Feature Retrieval Cost and on-line/off-line complexity in clefts

In Object Clefts (OCs, see (1)), it is crucial to resolve the dependency between thehead (“the banker”, (1.a)) and the lexical verb (“avoided”, (1.a)) to comprehend correctlythe sentence. This kind of dependency has been deeply studied both from thetheoretical/competence perspective (Friedmann et al 2009, Belletti & Rizzi 2012 a.o.) andfrom the psycholinguistic/performance one (Gordon et al. 2001, 2004, a.o.), especiallywhen an intervening “similar” DP (the subject of the cleft: “the lawyer” in (1.a) vs. “Dan” or“we” in (1.b)) is processed between the head and the lexical verb (Warren & Gibson 2005):(1) a. it was [the banker]i that [the lawyer] avoided _i at the party b. it was [the banker/Pat/you]i that [the lawyer/Dan/we] avoided _i at the party c. it was [the/you banker]i that [the/you lawyer] avoided _i at the partyThe goal of this work is twofold: on the one hand we want to provide another piece ofevidence by testing more precisely person features (third (default) vs. second person as in(1.c)) when the “lexical restriction” (i.e. a full noun, Belletti & Rizzi 2012) is present; on theother, we want to evaluate the accuracy of a feature-based “complexity metric” (FeatureRetrieval Cost, FRC, inspired to cue-based memory retrieval idea, Van Dyke & McElree2006) that should predict the processing asymmetries in more precise and graded waycompared to alternative approaches, eventually reconciling a formal theory of competenceand the psycholinguistic performance revealed.