Resumen de Structural Ambiguity and the Architecture of Language1

Jordi Fortuny Andreu

• 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.