Asymmetric Efficiency of Juncture Perception in L1 and L2

Abstract

In two experiments, Mandarin listeners resolved potential syntactic ambiguities in spoken utterances in (a) their native language (L1) and (b) English which they had learned as a second language (L2). A new disambiguation task was used, requiring speeded responses to select the correct meaning for structurally ambiguous sentences. Importantly, the ambiguities used in the study are identical in Mandarin and in English, and production data show that prosodic disambiguation of this type of ambiguity is also realised very similarly in the two languages. The perceptual results here showed however that listeners' response patterns differed for L1 and L2, although there was a significant increase in similarity between the two response patterns with increasing exposure to the L2. Thus identical ambiguity and comparable disambiguation patterns in L1 and L2 do not lead to immediate application of the appropriate L1 listening strategy to L2; instead, it appears that such a strategy may have to be learned anew for the L2.

The Effect of Ambiguity Awareness on Second Language Learners’ Prosodic Disambiguation

“…Participants' preference for the VP-attachment in unconscious processing can be explained by the Minimal Attachment principle. But other participants' preference for the NP-attachment suggests that Minimal Attachment principle cannot always predict L2 learners' parsing performance, and their parsing strategy, which is related to their linguistic experience, may have to be learned anew (Cutler, 2012;Ip and Cutler, 2018). That most of the participants' bias was reduced after they were informed of the ambiguity in Task 3 suggests that the learners could use prosodic cues to resolve ambiguity.…”

“…Recent decades have witnessed an increasing number of studies investigating how L2 learners process ambiguous sentences in spoken language comprehension. Some of the earlier studies have reported that L2 learners have difficulty in ambiguity resolution in spoken language comprehension, which may be attributed to their low sensitivity to prosodic cues, low L2 proficiency, difficulty in information integration, L1 background, limited learning experience, and limited cognitive resources, or that the L2 parsing strategy has to be learned anew (Harley et al, 1995;Ying, 1996;Dekydtspotter et al, 2008;Nakamura et al, 2016;Ip and Cutler, 2018;Nickels and Steinhauer, 2018). Our present study provides additional evidence that L2 learners' difficulty in prosodic disambiguation may come from their lack of ambiguity awareness that constrains them to detect the ambiguity within the structure.…”

“…Moreover, studies using ERPs found that Chinese learners of English showed different processing patterns from German learners and native English speakers, which might be due to their low proficiency ( Nickels and Steinhauer, 2018 ). A further study found that L2 learners displayed different processing strategies even when their L1 and L2 had identical ambiguity and disambiguation patterns, suggesting that L2 learners’ parsing strategy has to be learned anew ( Ip and Cutler, 2018 ). In addition, the learners might be less able to integrate prosodic information to other domains of information compared to native speakers ( Nakamura et al, 2016 , 2020 ).…”