What does ", which" refer to?

Hi, Andrew,

@Andrew Van Wagner posted:

I think that the next big question is: How do brains embody linguistic computations? But we can’t advance that question until we have some solid Minimalist theory—assuming that MP has legs, FL has a simple structure underneath the superficial complexity of linguistic computation, which should greatly simplify the problem of mapping mental computation to neural circuits.

I think "which" refers to "a simple structure underneath..."

I don't understand the second sentence above. Is the comma I highlighted correct? Shouldn't there be a period and some linker there? It looks like a run-on sentence.

@Gustavo, Co-Moderator posted:

I don't understand the second sentence above. Is the comma I highlighted correct? Shouldn't there be a period and some linker there? It looks like a run-on sentence.

Andrew likes to use em dashes to introduce entirely new sentences. I haven't been able to persuade him to abandon this bad habit. A new sentence begins at "assuming," but he is representing it as lurching forth out of the preceding one. This gives rise to the impression of there being a run-on sentence. Please note, Andrew, how confusing this can be to readers. This is a real-life example.

@David, Moderator posted:

Please note, Andrew, how confusing this can be to readers. This is a real-life example.

Absolutely!

Thanks!

I understand the issues regarding the em-dashes; that's a separate thing, though.

What I was wondering about here is simply whether ", which" is ambiguous (in terms of what precisely it refers to) and whether you have to sort out what it refers to based on semantic context. So in the above example we all know (if we're sane) what ", which" means, but technically there's no syntactic rule that says that ", which" can't refer to "computation" (or "complexity") instead of "structure", right?

If we consider syntactic hierarchies, "structure" is in a much better position to take a relative clause (both "complexity" and "computation" form part of embedded prepositional phrases, which renders them less likely to be modified by a relative clause). At a semantic level, there is also a distinct relationship between "simple structure" and "simplifies."

Thanks!

@Andrew Van Wagner posted:

FL has a simple structure underneath the superficial complexity of linguistic computation, which should greatly simplify the problem of mapping mental computation to neural circuits.

To eliminate ambiguity, you could insert "one" or reposition the prepositional phrase intervening between "which" and its antecedent:

(1) FL has a simple structure underneath the superficial complexity of linguistic computation, one which should greatly simplify the problem of mapping mental computation to neural circuits.

(2) Underneath the supericial complexity of linguistic computation, FL has a simple structure which should greatly simplify the problem of mapping mental computation to neural.

Thanks! I appreciate those ideas, especially "(1)"!