The shallow structure hypothesis of second language sentence processing: What is restricted and why?

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-52
Author(s):  
Margaret Gillon Dowens ◽  
Manuel Carreiras
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Processing Speed ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Direct Form ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Shallow Structure Hypothesis ◽  
On Line ◽  
Shallow Structure

Clahsen and Felser (CF) analyze the performance of monolingual children and adult second language (L2) learners in off-line and on-line tasks and compare their performance with that of adult monolinguals. They conclude that child first language (L1) processing is basically the same as adult L1 processing (the contiguity assumption), with differences in performance being due to cognitive developmental limitations. They argue that differences in L2 performance, however, are more qualitative and not explained by shortage of working memory (WM) resources, differences in processing speed, transfer of L1 processing routines, or incomplete acquisition of the target grammar. They propose a shallow structure hypothesis (SSH) to explain the differences reported in sentence processing. According to this, the syntactic representations computed by L2 learners during comprehension are shallower and less detailed than those computed by native speakers and involve more direct form-function mappings.

scholarly journals The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAUDIA FELSER ◽  
LEAH ROBERTS ◽  
THEODORE MARINIS ◽  
REBECCA GROSS
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
On Line ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

This study investigates the way adult second language (L2) learners of English resolve relative clause attachment ambiguities in sentences such as The dean liked the secretary of the professor who was reading a letter. Two groups of advanced L2 learners of English with Greek or German as their first language participated in a set of off-line and on-line tasks. The results indicate that the L2 learners do not process ambiguous sentences of this type in the same way as adult native speakers of English do. Although the learners' disambiguation preferences were influenced by lexical–semantic properties of the preposition linking the two potential antecedent noun phrases (of vs. with), there was no evidence that they applied any phrase structure–based ambiguity resolution strategies of the kind that have been claimed to influence sentence processing in monolingual adults. The L2 learners' performance also differs markedly from the results obtained from 6- to 7-year-old monolingual English children in a parallel auditory study, in that the children's attachment preferences were not affected by the type of preposition at all. We argue that children, monolingual adults, and adult L2 learners differ in the extent to which they are guided by phrase structure and lexical–semantic information during sentence processing.

Continuity and shallow structures in language processing

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARALD CLAHSEN ◽  
CLAUDIA FELSER
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Semantic Cues ◽  
Target Article ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Shallow Structure Hypothesis ◽  
Core Idea

The core idea that we argued for in the target article was that grammatical processing in a second language (L2) is fundamentally different from grammatical processing in one's native (first) language (L1). Our major source of evidence for this claim comes from experimental psycholinguistic studies investigating morphological and syntactic processing in child and adult native speakers, and nonnative speakers who acquired their L2 after childhood and for whom their L1 is the dominant language. With respect to child L1 processing, we argued for acontinuity of parsing hypothesisclaiming that the child's structural parser is basically the same as that of mature speakers and does not change over time. Adult L2 learners, in contrast, were seen to underuse syntactic information during sentence processing and to rely more on lexical–semantic cues to interpretation. To account for the observed L1/L2 differences in processing, we proposed the shallow structure hypothesis (SSH) according to which the representations adult L2 learners compute during processing contain less syntactic detail than those of child and adult native speakers.

Second language sentence processing in reading for comprehension and translation

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUNG HYUN LIM ◽  
KIEL CHRISTIANSON
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

A self-paced reading and translation task was used with learners of English as a second language (L2) to explore what sorts of information L2 learners use during online comprehension compared to native speakers, and how task (reading for comprehension vs. translation) and proficiency affect L2 comprehension. Thirty-six Korean native speakers of English and 32 native English speakers read plausible and implausible subject relative clauses and object relative clauses. Reading times, comprehension accuracy, and translations were analyzed. Results showed that L2 learners were able to use syntactic information similarly to native speakers during comprehension, and that online L2 processing and offline comprehension were modulated by reading goals and proficiency. Results are interpreted as showing that L2 processing is quantitatively rather than qualitatively different from first language processing, i.e. strategically “good enough”.

scholarly journals Processing empty categories in a second language: When naturalistic exposure fills the (intermediate) gap

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOS PLIATSIKAS ◽  
THEODOROS MARINIS
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Shallow Structure Hypothesis ◽  
Empty Categories ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Shallow Structure

An ongoing debate on second language (L2) processing revolves around whether or not L2 learners process syntactic information similarly to monolinguals (L1), and what factors lead to a native-like processing. According to the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a), L2 learners’ processing does not include abstract syntactic features, such as intermediate gaps of wh-movement, but relies more on lexical/semantic information. Other researchers have suggested that naturalistic L2 exposure can lead to native-like processing (Dussias, 2003). This study investigates the effect of naturalistic exposure in processing wh-dependencies. Twenty-six advanced Greek learners of L2 English with an average nine years of naturalistic exposure, 30 with classroom exposure, and 30 native speakers of English completed a self-paced reading task with sentences involving intermediate gaps. L2 learners with naturalistic exposure showed evidence of native-like processing of the intermediate gaps, suggesting that linguistic immersion can lead to native-like abstract syntactic processing in the L2.

PARSING STRATEGIES IN L1 AND L2 SENTENCE PROCESSING

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Despina Papadopoulou ◽  
Harald Clahsen
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
On Line ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Lexical Cues

To contribute to a better understanding of second language (L2) sentence processing, the present study examines how L2 learners parse temporarily ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses. Results are reported from both off-line and on-line experiments with three groups of advanced learners of Greek whose native languages (L1s) were Spanish, German, or Russian as well as from corresponding experiments with a control group of adult native speakers of Greek. We found that, despite their nativelike mastery of the construction under investigation, the L2 learners showed relative-clause attachment preferences that were different from those of the native speakers. Moreover, the L2 learners did not exhibit L1-based preferences in their L2 Greek, as might be expected if they were directly influenced by L1 attachment preferences. We suggest that L2 learners integrate information relevant for parsing differently from native speakers, with the L2 learners relying more on lexical cues than the native speakers and less on purely structurally based parsing strategies.

