Structural Ambiguity and the Architecture of Language

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.