Case matching and relative clause attachment

Two accounts of relative clause attachment will be discussed, the case-matc hing hypothesis proposed by Sauerland and Gibson (1998) and the attachment- binding dualism (Hemforth et at, in press a, b). While the case-matching hy pothesis predicts that relative clauses are preferentially attached to NPs whose case matches that of the relative pronoun, attachment binding predict s that NPs are preferentially attached to the most salient host, that is NP 1 in constructions with two NPs. We conducted two off-line studies, one sen tence completion task and one magnitude estimation experiment using subject (nominative pronoun) and object (accusative pronoun) relative clauses that can be attached to either of the two nouns in a complex subject (NP1 = nom inative, NP2 = genitive) or object NP (NP1 = accusative, NP2 = genitive). W hile attachment binding predicts an across-the-board NP1 preference, the ca se-matching hypothesis predicts an NP1 prefence only in the case of subject (object) NPs followed by subject (object) relative clauses. The results of both experiments provide evidence for attachment binding and against case matching.