Recency preference in ambiguous relative clause attachment in Turkish
Abstract
In Turkish, Relative Clause (RC) attachment ambiguity arises when two noun phrases (NPs) in a genitive construction follow the (RC). The present paper studies Turkish RC attachment preferences of Turkish native speakers in two experiments through off-line comprehension tasks. While in the first experiment the main verb immediately follows the NP group, in the second experiment a group of adjuncts intervened between the second NP and the main verb. The aim of this setting was to observe the effect of Recency and Predicate Proximity in attachment preferences. The results of the first experiment showed a clear preference for low attachment (NP1). This preference was considered to be the result of Recency effect. The outcomes of the second experiment also showed a higher frequency for low attachment preference, but with an increasing rate for high attachment in comparison to the first experiment. This outcome showed first, the effect of Recency was still prevalent, and second, Predicate Proximity along with Relativized Relevance Principle may also have an increasing effect when there is an intervening group of adjuncts between the NP group and the main verb.
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