Structural change and ambiguity resolution in L2 learners of English

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of structural changes for verbs in second language (L2) ambiguity resolution. Two types of verbs were examined: those taking a noun phrase (NP) or no complements (Z) (e.g., to type, NP/Z verbs), and those taking either an (NP) or a sentence (S) (e.g., to understand, NP/S verbs). A self-paced reading experiment found that Chinese-speaking learners of English, like first-language (L1) English speakers, took longer to process disambiguating regions in ambiguous sentences compared to corresponding regions in unambiguous sentences. Moreover, NP/Z verbs posed greater difficulty than NP/S verbs, especially in ambiguous sentences, for both speaker groups. This suggests a garden-path effect in learners, indicating that structural information from verbs influences L2 processing similarly to L1 processing.