| strategies proposed to account for the differential have beery ease of processing of structures containing relative clauses, a~though most proposals have concentrated on actives and have not addressed the problem of passive relative clauses, When these strategies are gathered together, however, it becomes obvious that they make different predictions. The original purpose of the research reported here was to evaluate four important strategies bearing on relative clause processing, in the context of a single experiment with stimuli based on the eight structures discussed above. The incorporation of passive relative clauses was an important added dimension, since it is the passives which serve to differentiate among the strategies. A related goal was to eliminate from consideration those strategies for which empirical support was not forthcoming. A final goal was to establish a hierarchy among the relevant strategies. The following cognitive strategies are all relevant to the processing of sentences containing relative clauses: She Parallel Function (PF) Strategy. Comprehension for sentences containing relative clauses is facilitated if the relative pronoun plays the same grammatical role (S or O) as is played by the modified noun. 8 The Interruption Strategy. A non-interrupted clause is easier to comprehend than an interrupted clause. ~\u00b0 The Word Order Strateqy. A clause in normal word order is easier to comprehend than a clause in non-normal word order. I\u00b0 The Adjacency Strategy. In parsing a noncompound sentence, start from the left and group together as constituents of the same clause two adjacent NPs (i.e., those not separated by another NP) and an adjacent verb not already assigned to a clause. Interpret the first NP as the subject and the second NP as the object of the verb. e The Parallel Function strategy was initially proposed 8 to account for English acquisition data, a]thouqh it then skips over that and incorrectly assigns the doq as subject of saw, and fina]]y specifies the boy as object. Thus, the Adjacency strategy makes one error for type SSa. She]don 9 suggests that the number of errors made by the strategy determines the relative processing difficulty of that type of structure. Each strategy generates predictions as to the ease of processing of the eight sentence types. If both Deep and Surface versions of Para]]el Function are tested, five sets of predictions an SSa sentence like \"It fundamental problems associated with this strategy. The first is that it is not clear whether parallel function is to be defined on underlying or surface grammatical roles. In the passives listed above, surface grammatical roles are indicated for all NPs, including relative pronouns. However, each of those could also be interpreted in underlying terms. For example, the relative pronoun is construed as subject in type SSp, although in deep structure terms it is the object. Consequently, two distinct versions of the strategy are possible, one based on surface grammatical relations and the other based on underlying relations. Both versions are tested here. The second problem is conceptual in nature, In particular, the strategy seems to lack any explanatory power, standing only as an isolated statement of certain results, without independent motivation. In fact, even its relevance for the acquisition data has been challenged. 7 Both the Word Order and Interruption strategies were proposed 1\u00b0 to deal with language acquisition phenomena, but both can readily be translated into processing terms, as they have been here. Clearly, neither is language specific, although the Word Order strategy assumes the existence of a \"basic\" or \"normal\" word order, usually assumed to be that of the simple, declarative, affirmative sentence. On quite independent grounds, Givon 4 has argued that the simple, declarative, affirmative sentence type is the most basic in many, if not all, languages precisely because it is presuppositionally the least burdened type. The Word Order strategy predicts that any clause which deviates from the normal form will be more difficult to process than one which does not. The Interruption strategy predicts that any sentence with an internally embedded (interrupting) clause will be more difficult to process than one with an embedded clause at one extremity or the other, Sheldon e noted that the Adjacency strategy is basically an English parsing device which applies blindly across a sentence from left to right, assigning a surface grammatical role to each full NP it encounters, and leaving relative pronouns unanalyzed. She pointed out that the strategy sometimes fails to assign grammatical roles correctly. For example, in follow. |