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This research was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University, grant number PID2019-111198GB-I00.

Analysis of institutional authors

Gonzalez, Jose Manuel IgoaCorresponding Author

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April 17, 2023
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Lexico-Semantic Influence on Syntactic Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study with Spanish Relative Clauses

Publicated to:Brain Sciences. 13 (3): 409- - 2023-03-01 13(3), DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13030409

Authors: Alvarez-Garcia, Esther; Gonzalez, Jose Manuel Igoa;

Affiliations

Autonomous Univ Madrid, Dept Basic Psychol, Madrid 28049, Spain - Author
Univ Leon, Dept Hispan & Class Philol, Leon 24007, Spain - Author

Abstract

This paper investigates the interaction between lexicosemantic and syntactic information in sentence processing by examining the online comprehension of Spanish relative clauses (RCs) of both restrictive and non-restrictive types. A corpus study shows that, in Spanish, a RC may be introduced by different function words (called relativizers), which differ in lexical frequency, as well as semantic features. Based on these facts, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted with the aim of analyzing whether lexicosemantic information could influence sentence processing at the early stages. The results report an early influence of lexicosemantic information not only when activating a relativizer but also when integrating it within the syntactic structure. Additionally, the semantic role played by each RC type seems to constrain sentence processing at different regions. Our results favor an interactive view of language processing, according to which language comprehension is guided from the early stages by different kinds of linguistic information rather than syntactic information alone.

Keywords

eye-trackinginteractive accountsspanish relative clauseAmbiguity resolutionAnimacyConstraintsEye-trackingFixationsInformationInteractive accountsLanguage comprehensionLate closureMovementsSpanish relative clauseWord-frequencyWorking-memory

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Brain Sciences due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2023, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q2 (Segundo Cuartil), in the category Neuroscience (Miscellaneous). Notably, the journal is positioned en el Cuartil Q3 for the agency WoS (JCR) in the category Neurosciences.

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-07-16:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 3.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 3 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 5.55.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 6 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
  • Assignment of a Handle/URN as an identifier within the deposit in the Institutional Repository: https://repositorio.uam.es/handle/10486/712198

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: Last Author (IGOA GONZALEZ, JOSE MANUEL).

the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been IGOA GONZALEZ, JOSE MANUEL.