# The actress was not on the balcony: testing the Pseudorelative-First Hypothesis in Spanish

## TL;DR

This paper tests a hypothesis about sentence structure preferences in Spanish and finds it doesn't explain the observed patterns.

## Contribution

Empirically challenges the Pseudorelative-First Hypothesis as an explanation for high attachment preferences in Spanish.

## Key findings

- Spanish speakers show a consistent high attachment preference regardless of pseudorelative clause availability.
- Reading times and accuracy scores do not support the PR-First Hypothesis.
- Results suggest the PR-First Hypothesis cannot explain attachment preference variation.

## Abstract

Strategies for attachment resolution in double-antecedent relative clauses have been widely studied since the late 1980s, when a seminal study by Cuetos and Michell revealed that the principles of Late Closure and Minimal Attachment were met in some languages but not in others. These principles predicted a universal preference for low attachment whereas several studies obtained a high attachment preference in Spanish. Since then, high attachment preference has been reported in a variety of languages and with different methods. There have been several attempts at explaining high attachment preference, but none have succeeded. In 2014, the Pseudorelative-First (PR-First) Hypothesis was proposed: it claims that pseudorelative clauses (PRs) are the reason why some languages reveal a preference for high attachment. In this paper, we test the PR-First Hypothesis by means of two self-paced reading experiments in Spanish. Results (reading times and accuracy scores) show an overall preference for HA regardless of PR availability, indicating that the PR-First Hypothesis cannot account for the variation in attachment preferences found in the literature.