The present study seeks to find the way Persian native speakers resolve Relative Clause attachment ambiguities in sentences containing a complex NP of the type NP of NP followed by a Relative Clause (RC). Previous off-line studies have found a preference for high attachment; in the present study, an on-line technique was used to help identify the nature of this process. Persian speakers were presented with sentences that were semantically consistent with either high or low attachment resolution. Results of the analysis of reaction times from 32 participants by the use of RSVP technique revealed that high attachment is the strategy used by Persian native speakers for this type of ambiguity. The results are in harmony with the previous findings in the literature showing a high attachment preference by Persian native speakers. However, the findings are inconsistent with constrained based-models and suggest that native speaker use purely structure-based parsing strategies.

Relative Clause construction in Iranian languages appears mainly in sentences as a subordinate Clause and acts as a describer for the preceding noun. Following Dixon's (2010) framework, our aim in this paper is to study and describe the Relative Clause construction in Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. This construction is generally of two types which can be considered as canonical and non-canonical with their own syntactic features. Relative Clauses can be either restrictive or non-restrictive according to the information given about the head. Restrictive Clauses cannot be omitted, because they give new information, while non-restrictives can; since the information they give are not always necessary. In Kurmanji, a third type can be identified which is called cleft Relative Clause in which the head is focused. In this dialect, Relative Clauses are absolutely in accordance with a head. These Clauses are external and come after the head. The data on which this study is based on interviews with native speakers of Kurmanji as well as a book called Az Ensanə m.

Within the Minimalist Program (MP), Relative Clauses (RCs) are considered complementizer Clauses (CPs) containing a C with an edge feature [EF] in the form of [wh] and [EPP] but no tense feature. This study investigates Persian RC derivation based on MP. By proposing two approaches, namely: (1) ‘ke-movement’ and (2) ‘null wh-operator (OP) movement’, we will consistently argue and show that the null wh-OP approach provides an appropriate generalization for Persian restrictive RCs. Adopting the latter, the results display Persian RCs can be analyzed as CPs with a null wh-OP assuming to undertake wh-movement as copying and deletion from different syntactic positions, i. e., subject, direct object, object of preposition, etc. This operator allows a small pro in the subject position, leaving an optional null copy, either allowing an optional resumptive pronoun (RP) behind in direct object position or attaching to the verb, and obligatorily in indirect object and object of preposition positions as well as Ezafe-construction. Also, the edge feature of the probe, the complementizer ke, attracts the null wh-OP to Spec-C, for checking and valuing the unvalued [wh] and [EPP] features. The long Relative Clause derivations can, correspondingly, work as expected by the successive cyclic movement of OP through intermediate Spec-C positions as well.

