this study examined whether processing ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (rcs) following a complex determiner phrase (dp) by persian-speaking learners of l2 english with different proficiency and working memory capacities (wmcs) is affected by semantic priming. the semantic relationship studied was one between the subject/verb of the main clause and one of the dps in the complex d...

Syntactically ambiguous sentences are sometimes read faster than disambiguated strings. Models of parsing have explained this tendency by appealing either to a race in the construction of alternative structures or to reanalysis. However, it is also possible that readers of ambiguous sentences save time by strategically underspecifying interpretations of ambiguous attachments. In a self-paced re...

This study examined whether processing ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) following a complex determiner phrase (DP) by Persian-speaking learners of L2 English with different proficiency and working memory capacities (WMCs) is affected by semantic priming. The semantic relationship studied was one between the subject/verb of the main clause and one of the DPs in the complex D...

This study aims at investigating whether Persian native speakers highly advanced in English as a second language (L2ers) can switch to optimal processing strategies in the languages they know and whether working memory capacity (WMC) plays a role in this respect. To this end, using a self-paced reading task, we examined the processing strategies 62 Persian speaking proficient L2ers used to read...

In this paper, I propose an implementation of relative clause extraposition in German. The proposal builds on Kiss (in press) who treats relative clause extraposition as an anaphoric process by means of percolation of anchors to which the relative clause is bound. I discuss several sources of spurious ambiguity in Kiss’s original formulation and suggest a two-step percolation of anchors that cr...

Sentences with temporarily ambiguous reduced relative clauses (e.g., The actress selected by the director believed that...) were preceded by discourse contexts biasing a main clause or a relative clause. Eye movements in the disambiguating region (by the director) revealed that, in the relative clause biasing contexts, ambiguous reduced relatives were no more difficult to process than unambiguo...

The role of lexical frequency in syntactic ambiguity resolution was explored in two selfpaced reading studies of ambiguous reduced relative clauses. Recent constraint-based models of syntactic ambiguity resolution have proposed that for a reduced relative clause (e.g., ‘‘The room searched by the police was . . .’’), both the participle and past tense forms of the ambiguous verb (‘‘searched’’) a...

We apply the C4.5 decision tree learner in interpreting Japanese relative clause constructions, based around shallow syntactic and semantic processing. In parameterising data for use with C4.5, we propose and test various means of reducing intraclausal interpretational ambiguity, and cross indexing the overall analysis of cosubordinated relative clause constructions. We additionally investigate...