Resumptive pronouns facilitate processing of long-distance relative clause dependencies in second language English

This study provides evidence that resumptive pronouns (RPs) can facilitate the processing of long-distance subject relative clause (RC) dependencies during second language (L2) sentence comprehension, even where they are disallowed in both the first language (L1) and the target language. A test group of 29 L1-Korean L2 learners (L2ers) of English and a control group of 25 native English speakers completed an online self-paced reading task (SPRT) and an offline acceptability judgment task (AJT) designed to test whether RPs reflect Interlanguage grammar representations and/or a strategy to alleviate processing overload. Analysis of the SPRT data from both response times and comprehension question accuracy indicates that RPs assisted the L2ers, but not the native speakers, with dependency resolution in long-distance RCs. For the AJT data, a proficiency effect was observed whereby some lower-proficiency L2ers, but not the higher-proficiency ones or the native speakers, tended to prefer RPs over gaps in long-distance RCs. The implications of these findings and plans for future research are discussed.

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Economy in the acquisition of English universal quantifier sentences: The interpretations of deaf and hearing students and second language learners at the college level

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716409090110 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 251-290 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

GERALD P. BERENT ◽

RONALD R. KELLY ◽

TANYA SCHUELER-CHOUKAIRI

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Language Learners ◽

Sentence Comprehension ◽

Second Language Learners ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Target Language ◽

Universal Quantifier ◽

College Level ◽

Language Groups ◽

Sentence Interpretation

ABSTRACTEnglish sentences containing the universal quantifiers each, every, and all are highly complex structures in view of the subtleties of their scope properties and resulting ambiguities. This study explored the acquisition of universal quantifier sentences as reflected in the performance of three diverse college-level student groups on a multipicture sentence interpretation task. The participant groups (hearing native speakers, deaf students, and second language learners of English) all exhibited fundamental knowledge of universal lexical, semantic, and syntactic properties that contribute to quantifier sentence interpretation. The native speakers outperformed the deaf and second language groups, whose performance was strikingly parallel. Performance patterns are explained in terms of the influences of derivational economy, including the option to restrict in situ indefinite noun phrases to singleton indefinites. The symmetry effect observed in child language studies was also observed among the college-aged participants in this study. It is explained in terms of a pragmatic challenge in managing contextual information that invokes an unexpected singleton indefinite interpretation. The results contribute to the understanding of sentence comprehension under conditions of restricted learner access to target language input and underscore the value of seeking correlates of theory-internal derivational economy in language acquisition and use.

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Idiosyncratic Grammars: Syntactic Processing in Second Language Comprehension Uses Subjective Feature Representations

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00609 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 26 (7) ◽

pp. 1428-1444 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Kristin Lemhöfer ◽

Herbert Schriefers ◽

Peter Indefrey

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Sentence Comprehension ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Nonnative Speakers ◽

Grammatical Gender ◽

Syntactic Processing ◽

Control Group ◽

Gender Agreement ◽

Feature Representations ◽

L2 Learners

Learning the syntax of a second language (L2) often represents a big challenge to L2 learners. Previous research on syntactic processing in L2 has mainly focused on how L2 speakers respond to “objective” syntactic violations, that is, phrases that are incorrect by native standards. In this study, we investigate how L2 learners, in particular those of less than near-native proficiency, process phrases that deviate from their own, “subjective,” and often incorrect syntactic representations, that is, whether they use these subjective and idiosyncratic representations during sentence comprehension. We study this within the domain of grammatical gender in a population of German learners of Dutch, for which systematic errors of grammatical gender are well documented. These L2 learners as well as a control group of Dutch native speakers read Dutch sentences containing gender-marked determiner–noun phrases in which gender agreement was either (objectively) correct or incorrect. Furthermore, the noun targets were selected such that, in a high proportion of nouns, objective and subjective correctness would differ for German learners. The ERP results show a syntactic violation effect (P600) for objective gender agreement violations for native, but not for nonnative speakers. However, when the items were re-sorted for the L2 speakers according to subjective correctness (as assessed offline), the P600 effect emerged as well. Thus, rather than being insensitive to violations of gender agreement, L2 speakers are similarly sensitive as native speakers but base their sensitivity on their subjective—sometimes incorrect—representations.

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Semantic priming effects and lexical access in English as L3

Gragoatá ◽

10.22409/gragoata.2018n46a1133 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 23 (46) ◽

pp. 354

Author(s):

Pâmela Freitas Pereira Toassi ◽

Mailce Borges Mota

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Lexical Access ◽

Picture Naming ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Naming Task ◽

