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Forty‐five adult second language learners of English participated in this study, which investigated syntactically ambiguous sentences in which a prepositional phrase is interpreted as either an NP (noun phrase) attachment or VP (verb phrase) attachment (e.g., The cop saw the spy with binoculars). One group of 23 students performed comprehension tasks, first by listening to the sentences produced with no distinction in intonation favoring the NP or the VP interpretation, then by listening to the sentences produced with an intonation that favored the NP interpretation. A second group of 22 students performed comprehension tasks, first by reading the sentences with no preceding context, then by reading them preceded by a referential context. The students also did 2 sentence‐completion tasks, one manipulating “action verbs,” the other “psych and perception verbs,” to evaluate the verb‐based lexical biasing effect. Statistical analyses of the results showed lexical, syntactic, prosodic, and contextual constraints on processing of ambiguous sentences.

Twenty-seven English-speaking learners of Chinese (the experimental groups) and 20 native speakers of Chinese (the control group) participated in a study that investigated second language learners' knowledge of reconstruction (NP and predicate fronted sentences with ziji ‘self’) in Chinese. Results of a sentence interpretation task indicate that English-speaking learners of Chinese had knowledge of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved predicate, and lack of ambiguity of antecedence of ziji inside a moved NP, although such information is not directly available in English. While the experiment produced evidence that they appeared to have access to Universal Grammar, English-speaking learners of Chinese bound ziji in non-movement sentences to an embedded subject, indicating that they mapped the narrower setting of reflexives in English onto a wider parameter setting of ziji in Chinese.

claims that the origin of early contrastive rhetoric lies in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity. This article argues that her claim does not appear tenable. The Sapir-Whorf view of language as a causal determination is not compatible with Kaplan's (1966) position that rhetoric is evolved out of a culture. Furthermore, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is actually rooted in German ideas which also conflict with Kaplan's view. On the other hand, Hymetr' ethnography of communication approach can be seen as an important historical antecedent for contrastive rhetoric. Kaplan's view appears to reinforce Hymes' position that it is culture rather than the linguistic form which is the frame of reference for the use of language.Since Kaplan (1966) published his seminal article on "Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education", contrastive rhetoric has seen significant growth in second language writing research. Recent publications on contrastive rhetoric include books (e.g. . Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the rhetorical patterns in cross-cultural settings in contrastive rhetoric research (see Connor 19% €or a review), the issue of the origin of contrastive rhetoric has not attracted much attention until recently.In her recent article, Connor (1997: 199) claims that the basis for the principles of early contrastive rhetoric lies in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity. In her book on contrastive rhetoric, Connor (1996: 10) expresses the same view: "The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity is basic to contrastive rhetoric because it suggests that different languages affect perception and thought in different ways". Connor's claim has not gone unnoticed. Leki (1997: 235) pointed out that interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. tual analysis of a Chinese Hui narrative. Semwtica 115: 345-60. Ying, H. (1997) The equilibrium of yin and yang and dialogics of silence: a tex-[

Forty adult Chinese-speaking learners of English and 20 native speakers of American English participated in a study of second language learners’ interpretation of syntactically ambiguous sentences involving that-clauses that could potentially be interpreted as complements or as relative clause. Two sentence interpretation tasks suggest that the principle of relevance constrained the interpretations. The learners showed a preference for interpreting the that-clause as a complement in the first task, using fewer syntactic nodes because it involved less processing effort. In the second task, however, the learners showed a preference for the relative clause reading, suggesting that the procedural information encoded by preceding referential sentences had the effect of reducing the overall processing effort required and of guiding the second language (L2) learners towards the intended contextual effects.