Processing Subject‐Object Ambiguities in the L2: A Self‐Paced Reading Study With German L2 Learners of Dutch

Abstract

The results of two self-paced reading experiments are reported, which investigated the online processing of subject-object ambiguities in Dutch relative clause constructions like Dat is de vrouw die de meisjes heeft/hebben gezien by German advanced second language (L2) learners of Dutch. Native speakers of both Dutch and German have been shown to have a preference for a subject versus an object reading of such temporarily ambiguous sentences, and so we provided an ideal opportunity for the transfer of first language (L1) processing preferences to take place. We also investigated whether the participants' working memory span would affect their processing of the experimental items. The results suggest that processing decisions may be affected by working memory when task demands are high, and in this case the high working memory span learners patterned like the native speakers of lower working memory. However, when reading Havik et al.Processing Subject-Object Ambiguities in L2 Dutch for comprehension alone and when only structural information was available to guide parsing decisions, working memory span had no effect on the L2 learners' online processing, and this differed from the native speakers' online processing even though the L1 and the L2 are highly comparable.

How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects

“…In contrast, native speakers showed the same effect at both SOAs (Ito et al, 2016). Since non-native speakers normally read more slowly than native speakers (Havik et al, 2009;Hopp, 2009), the longer 700 ms SOA is perhaps more likely to allow nonnative speakers to read at a comfortable pace. Therefore, we hypothesised that non-native speakers may show an N400 effect for unexpected nouns similarly to native speakers in Experiment 2.…”

“…the use of information as soon as it becomes available), the first being a possible mechanism by which rapid, "predictive" computation of the context occurs, and the second being a processing heuristic that describes the computational architecture required to achieve language processing in real time (Altmann & Mirković, 2009). One reason that effective incremental use of information may be difficult to achieve for non-native speakers is that they read more slowly and more effortfully than native speakers (Clahsen & Felser, 2006;Havik, Roberts, Van Hout, Schreuder, & Haverkort, 2009). As a result, non-native speakers may have fewer cognitive resources available to construct a rich mental representation of the context in an online fashion, rendering the prediction of upcoming information based on that context less likely (e.g.…”

Working memory capacity in L2 processing

“…This indicates that these L2 learners were more sensitive to gender agreement violations with increasing WM capacity, suggesting that WM capacity can be a reliable predictor of L2 learners' sensitivity to agreement violations between adjacent words, at least for within-phrase agreement dependencies. Havik et al (2009) also report WM effects in their study on the processing of subject-object relative clause ambiguities by German L2 learners of Dutch, where verbal agreement disambiguated between the two types of clauses. The researchers manipulated the length of agreement dependencies, such that an adverbial phrase intervened or did not intervene between the second noun in the relative clause and the embedded verb (e. g., Daar is de machinist die de conducteurs [na het ongeluk met de trein] heeft/hebben bevrijd uit het brandende treinstel 'That is the engine driver who [after the accident with the train] has saved the guards/who the guards after the accident with the train have saved from the burning train-carriage').…”

Working Memory in Second Language Acquisition

“…For example, Miyake and Friedman (1998) reported that WM correlated with Japanese-English learners' comprehension and cue preference when processing L2 syntactically complex sentences. Similarly, Havik, Roberts, van Hout, Schreuder, and Haverkort (2009) found that WM predicted German-Dutch learners' L2 processing of short-and long-subject and object relative clauses (only the high-span learners preferred to process object as subject short clauses like native Dutch speakers). In another self-paced reading study, Dussias and Piñar (2010) concluded that Chinese-English learners and English native speakers showed subject-object parsing asymmetries when processing long-distance wh-questions, but that only the high-span learners resembled the English controls when using plausibility information to facilitate recovery from initial misparses.…”