Masked Priming ◽

Brazilian Portuguese ◽

Target Language ◽

Control Group ◽

Third Language

We report an experiment using a picture-naming task within the masked priming paradigm to examine lexical access in English as a third language. Participants were assigned to one of three groups: a control group, consisting of native speakers of English, and two experimental groups, one consisting of speakers of English as L2 and the other consisting of speakers of German as L2 and English as L3. Participants of the two experimental groups were native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. All participants performed a picture-naming task in English in which pictures were preceded by a masked prime word in the target language (English), in the native language (Brazilian Portuguese) or in the second language (German). The results indicate some interference from the participants’ second language in the production of their third language (English), favoring the view that lexical access of multilinguals is qualitatively different from that of bilinguals and monolinguals.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Efeitos de priming semântico e acesso lexical em inglês como L3Reporta-se, neste artigo, os resultados de um experimento que investigou o acesso lexical em inglês como terceira língua por meio de uma tarefa de nomeação de figuras no paradigma de priming mascarado. Os participantes foram organizados em três grupos: um grupo controle, formado por falantes nativos de inglês, e dois grupos experimentais, sendo um formado por falantes de inglês como L2 e o outro, por falantes de inglês como L2 e de alemão como L3. Todos os participantes desempenharam uma tarefa de nomeação de figuras em que estas eram precedidas por palavras prime em inglês (a língua alvo), português brasileiro (a língua nativa), ou alemão (a segunda língua). Os resultados indicam alguma interferência da segunda língua desses participantes na produção da terceira língua e favorecem a visão de que o acesso lexical de multilíngues é qualitativamente diferente daquele de bilíngues e monolíngues.---Artigo em inglês.

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Semantic priming effects and lexical access in English as L3

Gragoatá ◽

10.22409/gragoata.v23i46.33581 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 23 (46) ◽

pp. 354-373

Author(s):

Pâmela Freitas Pereira Toassi ◽

Mailce Borges Mota

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Lexical Access ◽

Picture Naming ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Naming Task ◽

Masked Priming ◽

Brazilian Portuguese ◽

Target Language ◽

Control Group ◽

Third Language

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Real-time grammar processing by native and non-native speakers: Constructions unique to the second language

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728913000321 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 237-257 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

DANIJELA TRENKIC ◽

JELENA MIRKOVIC ◽

GERRY T. M. ALTMANN

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Real Time ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Target Language ◽

Control Group ◽

Multiple Meaning ◽

L2 Processing ◽

English Articles ◽

Referential Domains ◽

Grammatical Structures

We investigated second language (L2) comprehension of grammatical structures that are unique to the L2, and which are known to cause persistent difficulties in production. A visual-world eye-tracking experiment focused on online comprehension of English articles by speakers of the article-lacking Mandarin, and a control group of English native speakers. The results show that non-native speakers from article-lacking backgrounds can incrementally utilise the information signalled by L2 articles in real time to constrain referential domains and resolve reference more efficiently. The findings support the hypothesis that L2 processing does not always over-rely on pragmatic affordances, and that some morphosyntactic structures unique to the target language can be processed in a targetlike manner in comprehension – despite persistent difficulties with their production. A novel proposal, based on multiple meaning-to-form, but consistent form-to-meaning mappings, is developed to account for such comprehension–production asymmetries.

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The role of cross-linguistic stress pattern frequency and word similarity on the acquisition of English stress pattern by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

Revista Diadorim ◽

10.35520/diadorim.2012.v12n0a3978 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Amanda Post Silveira

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

American English ◽

Brazilian Portuguese ◽

Stress Pattern ◽

Target Language ◽

English As Second Language ◽

Word Similarity ◽

L1 Transfer

This is a preliminary study in which we investigate the acquisition of English as second language (L2[1]) word stress by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP, L1[2]). In this paper, we show results of a multiple choice forced choice perception test in which native speakers of American English and native speakers of Dutch judged the production of English words bearing pre-final stress that were both cognates and non-cognates with BP words. The tokens were produced by native speakers of American English and by Brazilians that speak English as a second language. The results have shown that American and Dutch listeners were consistent in their judgments on native and non-native stress productions and both speakers' groups produced variation in stress in relation to the canonical pattern. However, the variability found in American English points to the prosodic patterns of English and the variability found in Brazilian English points to the stress patterns of Portuguese. It occurs especially in words whose forms activate neighboring similar words in the L1. Transfer from the L1 appears both at segmental and prosodic levels in BP English. [1] L2 stands for second language, foreign language, target language. [2] L1 stands for first language, mother tongue, source language.

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Acquiring variable commands at home and abroad: Examining optatives and imperatives in L1 and L2 Spanish

Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics ◽

10.1515/shll-2020-2025 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 79-113

Author(s):

