LINGUIST List 11.128

Sat Jan 22 2000

Qs: Czech Sentence Processing, Embedded Clauses

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Shravan Vasishth, Czech sentence processing
2. mwl1, inversion in embedded clauses

Does anyone know of any psycholinguistic, experimental studies done
relating to any aspects of sentence processing in Czech? I can't seem
to find any literature through the usual means and would be grateful
for any pointers (of course, any literature available in Czech is not
accessible to me, but any pointers to such literature would be most
welcome). I will post a summary if I get a reasonable number of
responses. Please email me at vasishthling.ohio-state.edu.

Thanks in advance,

- 
Shravan Vasishth

I want to know if native speakers of English would accept relativisation 
(or questioning) of a constituent of a sentence which contains a 
stylistically marked subject-verb inversion.

For example, it is possible to say (1b) as a stylistically marked variant 
of (1a):

(1a) My mother went into the garden.
(1b) Into the garden went my mother.

Do native speakers of English accept (2b) and (3b) as stylistically marked 
variants of (2a) and (3a)? Or are (2b) and (3b) plainly ungrammatical?

(2a) I wonder into which garden my mother went.
(2b) I wonder into which garden went my mother.
(3a) That is the garden into which my mother went.
(3b) That is the garden into which went my mother.

Your judgment or suggestion of relevant literature (formal explanation, 
corpus-based studies?) would be much appreciated. Thank you in anticipation!

Ming-Wei Lee
Anglia Polytechnic University, UK