Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution While Reading in Second and Native Languages

Frenck-Mestre, Cheryl; Pynte, Joël

doi:10.1080/027249897392251

Cited by 178 publications

(176 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…While some studies have found evidence of processing transfer in L2 sentence comprehension (e.g. Frenck-Mestre, 1997;Juffs, 1998), several other studies, including the present one, have found no differences in processing performance among learners from typologically different language backgrounds (Felser et al, 2003;Papadopoulou & Clahsen, 2003;Williams et al, 2001). Our study included four groups of L2 learners, two of which from wh-movement backgrounds (German and Greek) and two from wh-in-situ backgrounds (Chinese and Japanese), with similar levels of proficiency in L2 English.…”

Section: L1 Transfer In L2 Processingmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…While there is evidence from various studies that L2 learners, like native speakers, are guided by lexical-semantic and plausibility information during L2 sentence comprehension (Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997;Juffs, 1998;Williams et al, 2001), studies by Felser, Roberts, Gross & Marinis (2003), Papadopoulou & Clahsen (2003) and Roberts (2003) have shown that L2 learners do not seem to apply any phrasestructure based locality principles when processing temporarily ambiguous sentences.…”

Section: Intermediate Gaps In L1 Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gaps in Second Language Sentence Processing

Marinis

Roberts

Felser

et al. 2005

Stud. Sec. Lang. Acq.

197

271

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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

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Section: L1 Transfer In L2 Processingmentioning

confidence: 55%

Section: Intermediate Gaps In L1 Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaps in Second Language Sentence Processing

Marinis

Roberts

Felser

et al. 2005

Stud. Sec. Lang. Acq.

197

271

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“…These data serve as first online ERP evidence on L2 temporary syntactic ambiguity processing. Furthermore, the data go hand in hand with evidence from eyemovement recordings in highly proficient L2 readers that show native-like syntactic ambiguity resolution (e.g., Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997;Juffs & Harrington, 1996) and are partly in support of a behavioural study by Dussias (2003). In addition, as discussed in Section 1 and by Tokowicz and MacWhinney (2005), L2 sentence structure that does not have an equivalent in L1 may be processed more easily than a structure that may be formed differently in L1 and L2.…”

Section: The P600 and Temporary Syntactic Ambiguitymentioning

confidence: 86%

ERPs reveal comparable syntactic sentence processing in native and non-native readers of English

2008

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L2 syntactic processing has been primarily investigated in the context of syntactic anomaly detection, but only sparsely with syntactic ambiguity. In the field of event-related potentials (ERPs) syntactic anomaly detection and syntactic ambiguity resolution is linked to the P600. The current ERP experiment examined L2 syntactic processing in highly proficient L1 Spanish-L2 English readers who had acquired English informally around the age of 5 years. Temporary syntactic ambiguity (induced by verb subcategorization information) was tested as a language-specific phenomenon of L2, while syntactic anomaly resulted from phrase structure constraints that are similar in L1 and L2. Participants judged whether a sentence was syntactically acceptable or not. Native readers of English showed a P600 in the temporary syntactically ambiguous and syntactically anomalous sentences. A comparable picture emerged in the non-native readers of English. Both critical syntactic conditions elicited a P600, however, the distribution and latency of the P600 varied in the syntactic anomaly condition. The results clearly show that early acquisition of L2 syntactic knowledge leads to comparable online sensitivity towards temporal syntactic ambiguity and syntactic anomaly in early and highly proficient non-native readers of English and native readers of English.

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“…comprehension. Learners' sensitivity to argument structure, thematic and plausibility information during L2 sentence processing is well attested (see, among others, Juffs and Harrington, 1995;Frenck-Mestre and Pynte, 1997;Juffs, 1998;Williams et al, 2001;Papadopoulou and Clahsen, 2003;Felser and Roberts, 2004), and may help compensate for their reduced ability to parse the L2 input in a native-like way.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing wh-dependencies in a second language: a cross-modal priming study

Felser

Roberts

2007

Second Language Research

128

156

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This study investigates the real-time processing of wh-dependencies by advanced Greek-speaking learners of English using a cross-modal picture priming task. Participants were asked to respond to different types of picture target presented either at structurally defined gap positions, or at pre-gap control positions, while listening to sentences containing indirect-object relative clauses. Our results indicate that the learners processed the experimental sentences differently from both adult native speakers of English and monolingual English-speaking children. Contrary to what has been found for native speakers, the learners' response pattern was not influenced by individual working memory differences. Adult second language learners differed from native speakers with a relatively high reading or listening span in that they did not show any evidence of structurally based antecedent reactivation at the point of the indirect object gap. They also differed from low-span native speakers, however, in that they showed evidence of maintained antecedent activation during the processing of the experimental sentences. Whereas the localized priming effect observed in the high-span controls is indicative of trace-based antecedent reactivation in native sentence processing, the results from the Greek-speaking learners support the hypothesis that the mental representations built during non-native language processing lack abstract linguistic structure such as movement traces.

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Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution While Reading in Second and Native Languages

Cited by 178 publications

References 43 publications

Gaps in Second Language Sentence Processing

Gaps in Second Language Sentence Processing

ERPs reveal comparable syntactic sentence processing in native and non-native readers of English

Processing wh-dependencies in a second language: a cross-modal priming study

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