• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.507-533
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• 2009

This paper examines the time course and processing patterns of filler-gap dependencies in Korean relative clauses, using an eyetracking method. Participants listened to a short story while viewing four pictures of entities mentioned in the story. Each story is followed by an auditorily presented question involving a relative clause (subject relative or dative relative). Participants' eye movements in response to the question were recorded. Results showed that the proportion of looks to the picture corresponding to a filler noun significantly increased at the relative verb affixed with a relativizer, and was largest at the filler where the fixation duration on the filler picture significantly increased. These results suggest that online resolution of the filler-gap dependency only starts at the relative verb marked with a relativiser and is finally completed at the filler position. Accordingly, they partly support the filler-driven parsing strategy for Korean, as for head-initial languages. In addition, the different patterns of eye movements between subject relatives and dative relatives indicate the role of case markers in parsing Korean sentences.