Sensitivity to syntactic violation and semantic ambiguity in English modal verbs: A self-paced reading study

Abstract

The present study is, to our knowledge, the first self-paced reading experiment to investigate the effects of syntactic violation and semantic ambiguity on processing English modal auxiliaries. Forty undergraduate students, native speakers of English, took part in the study and read 36 target sentences, each containing a modal verb in context. Two of the most frequent English modals, can and may, were used in three distinct categories of modal expression: agent-oriented/ability, epistemic possibility, and speaker-oriented/permission. The two modal auxiliaries were manipulated such that they were either congruent or incongruent with the context, or in the case of permission felicitous or infelicitous relative to the context. We found that incongruent modal use in an agent-oriented context resulted in a reading penalty that was observed in a spillover on the segments following the modal and the lexical verb. Incongruent modal use to express epistemic possibility significantly affected reading times immediately after the modal auxiliary, and also spilt over to the following segments. Reading times in sentences expressing speaker-oriented modality were not affected by inconsistency in the use of the modal verb unmarked for formality in a formal context. The substantive and methodological implications of findings are discussed.

Unpacking L2 explicit linguistic knowledge and online processing of the English modals may and can: A comparison of acceptability judgments and self-paced reading

“…In addition to the substantive findings, the study provides valuable data on instrument reliability in AJT and SPR stimuli (Marsden et al, 2018) and, adding to those in Mifka-Profozic et al (2020), shows how estimates varied across participant and instrument features. It also sheds light on the psychometric properties and error associated with these types of instrumentation.…”

“…Given the counterbalancing in our experimental design and random effects pertaining to items, we opted not to enter stimuli version as an additional fixed or random effect (cf. Mifka-Profozic et al, 2020).…”

“…Matching the modals may and can with the meanings of ability, epistemic possibility, and permission in relevant contexts allows us to clearly identify and differentiate the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic functions of the two modals. In a previous SPR experiment with English native speakers (Mifka-Profozic et al, 2020), it was found that the reading penalty due to ungrammatical use of can in the context of epistemic possibility could be clearly distinguished from semantically ambiguous use of may in the context of ability expression. In the same experiment with L1 speakers, both modals were shown to be equally acceptable to express permission.…”

“…Given that the SPR task also included data for each sentence segment, 168 reliability estimates were available. For the 84 estimates pertaining to L1 English participants (see also Mifka-Profozic et al, 2020), internal consistency was high overall (Mdn = .94, range: .43-.99, IQR = 0.06), as well as for congruent and incongruent items (42 estimates each, respectively, Mdn = .94, .93, IQR = 0.04, 0.08), different types of modality (28 estimates per type, ability: Mdn = .95, IQR = 0.06; epistemic: Mdn = .94, IQR = 0.04; permission: Mdn = .92, SD = 0.16), stimuli versions 1 and 2 (42 estimates each, respectively, Mdn = .97, IQR = 0.03 and Mdn = .91, IQR = 0.11), and across all six segments (Mdn = .92 to .97, IQR = 0.04 to 0.10). For the L2 English participants, internal consistency was similarly high overall for the 84 estimates (Mdn = .96, range: .86-.99, IQR = 0.05), for congruent and incongruent items (42 estimates each, respectively, Mdn = .96, .96, IQR = 0.03, 0.05), different modality types (28 estimates per type, ability: Mdn = .96, IQR = 0.03; epistemic: Mdn = .96, IQR = 0.03; permission: Mdn = .97, SD = 0.07), for stimuli versions 1 and 2 (42 estimates each, respectively, Mdn = .97, IQR = 0.03 and Mdn = .95, IQR = 0.05), and across all six segments (Mdn = .92 to .98, IQR = 0.01 to 0.05).…”

Postprint: Unpacking L2 explicit linguistic knowledge and online processing of the English modals may and can: A comparison of acceptability judgments and self-paced reading

“…The standardised effect sizes reported allowed us to consider the magnitude of effects alongside statistical significance, providing evidence that is less confounded by sample size in standardised measurement units (standard deviations) that enable systematic comparison across studies with different designs, foci, participants, and instrumentation (Avery & Marsden, 2019). In combination, this nuanced methodology helped us build on Mifka-Profozic et al (2020) findings, extending the inquiry to establish how linguistics knowledge and online processing of English modals manifest across first and second languages for these types of learners.…”