On the role of discourse-level information in second-language sentence processing

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 698-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELSI KAISER
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Memory Retrieval ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Retrieval Processes ◽  
Shallow Structure Hypothesis ◽  
Level Information ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Shallow Structure

Based on a detailed review of existing studies of high-proficiency second-language (L2) learners who acquired the L2 in adolescence/adulthood, Cunnings (Cunnings, 2016) argues that Sorace's (2011) Interface Hypothesis (IH) and Clahsen and Felser's (2006) Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) do not explain the existing data as well as his memory-based approach which posits that memory-retrieval processes in the L1 and L2 do not pattern alike. Cunnings proposes that L1 and L2 processing differ in terms of comprehenders’ ability to retrieve from memory information constructed during sentence processing. He concludes that L2 processing is more susceptible to interference effects during retrieval, and, most relevantly for this commentary, that discourse-based cues to memory retrieval are more heavily weighted in L2 than L1 processing.

DECOMPOSITION OF INFLECTED WORDS IN A SECOND LANGUAGE

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Neubauer ◽  
Harald Clahsen
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Combinatorial Structure ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Acceptability Judgments ◽  
Morphological Parsing

German participles offer a distinction between regular forms that are suffixed with –t and do not exhibit any stem changes and irregular forms that all have the ending –n and sometimes undergo (largely unpredictable) stem changes. This article reports the results from a series of psycholinguistic experiments (acceptability judgments, lexical decision, and masked priming) that investigate regular and irregular participle forms in adult native speakers of German in comparison to advanced adult second language (L2) learners of German with Polish as their first language (L1). The most striking L1-L2 contrasts were found for regular participles. Although the L1 group’s performance was influenced by the combinatorial structure of regular participle forms, this was not the case for the L2 group. These findings suggest that adult L2 learners are less sensitive to morphological structure than native speakers and rely more on lexical storage than on morphological parsing during processing.

Optionality in non-native grammars: L2 acquisition of German constructions with absent expletives

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALDONA SOPATA
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Written Production ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
High Level

This paper investigates the knowledge of constructions with absent expletives by advanced and high-proficiency non-native speakers of German whose first language is Polish. German grammar is known to license null subjects due to the strength of AGRP but not to identify them. Therefore only expletive subjects can be absent in German, except for Topic-drop and, crucially, the expletive subjects have to be absent in certain cases due to the Projection Principle. The knowledge of this phenomenon by second language (L2) learners has been investigated by two methods, elicited written production task and grammaticality judgment tests. High-level non-native speakers of German differ significantly from native speakers in both types of tasks. The differences are clearly not the result of transfer. The results reported here reveal permanent optionality in L2 grammars suggesting a deficit in the grammatical representations of L2 learners.

Processing Chinese relative clauses: An investigation of second-language learners from different learning contexts

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qin Yao ◽  
Claire Renaud
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
The Us ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Matrix Subject

AbstractThe goal of this study is to examine the processing of Chinese relative clauses (RCs) through a self-paced reading task and to determine whether the learning environment plays a role in the second-language (L2) acquisition of RCs. We investigated two types of RCs (subject vs. object RCs) along with two positions in which a RC can occur (modifying a matrix subject noun phrase [NP] vs. a matrix object NP). Eighteen native speakers of Chinese and twenty-one L2 learners at an intermediate proficiency level participated in the study. Ten learners were students learning Chinese in the US (i. e., in a foreign-language context), whereas the other eleven learners were students studying Chinese in China (i. e., in a study-abroad context). The comprehension of sentences containing a RC and reading times (RTs) on the RC and the head noun (the segment immediately following the RC) were analyzed. The results show distinct patterns for the learners and the native speakers. The accuracy data reveals that the L2 learners in China performed better than the L2 learners in the US. Additionally, the L2 learners in China exhibited a processing speed advantage to the L2 learners in the US. The RT data highlighted important asymmetries in the L2 learners in the US and the native speakers, while the results were flat for the L2 learners in China. Specifically, L2 learners in the US took longer to read object RCs than subject RCs while the opposite pattern was obtained for the L1 speakers. Moreover, matrix-object-modifying RCs revealed shorter RTs than matrix-subject-modifying RCs for L2 learners in the US, whereas the opposite pattern was found for the L1 speakers. These findings are discussed in light of the Linear Distance Theory and the Structural Distance Theory (e. g., O’Grady 1997. Syntactic development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Overall, these results seem to provide support to the assumption that changes in syntactic processing happen as a result of exposure to the language environment (Cuetos et al. 1996. Parsing in different languages. In Manuel Carreias, Jose E. Garcia-Albea & Nuria Sebastien-Galles (eds.), Language processing in Spanish, 145–187. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; Frenck–Mestre 2002. An on-line look at sentence processing in the second language. In Roberto Heredia & Jeanette Altarriba (eds.), Bilingual sentence processing, 217–236. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.).

Pervasiveness of shallow processing

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-88
Author(s):  
Irina A. Sekerina ◽  
Patricia J. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
First Language ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Shallow Processing ◽  
L2 Learners

Clahsen and Felser (CF) offer a novel explanation for the qualitative differences in language processing often observed between adult first language (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners. They argue that, although L2 learners are successful in drawing on lexical, morphological, and pragmatic sources of information, they underutilize syntactic structure, which results in shallower and less detailed processing than that of native speakers.

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