Incremental Processing of Gap-Filler Dependencies in Turkish : Focusing on the Processing Asymmetry between Subject and Object Relative Clauses

Previous studies have shown that the filler-gap dependencies are processed incrementally in both English and Japanese. In the case of relative clauses (RC), unlike English, the gap precedes the filler in Japanese (henceforth, the gap-filler dependencies). From the existing RC processing data in Japanese, it is hard to judge whether the gap-filler dependencies are also processed incrementally. In the present study, using Turkish subject and object RCs, we investigated whether the processing of gap-filler dependencies is incremental. The results showed that when the RC structure is determined at the RCverb position, subject RCs were read faster than object RCs at this position. This result suggests that as soon as the gap-site is determined at the RC-verb, the Turkish parser immediately postulates a filler, and starts to construct a dependency even before the filler appears. Thus, the processing of gap-filler dependencies is also incremental in a language like Turkish