{"title":"Structural Ambiguity and the Architecture of Language","authors":"Jordi Fortuny","doi":"10.1111/stul.12220","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates what structural ambiguity reveals about the architecture of language. It analyzes two basic types of structural ambiguity, constituent ambiguity and chain formation ambiguity, and illustrates with a small class of selected case studies how they interweave. It observes that several movement locality constraints have the effect of reducing chain formation ambiguities; however, it argues that movement locality constraints are not primarily motivated to reduce ambiguity. Finally, it defends that structural ambiguity is due to a loss of resolution at the PF branch of the language faculty.","PeriodicalId":46179,"journal":{"name":"STUDIA LINGUISTICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIA LINGUISTICA","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12220","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article investigates what structural ambiguity reveals about the architecture of language. It analyzes two basic types of structural ambiguity, constituent ambiguity and chain formation ambiguity, and illustrates with a small class of selected case studies how they interweave. It observes that several movement locality constraints have the effect of reducing chain formation ambiguities; however, it argues that movement locality constraints are not primarily motivated to reduce ambiguity. Finally, it defends that structural ambiguity is due to a loss of resolution at the PF branch of the language faculty.
期刊介绍:
Studia Linguistica is committed to the publication of high quality, original papers and provides an international forum for the discussion of theoretical linguistic research, primarily within the fields of grammar, cognitive semantics and language typology. The principal aim is to open a channel of communication between researchers operating in traditionally diverse fields while continuing to focus on natural language data.