1. Introduction The NasirKhusraw Travelogue as the very first Farsi travelogue remaining from ٥, th century (more than 1000 years ago) has been subject of many studies in a variety of fields, including literature, historical and social studies, or even historical architect studies. Yet few studies have been carried out from linguistic viewpoint to show its capacities as a linguistic data source. The current study probes on Relative Clause extraposition and its motivations as a non-obligatory movement mostly based on functional and discourse criteria. In many languages, Relative Clause is mostly a Clause that acts as a modifier for a head Np located in main Clause. This modifier Clause can appear right after (or based on the language word order before) the NP that is defined by the Clause and in this case it is named canonical Relative Clause,Or it can be dislocated and be moved to the end of the sentence (named extraposed Relative Clause) Since there is no syntactic need to force this movement, the motivations of Relative Clause extraposition were explained to be discourse factors (Francis, 2010) such as Grammatical weight of Clause (Hawkins, 1990 &2004), verb information Structure (Sheykho’, l Eslami, 2008) and a combination of some different factors together (Rasekh-Mahand et. al, 2012). 2. Materials and method Current study aimed to analyze the motivations of extrapositon Relative Clauses in historical proses. The NasirKhusraw Travelogue was studied and about 230 Relative Clauses were extracted based on systematic sampling which cover nearly more than half of the book. All Relative Clauses were grouped into 2 main categories based on their position in the sentence. 83 of them were in their canonical position (right after the head of NP they modify) and 138 were extraposed to the end of sentence after the main verb. 3. Results and discussion Comparing to present studies carried out by Rasekh-Mahand et. al, (2012) the rate of Relative Clause extraposition in The NasirKhusraw Travelogue is 3 times more than contemporary Persian texts (63% compared to 22%). All these extraposed Relative Clauses were analysed to figure out the head Np role in main and subordinate Clause, and findings suggest that most extraposed Clauses modify subject and object Np according to accessibility hierarchy (Keenan and Comrie. 1977) yet the top position is not occupied by Subject NP. 38% head NPs modified by extraposed Relative Clauses were Object NPs while 37% of them were Subject NPs which shows a little deviation of accessibility hierarchy in this book. Head Np definiteness was also studied in all extraposed Relative Clauses of The NasirKhusraw Travelogue. In Farsi, unlike some languages (Germany or English), there is no limitation on head Np definiteness and all types of NPs can be used in this position. However, only less than 3% of head NPs were pronouns. This means that although using pronoun as a head NP is not ungrammatical in Farsi, in NasirKhusraw Travelogue it was not very common. Head NP within Relative Clause in Farsi can appear in three different ways. It can be repeated completely, it can be referred to by a proper pronoun, or it can be omitted leaving a gap in Relative Clause instead. In The NasirKhusraw Travelogue using related pronoun in extraposed Relative Clause occurred 53%, using gap was second by 42% and, complete repetition was less than 6%. Verb information structure is another factor which was studied as a motivation for Relative Clause extraposition. It is supposed that when the verb of main Clause has old-given information, it is most likely for the Relative Clause to be extraposed. Current study shows that in The NasirKhusraw Travelogue, more than 51% Clauses were extraposed from the main Clauses with linking verbs. These connecting verbs are supposed to bear old-given information. Last factor studied in this paper was Relative Clause grammatical weight. In Francis’, s (2010) work, grammatical weight refers to the length and/or complexity of a phrase in relation to the other phrases in the same sentence (Francis, 2010, P. 6) and it can be calculated by the number of verb immediate constituent to word-ratios (Francis, 2010, P. 12). The average length of extraposed Relative Clauses in The NasirKhusraw Travelogue was 6. 2913 and the average length of verb phrases was 1. 890. Grammatical weight of extraposed Relative Clauses in this book is 3. 3397. Compared to Rasekh-Mahand et al (2012), the grammatical weight is lighter in The NasirKhusraw Travelogue. 4. Conclusion In terms of the rate of extraposition, this criterion in The NasirKhusraw Travelogue is three times more than the contemporary Persian texts. Data also suggest a little deviation of accessibility hierarchy in terms of head NP position in this book as far the top position is not occupied by Subject NP but by Object NPs. The use of pronouns as the head NP was not very common in NasirKhusraw Travelogue, although it is not ungrammatical in Farsi. From the point of the grammatical weight factor, extraposed Relative Clauses in this book are lighter than the contemporary text. Finally, even though previous studies consider Farsi as a language that obligates gaps in the subject position, the NasirKhusraw Travelogue shows some examples of resumptive pronouns in the subject Relative Clause extraposition.

This study examined whether processing ambiguous sentences containing Relative Clauses (RCs) following a complex determiner phrase (DP) by Persian-speaking learners of L2 English with different proficiency and working memory capacities (WMCs) is affected by semantic priming. The semantic relationship studied was one between the subject/verb of the main Clause and one of the DPs in the complex DP to see if, as predicted by Spreading Activation Model, priming one of the DPs affects the L2 learners’ preference. The results of a task using Rapid Serial Visual Processing showed that semantic priming does not affect the choice of the antecedent; rather, the L2 learners' processing is guided by syntactic information. A negative correlation was found between WMC and RC attachment preferences. The findings support the predictions of the chunking hypothesis for L2 learners.