def.f.sg
      1. maestra.
      2. teacher
      1. ‘The girl worries the teacher’
      1. (ii)
      1. La
      2. def.f.sg
      1. niña
      2. girl
      1. le
      2. dat.cl
      1. preocupa
      2. worry.prs.3sg
      1. a
      2. dat
      1. la
      2. def.f.sg
      1. maestra.
      2. teacher
      1. ‘The teacher is worried by the girl’
    [^]
  3. In order to be able to broaden the item set of PSY predicates, both alternating and not alternating type of verbs were included. While 10 of them were exclusively dative-marked object experiencer psychological predicates, the other 10 belonged to the class of verbs that allows for alternations with the variant that assigns the accusative case to the experiencer, e.g. “preocupar” (‘to worry’, see note 2). Of the alternating predicates, only the versions that assign the dative case were used. No differences between both types of dative-marked object experiencer predicates were obtained, neither in accuracy (χ2(1) = 0.04, p = 0.8) nor RTs (t(370) = –1.59, p > 0.1). [^]
  4. The design of the experiment included another set of sentences using the same verbs (manipulating the presence or absence of the embedded NP in each type of RC) that were evaluated and partly used as filler sentences for this study; however, this contrast is not relevant for the current discussion and, thus, not being analyzed in this paper. Therefore, the data related to that contrast were excluded. [^]
  5. We note, however, that work has been carried out regarding the acquisition of these sentences (Torrens 2006; Gómez Soler 2012; Mateu 2022). [^]
  6. In this aspect, eADM’s emphasis on prominence hierarchies could explain the Verb Type effect through inherent conflicts in PSY argument linking, aligning with evidence from declaratives sentences (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky 2009). [^]
  7. However, it’s important to note that the author argues that the results obtained in their study, regarding children’s acquisition of these structures, are “difficult to reconcile with input-frequency-based accounts” (Mateu 2022, pp. 11–12). [^]

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