Relative clause attachment ambiguity resolution in Persian

Abstract

The present study seeks to find the way Persian native speakers resolve relative clause attachment ambiguities in sentences containing a complex NP of the type NP of NP followed by a relative clause (RC). Previous off-line studies have found a preference for high attachment in the present study, an on-line technique was used to help identify the nature of this process. Persian speakers were presented with sentences that were semantically consistent with either high or low attachment resolution. Results of the analysis of reaction times from 32 participants by the use of RSVP technique revealed that high attachment is the strategy used by Persian native speakers for this type of ambiguity. The results are in harmony with the previous findings in the literature showing a high attachment preference by Persian native speakers. However, the findings are inconsistent with constrained based-models and suggest that native speaker use purely structure-based parsing strategies.