The processing of subject-verb agreement with postverbal subjects in Italian

The processing of subject-verb number agreement has been extensively studied when the subject precedes the verb; by contrast, agreement processing in dependencies in which the subject follows the verb has been less investigated. To address this gap, the authors measured the processing of sentences with postverbal subjects in Italian adults, investigating the role of syntactic structure and discourse licensing on agreement processing. They tested whether number agreement violations in verb-subject orders were processed differently depending on whether they occurred in transitive structures with clitic-left dislocation versus unaccusative structures with locative inversion. Because transitive structures are temporarily ambiguous and more constrained by discourse conditions than unaccusative structures, the authors hypothesized that the former might increase comprehenders’ memory load and impair the detection of agreement violations. The results of speeded acceptability judgments and self-paced reading tasks failed to support this hypothesis. However, transitive structures were accepted less often in isolation and elicited higher reading times than unaccusative structures, consistent with an increased cognitive load. The authors propose that the two structures are processed differently, but that this does not affect the computation of morphosyntactic relations like agreement. Instead, measures targeting interpretative processes—like discourse integration—may be more promising for future research.