A subject advantage in covert dependencies: The case ofwh‐question comprehension in French Sign Language

Abstract

AbstractStudies on sentence processing have shown that, as with all A‐bar dependencies, content questions involvingwh movement display a subject advantage. Very little is known, however, aboutwh‐in‐situ questions. The aim of this article is to fill this gap and explore whether a subject advantage can be found inwh‐in‐situ questions. We report the results of a sentence‐to‐picture matching task using in‐situwh questions in French Sign Language. Three adult populations with different ages of exposure to sign language were studied. Results show that comprehension ofwh‐in‐situ questions in French Sign Language does display a subject advantage. We argue that this is relevant for the analysis ofwh in situ, supporting a covert‐movement analysis against alternatives involving some form of (unselective) binding. Moreover, comparison of our three populations shows that delayed exposure to language has an impact on the comprehension ofwh questions, confirming that early language deprivation affects language competence in adulthood.