Experiment 9: CC topicalization in English .1 Background.1 Background

Experiment 8 replicated the pattern reported by Merchant et al. (2013) for frag-ments but found no difference between the corresponding topicalized CCs. This could either indicate a crosslinguistic difference between German and English or be due to the absence of the movement restriction. In order to distinguish be-tween these explanations I conducted an English version of experiment 8 that would show whether there is evidence for the presumed movement restriction on complementizer-less CCs or whether English patterns with my German data.

Since there were no meaningful differences between the main experiment 8 and the follow-up, the shorter stimuli tested in the follow-up were used.

The predictions of movement and deletion are identical to experiment 8: If the data in Merchant et al. (2013) are due to a movement restriction, complementizer-less CCs should be degraded both as fragments and in a left-peripheral position.

3.3.3.2 Materials

The materials were in principle identical to those from experiment 8 and were translated into American English by a native speaker. A sample item is given in (55) (context story) and (56) (target utterances). The most important difference to the German experiment was the omission of the subjunctive conditions, because in English subjunctive does not have the same status as a marker of reported speech that it has in German. This resulted in a 2×2 design that crossed CCType (thatvs. null complementizers) with Sententiality. Again, Sententiality was tested as a between subjects IV. Besides reducing the likelihood of a floor effect, this allowed for a comparison with my German studies and the original experi-ment by Merchant et al. (2013). The English verbs used in the matrix clause that embedded the CC in the sentential conditions wereto believe,to think,to sayand to mean.

(55) [Context story] This weekend a famous painting has been stolen from the museum. The newscaster is reporting on the investigation of the robbery.

The investigators are currently discussing how the burglar got into the building.

[Newscaster:] What does inspector Wagner believe?

(56) [Reporter:]

a. That the criminal entered through the window.

b. The criminal entered through the window.

c. The criminal entered through the window, he believes.

d. That the criminal entered through the window, he believes.

3.3.3.3 Procedure

The experiment was completed by 54 native speakers of American English, who were recruited on theProlific Academiccrowdsourcing platform. The study was run over the Internet using the LimeSurvey presentation software. Each partici-pant received £2 for participation. Subjects were asked to rate the naturalness of the italicized target utterance in the context of the question. They were assigned to one out of four lists. As Sententiality was tested between subjects, two of the lists contained only fragment and two only sentential target utterances. The materials were distributed across four lists according to a Latin square, so that each subject saw each token set once and each CCType condition equally of-ten. Each subject rated 20 items (10 per CCType condition).⁵⁰ The stimuli were mixed with 20 items from experiment 5 and 45 fillers. All fillers consisted of con-text stories which were followed by a dialogue. The target utterance was always the last utterance in that dialogue, and fillers were adapted so that participants assigned to the fragment lists rated only fragments and those assigned to the sentential lists only sentences. The stimuli were presented in individually fully randomized order. The fillers included five ungrammatical controls, which con-tained e.g. wrong auxiliaries or voice. Four subjects who rated more than 50%

with 6 or 7 points on the scale were excluded from further analysis.

3.3.3.4 Results

Figure 3.11 shows the aggregated ratings across conditions. The ratings for frag-ments are almost identical independently of the presence of a complementizer (𝜇_{𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡} = 5.69,𝜇_{𝑛𝑢𝑙𝑙} = 5.8). This suggests that the effect reported by Merchant et al.

(2013) was not replicated. Furthermore, topicalized CCs without overt comple-mentizers (𝜇_{𝑛𝑢𝑙𝑙} = 3.98), appear to be more acceptable than those headed bythat (𝜇_{𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡} = 3.08), in contrast to the introspective data reported in the literature.

The data were analyzed with CLMMs inRfollowing the procedure described in Section 3.1.1.5. I first fit a full model to the complete data set. The full model

50One of the German materials (𝑛 = 21) was not used in order to obtain an even number of materials.

Figure 3.11: Mean ratings and 95% confidence intervals across condi-tions in experiment 9.

contained fixed effects for Sententiality, CCType, the Position of the trial in the time-course of the experiment and the MatrixVerb as well all two-way interactions between the IVs. The models had by-item random intercepts by-item random slopes for Sententiality, CCType and their interaction, as well as by-subject random intercepts and by-by-subject random slopes for CCType. By-by-subject random slopes for Sententiality were not considered, because Sententiality was tested as a between subjects IV.

The final model (see Table 3.21) contains significant main effects of Senten-tiality, CCType, Position, MatrixVerb and the Sententiality:CCType in-teraction. The main effect of Sententiality (𝜒² = 29.85, 𝑝 < 0.001) confirms that fragments are preferred over topicalized CCs. The main effect of CCType (𝜒² = 10.58, 𝑝 < 0.01) shows that, unlike it has been argued in the theoretical literature based on introspective data, complementizer omission is overall pre-ferred. Finally, the significant interaction between Sententiality and CCType (𝜒² = 6.05, 𝑝 < 0.05) shows that the preference for complementizer omission is specifically strong for sentences. The Position effect (𝜒² = 11.64, 𝑝 < 0.001) reveals a slight overall improvement of ratings over time, but the absence of in-teractions with other predictors shows that this does not affect any condition in particular. The MatrixVerb main effect (𝜒² = 7.6, 𝑝 < 0.01) reveals a pref-erence for materials with the matrix verb believe as compared to other matrix verbs, for the other matrix verbs there was no such effect. Since the verb was not

varied systematically across all items, this might be due to properties of individ-ual materials, hence I consider this a control predictor. Just like in the German experiments, I addressed the movement restriction with an analysis of the data for the full sentences only, following the same procedure as for the main anal-ysis. The final model contains a Position effect (𝜒² = 5.63, 𝑝 < 0.05) and a main effect of CCType (𝜒² = 13.7, 𝑝 < 0.001) that confirms the preference for complementizer-less clauses in a left-peripheral position.

Table 3.21: Fixed effects in the final CLMM for experiment 9.

Predictor Estimate SE 𝜒² 𝑝

Sententiality 1.886 0.302 29.85 <0.001 ***

CCType 0.443 0.13 10.58 <0.01 **

MatrixVerb (believe) 0.441 0.15 7.60 <0.01 **

Position 0.009 0.003 11.64 <0.001 ***

Sententiality:CCType -0.323 0.128 6.05 <0.05 *

3.3.3.5 Discussion

Like experiment 8, experiment 9 investigated an assumed movement restriction on complementizer-less CCs that constrains the acceptability of the correspond-ing fragments accordcorrespond-ing to Merchant et al. (2013). The data do neither provide evidence for the assumed movement restriction nor for the effect that Merchant et al. (2013) report for fragments. The overall pattern in my English data is similar to that found for German: Short answers are preferred across the board and the overall difference in acceptability between CCType conditions is rather small in absolute terms. In English, there was no difference in acceptability between both types of fragment CCs. This contrasts with the study by Merchant et al. (2013), who found such an effect, and suggests that the preference for CCs with overt complementizers in their experiment was due to the use of factive matrix verbs, which disprefer complementizer-less CCs. Once more, there is no evidence for the movement restriction on which the study by Merchant et al. (2013) is based:

Complementizer-less CCs were even rated as more acceptable that in the senten-tial conditions, whereas the opposite pattern has been repeatedly assumed in the theoretical literature based on introspective data.