Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In multi-clause sentences, which clause carries the at-issue point is expected to be influenced by whether a clause is at the Right Frontier: Last-uttered clauses or clauses that subordinate these are expected to be at-issue. In a Dutch forced-choice experiment, we measure the rate at which comprehenders interpret an ambiguous pronoun to refer to one of two possible antecedents in a preceding sentence. We manipulated the type (matrix vs. subordinate) and position (sentence-early vs. sentence-final) of the clauses hosting the antecedents, as well as the topicality of the subject (mentioned in context vs.not mentioned in context). We find no effect of topicality, but we find that clause position and type influence the at-issue status of clauses within multi-clause sentences in Dutch: When multiple clauses are at the Right Frontier, sentence-final clauses are more likely hosts for at-issue content, and matrix clauses more so than subordinate clauses in this position.