Absence of evidence for underspecification in prenominal relative clause attachment

Abstract

Traxler et al. (1998) have found that relative clauses with ambiguous attachment are sometimes read faster than their unambiguous counterparts. Two broad classes of theories account for this phenomenon: Race-based models posit that ambiguous sentences are read faster due to a 'race' between several permissible analyses of the sentence. In contrast, the strategic underspecification account maintains that, under the right conditions, readers underspecify ambiguities in order to save time. We argue that the two accounts make qualitatively different predictions for structures with prenominal relative clauses, such as in Turkish. While the underspecification account predicts an ambiguity advantage in Turkish, race-based accounts predict the absence of such an effect. We present data from two reading experiments in Turkish (N = 39 and N = 184) in which we find no evidence for a substantial ambiguity advantage in the processing of ambiguous sentences with prenominal relative clauses and argue that this finding poses a major challenge for the strategic underspecification account.