We Could Have Loved and Lost, or We Never Could Have Love at All

Abstract

This study investigated sentence-processing strategies adopted by advanced nonnative speakers (NNSs) and native speakers (NSs) of English in the context of an English structure with which NNSs reportedly have an acquisition difficulty (e.g., Swan & Smith, 2001)—namely, modal perfect (MP). Participants read MP sentences such as He could have worked at the shoe factory and closely related analogous sentences (e.g., He could have work at the shoe factory), and reading times and errors were measured in an online grammaticality-judgment task. It was hypothesized that NSs would have a processing preference for MP sentences compared to the analogues, reflecting the primacy of syntactic information in NS processing and a preference for late closure, whereas NNSs would show no such preference because they rely less on syntactic information when processing sentences. The results revealed, however, that both NSs and NNSs read MP sentences more quickly and with fewer errors than the closely related analogues, consistent with a processing preference for MP sentences. Both groups were also influenced by word-category frequency information, which moderated, but did not fundamentally alter, their syntactic preference for MP. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of models of second-language sentence processing and NNSs’ reported MP acquisition difficulty.

A methodological synthesis of self-paced reading in second language research

“…The modal range was 200 ms to 2000 ms (4 studies), and the modal lower cutoff was <200 ms (3 studies). The mean reading speed of a native speaker has been found to be around 250 ms/word (Milton & Fitzpatrick, 2013), and such information might inform future empirical investigations into principled elimination of unnaturally fast key presses (as suggested by Conroy & Cupples, 2010). The upper cutoff ranged from >2000 ms to 20000 ms, with wide variability across studies, with a mode of >2000 ms (7 studies).…”

The two‐sided nature of reliance on prior knowledge and on L1/L2 structural similarity in L2 sentence comprehension

“…L2 readers seem to compensate for inadequate syntactic knowledge by deciphering the conveyed messages through top‐down integration of the semantic information they glean from recognized lexical items with the aid of prior knowledge (Bernhardt, 2011; Han & D'Angelo, 2009; Miller, 2000, 2010, 2013; van Patten, 2004; for a review, see Conroy & Cupples, 2010). In other words, the bottom‐up processes they activate in their reading are frequently limited to word recognition, and they skip the process of grouping the recognized words into phrases and clauses.…”

“…The literature reports a tendency of foreign language readers to skip detailed syntactic processing (e.g., to ignore function words and word order) and to comprehend L2 texts by mapping the meaning of sentences' content words to their prior knowledge (semantic top‐down reading strategy; Bernhardt, 2011; Clahsen & Felser, 2006; Han & D'Angelo, 2009; Miller, 2000, 2010, 2013; van Patten, 2004; for a review, see Conroy & Cupples, 2010). Some scholars have even claimed that teachers and textbooks encourage this reading strategy (Grabe, 2009; Han & D'Angelo, 2009; Jeon & Yamashita, 2014).…”