Recent advances in cross-language psycholinguistics provide reading researchers with both the models and the tools needed to investigate the syntactic processing of second language (L2) readers. In our study, 48 L1 (first language) and 48 highly fluent L2 French readers read sentences containing constructions that do not exist in English, the L1 of the L2 readers: pre-verbal pronominalization (clitics) and the faire+infinitive causative construction. The L2 readers exhibited the same processing as L1 French readers; however, slower (but equally fluent) L2 readers also employed a compensatory processing for sentences with clitics. These results build on previous findings that faster L2 readers are more efficient in their use of lower-level information by demonstrating that they are also more efficient at higher-level syntactic processing. Results are discussed in terms of implications for theories of L2 reading and recent models of cross-language syntactic processing.

The present work suggests that sentence processing requires both heuristic and algorithmic processing streams, where the heuristic processing strategy precedes the algorithmic phase. This conclusion is based on three self-paced reading experiments in which the processing of two-sentence discourses was investigated, where context sentences exhibited quantifier scope ambiguity. Experiment 1 demonstrates that such sentences are processed in a shallow manner. Experiment 2 uses the same stimuli as Experiment 1 but adds questions to ensure deeper processing. Results indicate that reading times are consistent with a lexical-pragmatic interpretation of number associated with context sentences, but responses to questions are consistent with the algorithmic computation of quantifier scope. Experiment 3 shows the same pattern of results as Experiment 2, despite using stimuli with different lexical-pragmatic biases. These effects suggest that language processing can be superficial, and that deeper processing, which is sensitive to structure, only occurs if required. Implications for recent studies of quantifier scope ambiguity are discussed.

No abstract

The present investigation focussed on the neural substrates underlying linguistic distinctions that are signalled by prosodic cues. A production experiment was conducted to examine the ability of left-(LHD) and right-(RHD) hemisphere damaged patients and normal controls to use temporal and fundamental frequency cues to disambiguate sentences which include one or more Intonational Phrase level (IPh) prosodic boundaries.Acoustic analyses of subjects' productions of three sentence-types -parentheticals, appositives, and tags -showed that LHD speakers, compared to RHD and normal controls, exhibited impairments in the control of temporal parameters signalling phrase boundaries, including inconsistent patterns of pre-boundary lengthening and longer-thannormal pause durations in non-boundary positions. Somewhat surprisingly, a perception test presented to a group of normal native listeners showed listeners experienced greatest difficulty in identifying the presence or absence of boundaries in the productions of the RHD speakers. The findings support a cue lateralization hypothesis in which prosodic domain plays an important role.