Is There a Particular RC Attachment Preference in Turkish? Negotiating the Effects of Semantic Factors

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Relative clause (RC) attachment preferences vary across languages, challenging universal processing principles.
• Turkish RC construction differs typologically from European languages, necessitating careful cross-linguistic comparisons.
• Extraneous factors can obscure true attachment preferences in ambiguous sentence structures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate relative clause attachment preferences in Turkish.
• To determine if Turkish speakers exhibit a specific NP attachment preference in ambiguous sentences.
• To identify the role of syntactic and non-syntactic factors in Turkish RC attachment.

Main Methods:

• Controlled experimental design to mitigate confounding variables.
• Analysis of ambiguous sentences with two potential noun phrase (NP) attachments.
• Focus on Turkish genitive-possessive constructions and semantic relations.

Main Results:

• No significant preference for NP1 or NP2 attachment was observed in monolingual Turkish speakers.
• Semantic relations (e.g., part-whole) and predicate associations significantly influence attachment.
• Both syntactic and non-syntactic factors are crucial for understanding ambiguity resolution.

Conclusions:

• Turkish does not exhibit a default preference for relative clause attachment in the tested construction.
• Semantic factors play a critical role in resolving attachment ambiguity in Turkish.
• Future research should consider a multifaceted approach to cross-linguistic attachment preference studies.