This article reports the results of an eye-tracking experiment that investigated the effects of structural distance on readers' sensitivity to violations of Spanish gender agreement during online sentence comprehension. The study tracked the eye movements of native Spanish speakers and English-speaking learners of Spanish as they read sentences that contained nouns modified by postnominal adjectives located in three syntactic domains: (a) in the DP, (b) in the VP, or (c) in a subordinate clause. In half of the sentences in each condition, adjectives agreed with the noun in gender, and in half, they did not. The results indicate that gender agreement is acquirable in adulthood, contra the failed functional features hypothesis, and that the distance that separates nouns and adjectives affects the detection of gender anomalies in the second language. The findings support Clahsen and Felser's (2006a) shallow structure hypothesis, as it pertains to morphological processing.
This study tests the claim that word learning and retention in a second language are contingent upon a task's involvement load (i.e. the amount of need, search, and evaluation it imposes), as proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001). Seventy-nine beginning learners of Spanish completed one of three vocabulary learning tasks that varied in the amount of involvement (i.e. mental effort) they induced: reading comprehension (no effort), reading comprehension plus target word suppliance (moderate effort), and sentence writing (strong effort). Passive and active knowledge of the target words was assessed immediately after treatment and two weeks later. In line with the predictions of the Involvement Load Hypothesis, retention was highest in the sentence writing task, lower in the reading plus fill-in task, and lowest in the reading comprehension task. However, when time on task was considered, the benefit associated with more involving tasks faded. The results are discussed in light of form-focused vocabulary instruction.
Since the publication of Clahsen and Felser's ( 2006 ) keynote article on grammatical processing in language learners, the online study of sentence comprehension in adult second language (L2) learners has quickly grown into a vibrant and prolifi c subfi eld of SLA. As online methods begin to establish a foothold in SLA research, it is important that researchers in our fi eld design sentence-comprehension experiments that adhere to the fundamental principles of research design typical of sentence processing studies published in related subfi elds of the language sciences. In this article, we discuss and review widely accepted principles of research design for sentence processing studies that are not always followed in L2 sentence processing research. Particular emphasis is placed on the design of experimental items and distractors, the choice and design of the poststimulus distractor task, procedures for presenting stimuli to participants, and methods for trimming and analyzing online data, among others.
The current investigation tested two predictions regarding second language (L2) processing at the syntax-discourse interface: (1) that L2 performance on measures of interface phenomena can differ from that of native speakers; and (2) that cross-linguistic influence can be a source of such divergence. Specifically, we examined the offline interpretation of ambiguous subject pronouns with intrasentential antecedents in Spanish and English, including discourse-syntactic constraints that are active in pro-drop Spanish and principles of discourse structure that affect pronominal reference in English. Two participant groups of English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish -an intermediate group and an advanced group -failed to show categorically native-like differentiation between null and overt pronouns in Spanish. Both groups, however, did show marginal effects for Discourse Structure (coordination or subordination of clauses), an effect that was also present in their native English. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction with the advanced group between Pronoun and Discourse Structure, so this group seemed to employ to a certain degree a hybrid strategy. This outcome suggests that pre-existing referential strategy persists even at an advanced level of L2 proficiency and may be a primary barrier to native-like performance, even after target-like L2 principles are acquired and begin to apply. Keywordspronominal reference, null subjects, pronoun interpretation, sentence comprehension, first language influence, non-native Spanish at University of New England on May 31, 2015 slr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
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