Basque Word Order Processing Lightened by Case

Abstract

In a self paced reading experiment, we measured the reading times of four word orders (SOV, SVO, OSV, and OVS) in Basque. Our results suggest that SOV is the canonical word orders as already has been attested (Ortiz de Urbina, 1989; Erdocia et al., 2009; Erdocia et al., 2012). The verb medial word orders (SVO and OVS) showed a great processing cost at sentence final position which is not found in verb final orders, favouring the preference of Basque speakers for verb final structures. Futher, the OSV word order showed an increase in reading times at S position in comparison with SOV. That results could be interpreted as a syntactic reanalysis in OSV word order. That reanalysis effect has not been observed in SVO and OVS word orders, suggesting that both word orders are not canonical. Further, we obser- ved that unmarked absolutive objects (-Ø) are always processed faster than ergative subjects (-k).