RC-attachment Ambiguity Resolution inPersian Sentences

RC-attachment ambiguity arises when there is a competition betweentwo preceding nouns to act as potential hosts for the upcoming relativeclause. To resolve this ambiguity in Persian language, one might rely onsuch intriguing cues as the definite marker (DM) 'eei', semanticcongruity or in/animacy that may appear in the clause. This studyaddressed the role of the first cue i.e. the DM 'eei', which is attached tothe second NP, in functioning as a disambiguating cue to hint therelevant antecedent noun. A total number of 20 sentence stimuli wereprovided each containing two preceding nouns, one with and onewithout the marker, followed by an RC, that were given to 49 PersianNSs in offline interpretation tasks to identify their attachmentpreferences in canonical as well as DM-supported sentences. Theresults showed a clear NP1 attachment preference for canonical but anambiguous pattern for DM-supported sentences

کلیدواژه ها:

relative clause (RC-) attachment ، preference ، NP1/NP2 ، definitemarker ، high/low attachment