Chapter published in:
Typical and Impaired Processing in Morphosyntax
Edited by Vincent Torrens
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 64] 2020
► pp. 91–116

Gone with a trace?

Reactivation at PRO positions

| University of Bergen
| University of Bergen
PRO is a theoretically attractive empty category proposed to fill the subject position in non-finite clauses. This chapter is concerned with the empirical evidence for PRO. We investigate reactivation patterns in Control sentences in Norwegian with data from two reaction time experiments. We use a picture recognition task to measure the time and position of PRO antecedent reactivation during sentence processing. The data analysis explores a baseline that has the ability to separate syntactic priming (correct PRO antecedent reactivation) and repetition priming. We find a significant effect of position and an effect of syntactic priming for Subject Control using mixed effects models. We discuss possible theoretical implications and necessary future research.
Keywords: control, PRO, coreference, trace, reactivation, priming, Norwegian, sentence processing
Published online: 21 October 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.64.05lar
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