Gaps in Second Language Sentence Processing

Abstract

Four groups of second language (L2) learners of English from different language backgrounds (Chinese, Japanese, German & Greek) and a group of native speaker controls participated in an on-line reading-time experiment with sentences involving long-distance wh-dependencies. While the native speakers showed evidence of making use of intermediate syntactic gaps during processing, the L2 learners appeared to associate the fronted wh-phrase directly with its lexical subcategoriser, regardless of whether or not the subjacency constraint was operative in their native language. This finding is argued to support the hypothesis that L2 learners under-use syntactic information in L2 processing, which prevents them from processing the L2 input in a native-like fashion.45

An fMRI study on the processing of long-distance wh-movement in a second language

“…The results from Marinis et al (2005) revealed that, whereas the native speakers showed clear evidence for facilitation at the final gap when an intermediate gap was present, none of the L2 groups revealed a similar pattern, or indeed any differences for processing (1) vs. (2). Since their comprehension of the sentences was not affected, Marinis et al concluded that L2 learners process long-distance dependencies successfully, albeit not relying on abstract syntactic cues but on lexical, thematic and pragmatic information.…”

“…sentences with long-distance syntactic dependencies, it is not fully understood whether comprehension is achieved via processing of the abtract syntactic structure of a sentence, as the expectation is for native processing, or via heuristic information, such as lexical and semantic cues (Dallas & Kaan 2008). One of the first studies attempting to directly tease apart syntactic from lexical-semantic processing in L2 was conducted by Marinis et al (2005). Marinis and colleagues tested a group of native speakers of English and four groups of non-native speakers in a self-paced reading (SPR) task with sentences such as the following:…”

“…Instead, they compute "shallow" representations and rely more on semantic and pragmatic information to comprehend sentences, in contrast to the native speakers who form "deep" representations which include both structural and semantic/pragmatic information. Evidence for the SSH has been provided by the study by Marinis et al (2005) that was mentioned above, as well as the study by Felser & Roberts (2007) Although the SSH has been an influential theoretical framework in the field of L2 processing, it is based on relatively limited experimental evidence, which did not take into account several factors that can be crucial in native-like L2 grammatical processing, like proficiency and immersion. For example, it has been suggested that L2 learners may be slower than native speakers in processing the same structures, and this effect was not captured in Marinis et al's design (Dekydtspotter, Schwartz & Sprouse 2006).…”

Deeper than shallow: Evidence for structure-based parsing biases in second-language sentence processing

“…In order to answer this question, researchers have focused largely on identifying and accounting for the similarities and differences between first-language (L1) and L2 sentence processing. Although there appears to be considerable overlap in the characteristics of L1 and L2 sentence comprehension, salient L1/L2 processing differences include disparities in global performance (i.e., generally slower and less accurate performance in the L2; among others, see Cook, 1997;Frenck-Mestre, 2002;Hahne & Friederici, 2001), as well as differential sensitivity to certain morphosyntactic cues (Guillelmon & Grosjean, 2001;Jiang, 2004Jiang, , 2007Liu & Nicol, 2010;MacWhinney, 2002) and syntactic information (Marinis, Roberts, Felser, & Clahsen, 2005). These and other differences have been explained in terms of deficient L2 competence, even for highly proficient L2 users (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a;Jiang, 2004Jiang, , 2007; but see Clahsen & Felser, 2006b), as well as in terms of differences between the L1 and L2 processing systems.…”

Mass-count distinction in Chinese-English bilingual students

“…For example, their performance in resolving relative clause attachment ambiguities was random even in situations where L1 and L2 are similar (Felser et al 2003). In resolving long-distance filler-gap dependencies, they were shown to have failed to reactivate the structural gap (Marinis et al 2005). The conclusion in Clahsen and Felser (2006) was that though L2 learners are guided by lexical-semantic cues during sentence parsing in the same way as native speakers, they are less able to make use of (complex) syntactic information.…”