How Do French–English Bilinguals Pull Verb Particle Constructions Off? Factors Influencing Second Language Processing of Unfamiliar Structures at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Abstract

An important challenge in bilingualism research is to understand the mechanisms underlying sentence processing in a second language and whether they are comparable to those underlying native processing. Here, we focus on verb-particle constructions (VPCs) that are among the most difficult elements to acquire in L2 English. The verb and the particle form a unit, which often has a non-compositional meaning (e.g., look up or chew out), making the combined structure semantically opaque. However, bilinguals with higher levels of English proficiency can develop a good knowledge of the semantic properties of VPCs (Blais and Gonnerman, 2013). A second difficulty is that in a sentence context, the particle can be shifted after the direct object of the verb (e.g., The professor looked it up). The processing is more challenging when the object is long (e.g., The professor looked the student’s last name up). This shifted structure favors syntactic processing at the expense of VPC semantic processing. We sought to determine whether or not bilinguals’ reading time (RT) patterns would be similar to those observed for native monolinguals (Gonnerman and Hayes, 2005) when reading VPCs in sentential contexts. French–English bilinguals were tested for English language proficiency, working memory and explicit VPC semantic knowledge. During a self-paced reading task, participants read 78 sentences with VPCs that varied according to parameters that influence native speakers’ reading dynamics: verb-particle transparency, particle adjacency and length of the object noun phrase (NP; 2, 3, or 5 words). RTs in a critical region that included verbs, NPs and particles were measured. Results revealed that RTs were modulated by participants’ English proficiency, with higher proficiency associated with shorter RTs. Examining participants’ explicit semantic knowledge of VPCs and working memory, only readers with more native-like knowledge of VPCs and a high working memory presented RT patterns that were similar to those of monolinguals. Therefore, given the necessary lexical and computational resources, bilingual processing of novel structures at the syntax-semantics interface follows the principles influencing native processing. The findings are in keeping with theories that postulate similar representations and processing in L1 and L2 modulated by processing difficulty.

Figuring Out How Verb-Particle Constructions Are Understood During L1 and L2 Reading

“…However, the results for L2 reading diverge from past findings, which typically show that L2 readers are also sensitive to semantic differences among VPCs (e.g., Blais and Gonnerman, 2013; Herbay et al, 2018). It is possible that L2 readers demonstrate explicit sensitivity (and even implicit sensitivity as measured by a masked prime task) to differences in semantic transparency among VPCs; however, to our knowledge there has not been a naturalistic investigation of solely L2 VPC reading using eye tracking.…”

“…However, it is important to note critical design differences in past work and the present study, the most egregious difference being how “difficulty with VPCs” was measured. Past work overwhelmingly has relied on paradigms useful for language learning (e.g., multiple choice tests, production tasks; Dagut and Laufer, 1985; Laufer and Eliasson, 1993; Liao and Fukuya, 2004) or self-paced reading (e.g., Blais and Gonnerman, 2013; Herbay et al, 2018), whereas the present work assesses processing through a more naturalistic reading paradigm using eye-tracking. It is possible that although L2 users avoid opaque VPCs and prefer single word synonyms during actual use of the L2, they do not demonstrate implicit processing differences as a function of linguistic dimension (for a similar discussion see Paulmann et al, 2015).…”

“…In Analysis 3, we investigated whether individual differences in English experience (operationally defined as general percentage of L2 English usage) interacted with processing of item-specific properties. Past work has demonstrated that among English–French bilinguals tested in Montreal, extent of knowledge with VPCs predicts reading behavior (Herbay et al, 2018). While we do not have an explicit measure of VPC knowledge for our sample, we used percentage of L2 English usage as an approximation of the opportunities that L2 users have to use or be exposed to VPCs, given that VPCs are only present in English and not in French.…”

“…Recently, Herbay et al (2018) investigated a variety of item and participant factors that could potentially influence French–English bilinguals’ reading of English (L2) VPCs. Using a self-paced reading task, participants read the same VPC items from Gonnerman and Hayes (2005) and Blais and Gonnerman (2013).…”

An Extra Cue Is Beneficial for Native Speakers but Can Be Disruptive for Second Language Learners: Integration of Prosody and Visual Context in Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution

“…9 Another possibility is that our participants had somewhat limited and insufficient language ability to correctly process the prosodic cue. Some other studies in fact reported a link between comprehenders' performance in L2 processing and their general L2 proficiency (Reichle, 2010;Dussias et al, 2013;Reichle and Birdsong, 2014). However, our analyses showed that language proficiency level did not mediate the results of the eye-movements in any way.…”