scholarly journals Accessing and maintaining referents in L2 processing of wh-dependencies

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Kate Miller
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Access ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Time Profiles ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
L2 Processing

This study considers the role of lexical access in the activation and maintenance of referents interacting with syntactic computations during the online processing of wh-dependencies in second-language French by beginning (N = 39), low intermediate (N = 40), and high intermediate (N = 35) learners. Two computer-paced reading tasks involving concurrent picture classification were designed to investigate trace reactivation during sentence processing: The first task targeted sentences that contained indirect object relative clauses, whereas the second task involved indirect object cleft sentences. Response time profiles for sentences containing English-French cognates as antecedents were compared with those for sentences with noncognate vocabulary. All learner participants produced differing response patterns for cognate and noncognate items. Intermediate learners’ response patterns were consistent with trace reactivation for cognate items only; noncognate items induced inhibitions or erratic response patterns. Additionally, a (French-English bilingual) native speaker control group (N = 35) showed the predicted response pattern with the noncognate items only. These findings indicate that the role of lexical access in sentence processing merits further consideration.

scholarly journals L1 EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION CAN IMPROVE L2 ONLINE AND OFFLINE PERFORMANCE

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin McManus ◽  
Emma Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Context Sentence ◽  
Explicit Information ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Sentence Matching ◽  
Online Sentence Processing ◽  
L1 English

This study investigated the effectiveness of providing L1 explicit information (EI) with practice for making more accurate and faster interpretations of L2 FrenchImparfait(IMP). Two treatments were investigated: (a) “L2-only,” providing EI about the L2 with L2 interpretation practice, and (b) “L2+L1,” providing the exact same L2-only treatment and including EI about the L1 (English) with practice interpreting L1 features that are equivalent to the IMP. Fifty L2 French learners were randomly assigned to either L2-only, L2+L1, or a control group. Online (self-paced reading) and offline (context-sentence matching) measures from pretest, posttest, and delayed posttests showed that providing additional L1 EI and practice improved not only offline L2 accuracy, but also the speed of online L2 processing. To our knowledge, this makes original and significant contributions about the nature of EI with practice and the role of the L1 (Tolentino & Tokowicz, 2014), and it extends a recent line of research examining EI effects in online sentence processing (Andringa & Curcic, 2015).

PROCESSING OF THE REDUCED RELATIVE CLAUSE VERSUS MAIN VERB AMBIGUITY IN L2 LEARNERS AT DIFFERENT PROFICIENCY LEVELS

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Rah ◽  
Dany Adone
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Versus Main ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
L1 And L2

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.

THE ROLE OF EXPOSURE CONDITION IN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EXPLICIT CORRECTION

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yucel Yilmaz
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Exposure Condition ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Group Assignment ◽  
Communication Games ◽  
Randomized Experimental Design ◽  
And Control

This article reports on a study that investigated the effects of two feedback exposure conditions on the acquisition of two Turkish morphemes. The study followed a randomized experimental design with an immediate and a delayed posttest. Forty-two Chinese-speaking learners of Turkish were randomly assigned to one of three groups: receivers, nonreceivers, and control. All learners performed three communication games with a Turkish native speaker in which their errors on the Turkish plural and locative morphemes were treated according to their group assignment. The receivers’ errors were corrected through explicit correction. The nonreceivers were allowed to hear the feedback provided to the receivers; however, they did not receive feedback on their own errors. The learners in the control group neither received feedback on their own errors nor were allowed to hear the feedback other learners received. Results indicated that feedback exposure condition has an effect on the extent to which learners benefit from feedback but that this effect may be moderated by linguistic structure.

Morphosyntactic adaptation in adult L2 processing: Exposure and the processing of case and tense violations

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 627-656
Author(s):  
Holger Hopp
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Control Group Design ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Group Design ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Input Adaptation ◽  
Verb Tense ◽  
Experimental Versus

AbstractThis paper investigates morphosyntactic adaptation in second language (L2) sentence processing. In a pre-/posttest control group design, two experiments with intermediate to advanced German–English learners examine whether massed exposure to informative input leads to adaptation in L2 processing in that L2 readers come to integrate inflection in real-time comprehension. Experiment 1 on case marking shows that input causing prediction error and flagging the target parse leads to nativelike integration of case in the reanalysis of garden-path sentences. Experiment 2 shows partially nativelike processing of adverbial–verb tense mismatches after exposure to target input. Adaptation was selective to the experimental versus the control group in processing, yet it did not generalize to offline, explicit performance. We conclude that morphosyntactic adaptation constitutes an implicit learning mechanism in L2 processing, and we discuss its implications for models of L2 processing and acquisition.