Farrah Neumann ◽

Matthew Kanwit

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Study Abroad ◽

Language Teaching ◽

Applied Linguistics ◽

Future Research ◽

Control Group ◽

Before And After ◽

The Individual ◽

At Home

AbstractSince many linguistic structures are variable (i. e. conveyed by multiple forms), building a second-language grammar critically involves developing sociolinguistic competence (Canale and Swain. 1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1(1). 1–47), including knowledge of contexts in which to use one form over another (Bayley and Langman. 2004. Variation in the group and the individual: Evidence from second language acquisition. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 42(4). 303–318). Consequently, researchers interested in such competence have increasingly analyzed the study-abroad context to gauge learners’ ability to approximate local norms following a stay abroad, due to the quality and quantity of input to which learners may gain access (Lafford. 2006. The effects of study abroad vs. classroom contexts on Spanish SLA: Old assumptions, new insights and future research directions. In Carol Klee & Timothy Face (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 7th conference on the acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as first and second languages, 1–25. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project). Nevertheless, the present study is the first to examine native or learner variation between imperative (e. g. ven ‘come’) and optative Spanish commands (e. g. que vengas ‘come’). We first performed a corpus analysis to determine the linguistic factors to manipulate in a contextualized task, which elicited commands from learners before and after four weeks abroad in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. Their overall rates of selection and predictive factors were compared to local native speakers (NSs) and a control group of at-home learners.Results revealed that the abroad learners more closely approached NS rates of selection following the stay abroad. Nonetheless, for both learner groups conditioning by independent variables only partially approximated the NS system, which was more complex than previously suggested.

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Second language processing of English past tense morphology: The role of working memory

IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching ◽

10.1515/iral-2019-0005 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Filiz Rızaoğlu ◽

Ayşe Gürel

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Second Language ◽

Language Processing ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Negative Relationship ◽

Masked Priming ◽

Morphological Processing ◽

Target Language ◽

Past Tense ◽

L2 Learners

AbstractThis study examines, via a masked priming task, the processing of English regular and irregular past tense morphology in proficient second language (L2) learners and native speakers in relation to working memory capacity (WMC), as measured by the Automated Reading Span (ARSPAN) and Operation Span (AOSPAN) tasks. The findings revealed quantitative group differences in the form of slower reaction times (RTs) in the L2-English group. While no correlation was found between the morphological processing patterns and WMC in either group, there was a negative relationship between English and Turkish ARSPAN scores and the speed of word recognition in the L2 group. Overall, comparable decompositional processing patterns found in both groups suggest that, like native speakers, high-proficiency L2 learners are sensitive to the morphological structure of the target language.

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The processing of case in near-native Spanish

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658314563880 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 281-307 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Jill Jegerski

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Sentence Comprehension ◽

Native Speakers ◽

First Language ◽

Differential Object Marking ◽

L2 Processing ◽

Case Marker ◽

Object Marking ◽

Case Markers ◽

Ditransitive Constructions

This article reports a study that sought to determine whether non-native sentence comprehension can show sensitivity to two different types of Spanish case marking. Sensitivity to case violations was generally more robust with indirect objects in ditransitive constructions than with differential object marking of animate direct objects, even among native speakers of Spanish, which probably reflects linguistic differences in the two types of case. In addition, the overall outcome of two experiments shows that second language (L2) processing can integrate case information, but that, unlike with native processing, attention to a case marker may depend on the presence of a preverbal clitic as an additional cue to the types of postverbal arguments that might occur in a stimulus. Specifically, L2 readers showed no sensitivity to differential object marking with a in the absence of clitics in the first experiment, with stimuli such as Verónica visita al/el presidente todos los meses ‘Veronica visits the[ACC/NOM]president every month’, but the L2 readers in the second experiment showed native-like sensitivity to the same marker when the object it marked was doubled by the clitic lo, as in Verónica lo visita al/el presidente todos los meses. With indirect objects, on the other hand, sensitivity to case markers was native-like in both experiments, although indirect objects were also always doubled by the preverbal clitic le. The apparent first language / second language contrast suggests differences in processing strategy, whereby non-native processing of morphosyntax may rely more on the predictability of forms than does native processing.

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Verstaanbaarheid als interactioneel en contextgebonden fenomeen

Nederlandse taalkunde ◽

10.5117/nedtaa2021.2.001.simo ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 147-170

Author(s):

Ellen Simon ◽

Chloé Lybaert

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Language Teaching ◽

Language Education ◽

Future Research ◽

Content Type ◽

Context Sensitive ◽

Second Language Education ◽

Communicative Success ◽

And Migration

Abstract As a result of growing mobility and migration flows, the number of non-native speakers of Dutch in Belgium and the Netherlands have gradually increased over the past decades and so have the number of people enrolled in Dutch as a Second Language education. While there is huge variation in the profiles of these non-native speakers, they almost exclusively have in common that their Dutch sounds, in some way and at some stage, accented. In line with worldwide trends in foreign language teaching, the pronunciation goal in Dutch as a Second Language education has shifted from native-like to intelligible. Indeed, the notion of intelligibility has become prominent in language teaching and assessment. In this paper, we discuss the complexity of this notion and set it off against related terms like ‘comprehensibility’ and ‘foreign accent’. Through a literature review, we argue that intelligibility is an interactional and context-sensitive phenomenon: it is as much a responsibility of the speaker as it is of the listener or conversational partner(s) in general, whose attitudes will have an impact on the intelligibility and thus on the conversational flow and communicative success. After reviewing literature on the intelligibility of Dutch as a Second Language, we end by formulating some promising lines for future research.

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