The Missing VP Illusion in Spanish: Assessing the Role of Language Statistics and Working Memory

Abstract In English, double center-embedded sentences yield a so-called “missing VP illusion”: When they are ungrammatical due to a missing verb, they are judged as equally or even more acceptable than their grammatical counterparts. The illusion is often attributed to working memory limitations. Additionally, it has been suggested that statistical differences across languages—e.g., the lower frequency of consecutive verb clusters in verb-initial languages—play a role, since languages with verb-final embedded clauses are less susceptible to the illusion than English. In two speeded acceptability experiments, we demonstrate that the illusion arises in Spanish, a verb-initial language. We also find that the strength of the illusion is modulated by the number of consecutive verbs, consistent with the involvement of language statistics. By contrast, we do not find that participants’ working memory modulates the illusion, failing to support a role of memory limitations. Our results support the generalization that cross-linguistic variation in the missing VP illusion is associated with language statistics and verb position and they demonstrate that this is the case even in languages in which word order is not a reliable processing cue.