EFFECTS OF LISTENERS' EXPECTATIONS OF SPEAKERS' NATIVENESS: IDENTIFICATION OF PHONEMIC VOWEL LENGTH

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1106-1115
Author(s):  
Wael Zuraiq ◽  
Moh'd Al-Omari ◽  
Sabri Al Shboul ◽  
Anas Al Huneety ◽  
Bassil Mashaqba
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Test Group ◽  
Speaking Rate ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Minimal Pairs ◽  
Native Arabic Speakers

Purpose of the study: This study is to describe an experiment in which native Arabic listeners identified phonemic vowels in Arabic words. Native Arabic speakers from a variety of dialects and non-native Arabic speakers spoke the words. The main objective of the present study is to understand the neglected role of the native listeners in making communication successful or impeded when native listeners lack adequate information about the non-native speaker and when the top-down processing is absent. Methodology: The present study examined real Arabic minimal pairs (short versus long vowels) uttered at a regular speaking rate by both native speakers of Arabic (NSA) as a control group and non-native speakers of Arabic (NNSA) as a test group. First, we told the listeners that they would hear speakers from various countries, and we did not tell them that the stimuli had non-native words. In the subsequent part of the experiment, we told native listeners that they would hear both native speakers and non-native intermediate speakers. Main Findings: The major outcome of the present study is that listeners made slower and less correct identifications when they knew that some of the speakers were non-native. The finding of the experiment confirms the hypothesis that the processing of non-native productions is influenced by native listeners' negative expectations about non-native speakers with the absence of adequate facilitating details. Applications of this study: The study contributes to the psycholinguistic understanding of the role of the native listeners' expectations and attitudes towards non-native speakers and contributes to the understanding of the interaction between native listeners and non-native speakers. The study can help linguists in understanding the role of listeners in communication impediments within the top-down approach. Novelty/Originality of this study: This work adopts a new approach where we tested the same listeners twice, first with no information about non-native speakers and second with information that they will hear non-native speakers in the stimuli. Such an approach intends to improve our perception towards language communication within listeners' attitudes as associated with foreign speakers when information about the context of stimuli is inadequate.

Construct operationalization, L1 effects, and context in second language processing

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 694-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN JUFFS
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
First Language ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Second Language Processing

Cunnings (2016) provides welcome insights into differences between native speaker (NS) sentence processing, adult non-native speaker processing (NNS), and working memory capacity (WMC) limitations. This commentary briefly raises three issues: construct operationalization; the role of first language (L1); and context.

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.

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic Processing in Late Second-Language Learners

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1870-1887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Gillon Dowens ◽  
Marta Vergara ◽  
Horacio A. Barber ◽  
Manuel Carreiras
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
First Language ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
L2 Processing ◽  
Sentence Position ◽  
And Gender

The goal of the present study was to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of second-language (L2) morphosyntactic processing in highly proficient late learners of an L2 with long exposure to the L2 environment. ERPs were collected from 22 English–Spanish late learners while they read sentences in which morphosyntactic features of the L2 present or not present in the first language (number and gender agreement, respectively) were manipulated at two different sentence positions—within and across phrases. The results for a control group of age-matched native-speaker Spanish participants included an ERP pattern of LAN-type early negativity followed by P600 effect in response to both agreement violations and for both sentence positions. The late L2 learner results included a similar pattern, consisting of early negativity followed by P600, in the first sentence position (within-phrase agreement violations) but only P600 effects in the second sentence position (across-phrase agreement violation), as well as significant amplitude and onset latency differences between the gender and the number violation effects in both sentence positions. These results reveal that highly proficient learners can show electrophysiological correlates during L2 processing that are qualitatively similar to those of native speakers, but the results also indicate the contribution of factors such as age of acquisition and transfer processes from first language to L2.

scholarly journals Concordancing in writing pedagogy and CAF measures of writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Negin Samoudi ◽  
Sima Modirkhamene
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Pedagogical Application

AbstractSince the early twenty-first century, data-driven learning (DDL) approach that is a pedagogical application of corpus linguistics in classroom, has introduced a paradigm shift in EFL instruction. Research output, however, concerning this inductive, discovery-oriented learning is equivocal. This study, thus, explored the application of both native-speaker and local learner corpora, attesting the effect of direct vs. indirect DDL activities on 39 EFL learners’ development in CAF measures of writing. To this end, two experimental groups were taught through corpus consultation, but the control group received the conventional method of using a textbook, teacher explanations, and classroom exercises. Results obtained from three (two experimental and one control) groups of participants’ writing performances pre and post to seven sessions of paragraph writing confirmed the significant role of indirect DDL in writing more accurate and fluent paragraphs; however, no statistical evidence was found as regards syntactic complexity. Moreover, no significant effect of the direct DDL method in improving learners’ writing was observed, which is, thus, interpreted as suggestive that applying indirect DDL could be more effective than the direct DDL approach. It is concluded that classroom-based computers are not necessarily essential tools to implement the DDL pedagogy.

FILLER-GAP DEPENDENCIES AND ISLAND CONSTRAINTS IN SECOND-LANGUAGE SENTENCE PROCESSING

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akira Omaki ◽  
Barbara Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Structural Details ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Island Constraints

Second-language (L2) sentence processing may differ from processing in a native language in a variety of ways, and it has been argued that one major difference is that L2 learners can only construct shallow representations that lack structural details (e.g., Clahsen & Felser, 2006). The present study challenges this hypothesis by comparing the extent to which advanced L1 Spanish-L2 English learners and English native speakers make use of the relative clause island constraint in constructing filler-gap dependencies. In offline acceptability judgment and online self-paced reading experiments that used stimuli adapted from Traxler and Pickering (1996), both the L2 group and the native-speaker control group demonstrated clear evidence for application of the relative clause island constraint. These findings suggest that advanced L2 learners not only build abstract structural representations but also rapidly constrain the active search for a gap location. These results cast doubt on the proposal that L2 learners are unable to build structural representations with grammatical precision.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document