Representational Complexity of Persian Relative tenses during listening Comprehension

The main question of the present study is that of psycholinguistic reality of Relative Tense in Persian; How Persian tenses are processed? Cross modal lexical decision tasks applied by dmdx software program have been used here to examine relative tense processing during sentence processing. Theoretical framework used here is that of Comrie (1985) linguistically and Shapiro (1990) psycholinguistically. Independent variable is the type of tense used in the verb form and the dependent variable is subjectsˈ reaction times to visual stimuli. 25 university students aged 18-30 participated in experiments who were divided into two groups; male and female participants. The results of the first experiment showed that sentences containing non-finite relative tense verbs, are processed later than the other tenses (present perfect, past perfect, and subjunctives). The explanation is to be found in the un-markedness of non-finites (lacking mood, tense, number). The results of the second experiment also showed that converting simple sentences to the complex ones will erase the meaningful differences in the participantsˈ reaction times.  This shows that the independent variable of sentence type is much more effective on cognitive load than tense type. In these two experiments the gender of the participants is not effective. The findings can be used in curriculum design for non-natives of Persians as it shows the cognitive load of relative tenses across memory.