Presuppositions vs. Asserted Content in Online Processing

Author(s):  
Florian Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Laurel Brehm ◽  
Carrie N. Jackson ◽  
Karen L. Miller
Keyword(s):  

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Roberts ◽  
Marianne Gullberg ◽  
Peter Indefrey

This study investigates whether advanced second language (L2) learners of a nonnull subject language (Dutch) are influenced by their null subject first language (L1) (Turkish) in their offline and online resolution of subject pronouns in L2 discourse. To tease apart potential L1 effects from possible general L2 processing effects, we also tested a group of German L2 learners of Dutch who were predicted to perform like the native Dutch speakers. The two L2 groups differed in their offline interpretations of subject pronouns. The Turkish L2 learners exhibited a L1 influence, because approximately half the time they interpreted Dutch subject pronouns as they would overt pronouns in Turkish, whereas the German L2 learners performed like the Dutch controls, interpreting pronouns as coreferential with the current discourse topic. This L1 effect was not in evidence in eye-tracking data, however. Instead, the L2 learners patterned together, showing an online processing disadvantage when two potential antecedents for the pronoun were grammatically available in the discourse. This processing disadvantage was in evidence irrespective of the properties of the learners' L1 or their final interpretation of the pronoun. Therefore, the results of this study indicate both an effect of the L1 on the L2 in offline resolution and a general L2 processing effect in online subject pronoun resolution.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jona Sassenhagen ◽  
Ryan Blything ◽  
Elena V. M. Lieven ◽  
Ben Ambridge

How are verb-argument structure preferences acquired? Children typically receive very little negative evidence, raising the question of how they come to understand the restrictions on grammatical constructions. Statistical learning theories propose stochastic patterns in the input contain sufficient clues. For example, if a verb is very common, but never observed in transitive constructions, this would indicate that transitive usage of that verb is illegal. Ambridge et al. (2008) have shown that in offline grammaticality judgements of intransitive verbs used in transitive constructions, low-frequency verbs elicit higher acceptability ratings than high-frequency verbs, as predicted if relative frequency is a cue during statistical learning. Here, we investigate if the same pattern also emerges in on-line processing of English sentences. EEG was recorded while healthy adults listened to sentences featuring transitive uses of semantically matched verb pairs of differing frequencies. We replicate the finding of higher acceptabilities of transitive uses of low- vs. high-frequency intransitive verbs. Event-Related Potentials indicate a similar result: early electrophysiological signals distinguish between misuse of high- vs low-frequency verbs. This indicates online processing shows a similar sensitivity to frequency as off-line judgements, consistent with a parser that reflects an original acquisition of grammatical constructions via statistical cues. However, the nature of the observed neural responses was not of the expected, or an easily interpretable, form, motivating further work into neural correlates of online processing of syntactic constructions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Serrano ◽  
Ana Pellicer-Sánchez

AbstractCombining reading with auditory input has been shown to be an effective way of supporting reading fluency and reading comprehension in a second language. Previous research has also shown that reading comprehension can be further supported by pictorial information. However, the studies conducted so far have mainly included adults or adolescents and have been based on post-reading tests that, although informative, do not contribute to our understanding of how learners’ processing of the several sources of input in multimodal texts changes with the presence of auditory input and the effect that potential differences could have on comprehension. The present study used eye-tracking to examine how young learners process the pictorial and textual information in a graded reader under reading only and reading-while-listening conditions. Results showed that readers spent more time processing the text in the reading only condition, while more time was spent processing the images in the reading-while-listening mode. Nevertheless, comprehension scores were similar for the readers in the two conditions. Additionally, our results suggested a significant (negative) relationship between the amount of time learners spent processing the text and comprehension scores in both modes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Rah ◽  
Dany Adone

This article presents new evidence from offline and online processing of garden-path sentences that are ambiguous between reduced relative clause resolution and main verb resolution. The participants of this study are intermediate and advanced German learners of English who have learned the language in a nonimmersed context. The results show that for second language (L2) learners, there is a dissociation between parsing mechanisms and grammatical knowledge: The learners successfully process the structures in question offline, but the online self-paced reading task shows different patterns for the L2 learners and the native-speaker control group. The results are discussed with regard to shallow processing in L2 learners (Clahsen & Felser, 2006). Because the structures in question differ in English and German, first language (L1) influence is also discussed as an explanation for the findings. The comparison of the three participant groups’ results points to a gradual rather than a fundamental difference between L1 and L2 processing.


2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Roberts

In this article, a survey of current psycholinguistic techniques relevant to second language acquisition (SLA) research is presented. I summarize many of the available methods and discuss their use with particular reference to two critical questions in current SLA research: (1) What does a learner’s current knowledge of the second language (L2) look like?; (2) How do learners process the L2 in real time? The aim is to show how psycholinguistic techniques that capture real-time (online) processing can elucidate such questions; to suggest methods best suited to particular research topics, and types of participants; and to offer practical information on the setting up of a psycholinguistics laboratory.


Author(s):  
Eun-Kyung Lee ◽  
Scott Fraundorf

Abstract We examined what causes L1-L2 differences in sensitivity to prominence cues in discourse processing. Participants listened to recorded stories in segment-by-segment fashion at their own pace. Each story established a pair of contrasting items, and one item from the pair was rementioned and manipulated to carry either a contrastive or presentational pitch accent. By directly comparing the current self-paced listening data to previously obtained experimenter-paced listening data, we tested whether reducing online-processing demands allows L2 learners to show a nativelike behavior, such that contrastive pitch accents facilitate later ruling out the salient alternative. However, reduced time pressure failed to lead even higher proficiency L1-Korean learners of English to reach a nativelike level, suggesting that L2 learners’ nonnativelike processing and representation of the prominence cue in spoken discourse processing can be due to the inherent difficulty of fully learning a complex form-function mapping rather than to online-processing demands.


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