An investigation on the role of referentiality in the interpretation of relative clauses in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This paper presents an off-line experiment we conducted to investigate theinfluence of referentiality on relative clause (RC) interpretation in BrazilianPortuguese. RCs associated with complex NPs seem to be preferentiallyattached to a referential noun. This referentiality effect can be treated indiscourse terms (Gilboy, Sopena, Clifton & Frazier, 1995) or in syntacticsemanticterms (Bezerra, 2017; this paper). Our questionnaire tested theseapproaches using two types of complex NPs (occupational and kinshipNPs) and the results showed that the syntactic-semantic structure ofthese complex NPs can account for the referentiality effect reported in theliterature by Gilboy et al. (1995). Based on our results, we argue in favorof the syntactic-semantic approach and show that the discourse-orientedapproach lacks explanatory power.