The present study focuses on Complementizer Omission in Russian. The choice of alternating pairs is statistically modeled with mixed-effects regression. We find that the complementizer is more likely to be absent when the matrix subject is a first or second person pronoun, the matrix predicate has a high frequency and the onset of the complement clause is unsurprising, non-ambiguous and non-informational. On the one hand, the findings align well with the Grammaticalization theory. On the other hand, the findings offer no strong support for any of the three accounts of language processing (Availability-based Production, Ambiguity Avoidance and Uniform Information Density). We argue that Complementizer Omission may be an important locus of language differentiation and that previous accounts from the perspective of language processing may not be universal. We propose that more cross-linguistic re-search should be done on syntactic alternations as "even similar constructions may be processed differently in different languages".

Authors:

Yue Zou: Shanghai International Studies University; Hao Lin: Shanghai International Studies University