Referential context effects in L2 ambiguity resolution: Evidence from self-paced reading

Pan, Hui-Yu; Felser, Claudia

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2010.08.003

Cited by 39 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…L2 speakers have shown sensitivity to various types of (morpho-) syntactic disambiguation cues, such as finite verbs lacking a subject (e.g., Juffs, 1998;Rah & Adone, 2010;Roberts & Felser, 2011), overt complementizers (e.g., Dussias & Cramer Scaltz, 2008), number and gender agreement (e.g., Jackson & Roberts, 2010;Papadopoulou & Clahsen, 2003), THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2015 3 NATIVE/NON-NATIVE GARDEN-PATH RECOVERY or case marking (e.g., Hopp, 2006Hopp, , 2013Jackson, 2008). L2 speakers have also demonstrated sensitivity to semantic disambiguation cues (Pan & Felser, 2011) and to disambiguating punctuation marks as in (2b) above (Hopp, 2013;Witzel et al, 2012).…”

Section: Garden-path Recovery In Non-native Sentence Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery

Jacob

Felser

2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating how native and non-native speakers of English process temporarily ambiguous sentences such as While the gentleman was eating the burgers were still being reheated in the microwave, in which an initially plausible direct-object analysis is first ruled out by a syntactic disambiguation (were) and also later on by semantic information (being reheated). Both participant groups showed garden-path effects at the syntactic disambiguation, with native speakers showing significantly stronger effects of ambiguity than non-native speakers in later eye-movement measures but equally strong effects in first-pass reading times. Ambiguity effects at the semantic disambiguation and in participants' end-of-trial responses revealed that for both participant groups, the incorrect direct-object analysis was frequently maintained beyond the syntactic disambiguation. The non-native group showed weaker reanalysis effects at the syntactic disambiguation and was more likely to misinterpret the experimental sentences than the native group. Our results suggest that native language (L1) and non-native language (L2) parsing are similar with regard to sensitivity to syntactic and semantic error signals, but different with regard to processes of reanalysis.

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Section: Garden-path Recovery In Non-native Sentence Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery

Jacob

Felser

2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…In real-time language comprehension written or spoken utterances are analysed incrementally, with information extracted from the linguistic stimulus itself (bottom-up information) quickly being integrated with contextual or other top-down information (e.g., Tanenhaus et al, 1995). Incremental analysis and interpretation have also been attested for L2 comprehension (e.g., Roberts & Felser, 2011;Williams, 2006), and L2 processing has been found to be guided by top-down information, such as contextual information (e.g., Pan & Felser, 2011) and probabilistic biases (e.g., Dussias & Cramer Scaltz, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structure-sensitive constraints in non-native sentence processing

Felser

2019

Journal of the European Second Language Association

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Studies examining the real-time application of structure-sensitive constraints in second-language (L2) sentence processing have shown that depending on the type of constraint under investigation, the constraint may be more likely, equally (un)likely, or less likely to be violated during L2 than during native (first-language, L1) processing. Several attempts have been made in the past to attribute L1/L2 processing differences to a specific underlying cause, including cognitive resource limitations, reduced sensitivity to grammatical information, or increased susceptibility to memory interference during L2 processing. Focusing on recent findings on the processing of referential and filler-gap dependencies, I argue that trying to reduce L1/L2 processing differences to a single cause is misguided. What is called for instead is a more careful investigation of how different types of constraint and information sources interact during L2 comprehension, taking into account what linguistic cues need to be extracted from the input or need to be re-accessed in order for a given constraint to be applied. This should provide us with a more nuanced picture of how the relative weighting or timing of constraints or information sources might differ in L2 in comparison to L1 processing.

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“…As noted above, that natural language use is frequently vague has repeatedly been established by researchers (see Channell 1994;Cheng and Warren 2001;Cutting 2007Cutting , 2012Fern ‡ndez 2015;Fern ‡ndez and Yuldashev 2011;Janney 2002;Parvaresh and Tayebi 2014;Pan and Felser 2011;Peires 1997;Powell 1985;Ruzait• 2007;Zhang 2011Zhang , 2013. In the same way, it has been argued that while speakers have the ability to make their language less vague, it would be impossible for them to make it perfectly precise (Williamson 1994).…”

Section: Some Notes On Vlmentioning

confidence: 88%

The impact of task structure on the use of vague expressions by EFL learners

Parvaresh

Ahmadian

2016

The Language Learning Journal

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Vague language (e.g. thing, somewhere) is one of the linguistic features which typically differentiate the language use of a native or near-native speaker from that of a language learner since native speakers typically make abundant use of vague expressions. Thus far, however, there has been no published research on how features of pedagogic tasks might encourage L2 learnersÕ production of vague expressions. The present study sets out to examine whether and how task structure affects the number and type of vague expressions used by a group of higher-intermediate EFL learners. The participants were 50 Iranian EFL learners from six intact classes, all native speakers of Persian with limited opportunity to communicate with native speakers of English, and no experience in English-speaking countries. To elicit data, two picture description tasks were used. These picture-stories possessed the defining characteristics of structured and unstructured narrative tasks, respectively. Results revealed that (a) unstructured tasks were associated with the production of significantly more vague expressions; and (b) the most notable differences between performances on the two task types concerned Ôvague nounsÕ, Ôvague quantifiersÕ, Ôvague deintensifiersÕ and Ôvague subjectivisersÕ. The results of the study have implications for both teachers and teacher educators in that they may help identify the kinds of tasks which induce language learners to use vague expressions more frequently.

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Referential context effects in L2 ambiguity resolution: Evidence from self-paced reading

Cited by 39 publications

References 45 publications

Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery

Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery

Structure-sensitive constraints in non-native sentence processing

The impact of task structure on the use of vague expressions by EFL learners

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