한국언어과학회

Ambiguity resolution is an important aspect of sentence processing research, as it plays a key role in understanding the language processing mechanism. This study investigates whether there exists a similarity in the processing of structurally ambiguous and referentially ambiguous sentences. Korean learners proficient in English took part in a self-paced reading experiment to examine how they process the relative clause attachment dependency and the pronominal reference dependency. The results revealed that the processing of attachment dependency demonstrated an ambiguity advantage. However, an ambiguity disadvantage was observed in the processing of referential dependency, suggesting a competition between two potential referents. Consequently, these findings provide evidence that the computational processes involved in resolving structural ambiguity and referential ambiguity are dissimilar.