They knew that some lawyer defended some dealers. Do you know which one?
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...some lawyer defended some dealers. ...which one?
They knew that some lawyer defended some dealers. Do you know which (one/lawyer) [they knew that_defended some dealers]? This is a temporary ambiguity. Up until the disambiguation region (here the wh-phrase "which one"), the structue is ambiguous between asking for "which one" and "which ones". The preferred interpretation is one where the inner antecedent of the wh-remnant is the last argument of the structure, here the object NP. Since the wh-remnant in this example is singular, it requires a singular inner antecedent. However, the only singular NP of the previous clause is the subject NP. Therefore, the structure has to be resolved towards "Do you know which (one/lawyer) [_defended some dealers]?", which is the dispreferred interpretation. A reader is likely to have the preferred interpretation in mind and therefore has to reanalyze the entire structure once he encounters the disambiguation region "which one". In spoken language, the speaker can place a pitch accent on the inner antecedent of the wh-remnant to help the listener to not run into this garden path and to get the final analysis at the first run.
*They knew that some lawyer defended some dealers. Do you know which (one/dealers) [they knew that some lawyer defended_]? This paraphrase illustrates the preferred interpretation which turns out to be incompatible with the wh-remnant "which one". The reader prefers to take the last argument of the structure, thus the object NP, to be the inner antecedent of the wh-remnant at the end of the structure. However, such an analysis leads the parser up the garden path and forces him to reanalyze the structure since a singular wh-remnant cannot take a plural inner antecedent.
dependent elements, may differentiate between meanings or carry meaning themselves (e.g. phoneme, grapheme, morpheme)
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independent elements, may consist of subelements and carry meaning (e.g. word)
structure of two or more elements, expandable, may be composed ad hoc or be established components (e.g. phraseme, single phrase, figure).
one or more elements and/or complex elements, which may be structurally linked and form a self-contained unit of meaning (e.g. sentence; group of figures)
the part of a whole which carries a message, is thematically essentially self-contained, and which is structurally and/or thematically separated from the whole it belongs to (e.g. section of text/discourse/speech; picture (with cotext))
network of thematically, structurally and/or functionally linked sub-units, separated and independent from other complexes, and complete in itself (e.g. text; discourse; speech; poem; dramatic text; picture and circumstances of reception)
an in principle indefinite amount of thematically, structurally and/or functionally comparable complexes (e.g. thematically, structurally and/or functionally linked texts/discourses/speeches/pictures in comparison; political debate)
This example was an experimental target item in the production study “Quarterback” conducted by Bettina Remmele in 2017. This annotation represents the view from the participants of the uninformed group. This is a case of non-strategic ambiguity because the participants of the uninformed group did not consistently produce clear prosodic contours that fully disambiguated the sentences towards one interpretation. Participants had to read short text passages consisting of a declarative and an interrogative clause representing the sluicing structure illustrated above. There was no context. Participants were simply asked to first read the text passage silently, to make sure that they understand what it means and to then read the text passage out loud as naturally as possible.
