What verb-final and V2 have in common: evidence from the prosody of German restrictive relative clauses in adults and children

Theoretical accounts agree that German restrictive relative clauses (RCs) are integrated at the level of syntax as well as at the level of prosody (Brandt 1990; Gärtner 1998, 2002; Endriss and Gärtner 2005; Catasso and Hinterhölz 2016; Sanfelici et al. 2017) in both the default verb-final and the marked verb-second variant (referred to as iV2). Both variants are assumed to show the same prosodic pattern, i.e., prosodic integration into the main clause and not unintegrated prosody, which would signal a sequence of two main clauses. To date strong empirical evidence for this close correspondence between prosody and syntax in RCs is missing. Findings regarding prosodic integration of verb-final RCs are not consistent, and research regarding the prosody of iV2 structures is very scarce. Using a delayed sentence-repetition task, our study investigated whether subordination is signaled by prosody in RCs in both the verb-final and the V2 variant in adults (n = 21). In addition, we asked whether young language learners (n = 23), who at the age of 3 have just started to produce embedded clauses, are already sensitive to this mapping. The adult responses showed significantly more patterns of prosodic integration than of prosodic non-integration in the V-final and the iV2 structures, with no difference between the two conditions. Notably, the child responses mirrored this adult behavior, showing significantly more patterns of prosodic integration than of prosodic non-integration in both V-final and iV2 structures. The findings regarding adults’ prosodic realizations provide novel empirical evidence for the claim that iV2 structures, just like verb-final RCs, show prosodic integration. Moreover, our study strongly suggests that subordination is signaled by prosody already by age 3 in both verb-final and V2 variants of RCs.