Figure 1.
Representation of the syntactic structure of an embedded clause.
The noun phrase "the bottle" appears twice, once when it is pronounced at the beginning of the main clause and as a trace in the position it is interpreted in i.e. as the object complement of the verb grasp of the relative clause. Note that this structure is characteristically asymmetric.
Figure 2.
Schema for embedded and coordinated sentence structure.
A: An embedded structure is essentially asymmetric and accepts distance dependency as in the example given in (a). By contrast a symmetric coordinated structure does not accept distance dependency.
Figure 3.
Potential structures of the two sub-phases of a displacing action.
AB: Sequential juxtaposition, analogous to [I reach-grip a bottle AND lift-move it]. When object weight is unknown prior to object contact (A), kinematic parameters adapt to object weight in the ‘Move sub-phase’ (schematically indicated by the red line). No effect of object weight is expected in the ‘Reach sub-phase’. By contrast, when object weight is known in advance (B), movement kinematics could differ for heavy and light objects conjointly in the ‘Reach sub-phase’ and the Move sub-phase i.e. [This heavy bottle, I reached-griped it AND lift-moved it]. CD: Syntactic embedding, analogous to [I reach-grip a bottle TO lift-move it]. When object weight is unknown kinematic parameters adapt to object weight in the ‘Move sub-phase’ only (C). When known prior to movement onset object weight effects could be front-moved from the Move sub-phase to the reach sub-phase(D), following this displacement the Move sub-phase kinematics would remain immune to object weight effects (i.e., [The heavy bottle that I reached-griped TO lift-move]).
Figure 4.
Kinematic parameters latencies in the Reach sub-phase (green) and the Move sub-phase (orange) for TD (left) and SLI children (right) for the unknown (top) and known (bottom) conditions.
Horizontal line with (*) indicates significant planned comparison between heavy and light objects. Vertical line with (*) indicates significant main effects of Knowledge (all p<= .05).
Figure 5.
Kinematic parameters latencies in the Reach sub-phase and the Move sub-phase for FXS and HA.
Same conventions as in Figure 4.