High attachment of adjuncts in sentences with complex noun phrases during syntactic ambiguity resolution in Mongolian native speakers

Abstract
The purpose of this study was to reveal the preferences in ambiguity resolution of adjunct attachments in Mongolian (referred to as high vs. low attachment). The off-line questionnaire technique in Mongolian native speakers was used to collect the material. The sample comprises data from 193 monolingual Mongolian schoolchildren and university students aged from 16 to 24 years. The typical structure of Mongolian sentences with two potential attachment sites for the adjunct is as shown by the example: Гэмт хэрэгтэн тагтан дээр байсан жүжигчнийNP2 үйлчлэгч-бусгуйгNP1 буудсан (The criminal shot the maidNP1 of the actressNP2 standing on the balcony). Statistical results of responses’ analysis show that young Mongolian native speakers tend to prefer high attachment strategy (59% of total number of cases). This percentage of NP1-preference choices shows a high level of significance of the non-random strategy when Mongolian native speakers have to resolve ambiguity of high attachment of adjunct (Z = 6.77, p <0.001). For the Mongolian language, this off-line study is the first to establish such a psycholinguistic preference. Preliminarily, it is possible to claim that Mongolian may be included in the group of languages with high attachment preference (along with Japanese, Korean, Italian, Greek, German, and Russian).

Keywords: syntactic ambiguity, Mongolian, adjunct attachment, high attachment, psycholinguistics