For the following pair, select which sentence is EASIER to process, according to memory-based explanations.

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Question restatement: For the following pair, select which sentence is EASIER to process, according to memory-based explanations.

Answer options:
- The professor should approach the student who his classmate pushed yesterday.
- The professor should approach the student who pushed his classmate yesterday.

Option 1 analysis: The sentence 'The professor should approach the student who his classmate pushed yesterday' introduces a possessive pronoun 'his' that competes with the relative clause for a clear antecedent. This can create a temporary ambiguity about whose classmate is being referred to, making the dependency between 'the student who' and 'his classmate' harder to resolve in real time. Memory-based accounts predict slower processing when pronoun resolution is ambiguous or when the relative clause imposes a structurally complex interpretation. Practically, listeners may momentarily misattach 'his' or struggle to identify the intended antecedent, leading to increased processing load.

Option 2 analysis: 'The professor should approach the student who pushed his classmate yesterday' places the relative clause with a clear agent for the verb 'pushed': the student is the one who performed the action. The pronoun 'his' clearly refers to 'the student' within the relative clause, and there is a direct, unambiguous binding of the possessive to its antecedent. This straightforward binding reduces ambiguity and aligns with typical memory-based expectations for ease of processing. The overall structure is simpler: [the student] [who [pushed his classmate yesterday]] with a direct subject–verb relationship parsed in a canonical order, which supports faster retrieval and integration in real time.

Comparative contrast: Option 1 risks a garden-path-like undoing due to the 'whose' reference created by 'his' in combination with the relative clause, whereas Option 2 presents a more transparent dependency: the action is performed by the immediately preceding noun 'the student', making interpretation more incremental and less demanding on memory resources.

In summary, the main source of difficulty in Option 1 is pronoun resolution and potential misattachment within the relative clause, while Option 2 benefits from a clean, unambiguous subject–verb relationship in the relative clause, leading to easier processing according to memory-based explanations.

LIN102H1S Homework 04 (due 11 March Tues before 11:59pm)

For the following pair, select which sentence is EASIER to process, according to memory-based explanations.

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