Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:21:21.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plausibility and recovery from garden paths in second language sentence processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

LEAH ROBERTS  and
CLAUDIA FELSER
LEAH ROBERTS*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and University of Essex
CLAUDIA FELSER
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and University of Essex
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Leah Roberts, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, P.O. Box 310, Nijmegen 6500 AH, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this study, the influence of plausibility information on the real-time processing of locally ambiguous (“garden path”) sentences in a nonnative language is investigated. Using self-paced reading, we examined how advanced Greek-speaking learners of English and native speaker controls read sentences containing temporary subject–object ambiguities, with the ambiguous noun phrase being either semantically plausible or implausible as the direct object of the immediately preceding verb. Besides providing evidence for incremental interpretation in second language processing, our results indicate that the learners were more strongly influenced by plausibility information than the native speaker controls in their on-line processing of the experimental items. For the second language learners an initially plausible direct object interpretation lead to increased reanalysis difficulty in “weak” garden-path sentences where the required reanalysis did not interrupt the current thematic processing domain. No such evidence of on-line recovery was observed, in contrast, for “strong” garden-path sentences that required more substantial revisions of the representation built thus far, suggesting that comprehension breakdown was more likely here.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 299 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allan, D. (1992). The Oxford Placement Test. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baumann, H., Nagengast, J., & Klaas, G. (1993). New experimental setup (NESU). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Centre for Lexical Information. (1993). The Celex lexical database. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Christianson, K., Hollingworth, A., Halliwell, J., & Ferreira, F. (2001). Thematic roles assigned along the garden path linger. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 368–407.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Christianson, K., Williams, C. C., Zacks, R. T., & Ferreira, F. (2006). Misrepresentations of garden-path sentences by older and younger adults. Discourse Processes, 42, 205–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifton, C. (1993). Thematic roles in sentence parsing. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47, 222–246.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Felser, C., & Roberts, L. (2007). Processing wh-dependencies in a second language: A cross-modal priming study. Second Language Research, 23, 9–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., Roberts, L, Gross, R., & Marinis, T. (2003). The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 453–489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., Sato, M., & Bertenshaw, N. (2009). The on-line application of binding Principle A in English as a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 485–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, F., & Henderson, J. (1991). Recovery from misanalyses of garden-path sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 725–745.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. D., & Ferreira, F. (1998). Reanalysis in sentence processing. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, L. (1987). Sentence processing: A tutorial review. In Coltheart, M. (Ed.): Attention and performance: Vol. 12. The psychology of reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (1998). Sentence reanalysis and visibility. In Fodor, J. D. & Ferreira, F. (Eds.), Reanalysis in sentence processing. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Frazier, L., & Rayner, K. (1982). Making and correcting errors during sentence comprehension: Eye movements in the analysis of structurally ambiguous sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 14, 178–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frenck-Mestre, C. (2005). Ambiguities and anomalies: What can eye-movements and event-related potentials reveal about second language sentence processing? In Kroll, J. & De Groot, A. (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (1991). A computational theory of human linguistic processing: Memory limitations and processing breakdown. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Carnegie Mellon.Google Scholar
Gorrell, P. (1995). Syntax and parsing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grodner, D., Gibson, E., Argaman, V., & Babyonyshev, M. (2003). Against repair-based reanalysis in sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 141–166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hahne, A., & Friederici, A. (2001). Processing a second language: Late learners’ comprehension mechanisms as revealed by event-related brain potentials. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 123–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, J. (2003). The information conveyed by words in sentences. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 101–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Havik, E., Roberts, L., van Hout, R., Schreuder, R., & Haverkort, M. (2009). Processing subject–object ambiguitities in the L2: A self-paced reading study with German L2 learners of Dutch. Language Learning, 59, 73–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, V., Stowe, L., & Cupples, L. (1989). Lexical expectations in parsing complement–verb sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 668–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, V. M., Kennedy, A., & Murray, W. (1987). Syntactic structure and the garden path. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology, 39A, 277–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Juffs, A. (2004). Representation, processing, and working memory in a second language. Transactions of the Philological Society, 102, 199–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Juffs, A., & Harrington, M. (1996). Garden path sentences and error data in second language processing research. Language Learning, 46, 286–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Just, M., Carpenter, P., & Woolley, J. (1982). Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 111, 228–238.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kennedy, A., Murray, W., Jennings, F., & Reid, C. (1989). Parsing complements: Comments on the generality of the principle of minimal attachment. Language and Cognitive Processes 4, 51–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, R. (2008). Expectation-based syntactic comprehension. Cognition, 106, 1126–1177.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marinis, T., Roberts, L., Felser, C., & Clahsen, H. (2005). Gaps in second language sentence processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 53–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McRae, K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Modeling the influence of thematic fit (and other constraints) in on-line sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 38, 283–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papadopoulou, D. (2005). Reading-time studies of second language ambiguity resolution. Second Language Research, 21, 98–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papadopoulou, D., & Clahsen, H. (2003). Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 501–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papadopoulou, D., & Tsimpli, I. (2005). Morphological cues in children's processing of ambiguous sentences: A study of subject/object ambiguities in Greek. In Brugos, A., Clark-Cotton, M.-R., & Ha, S. (Eds.), BUCLD 29: Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 471–481). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, M., & Traxler, M. (1998). Plausibility and recovery from garden paths: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 24, 940–961.Google Scholar
Pickering, M., & Van Gompel, R. (2006). Syntactic parsing. In Traxler, M. & Gernsbacher, M. (Eds.), The handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 455–503). San Diego, CA: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pritchett, B. (1992). Grammatical competence and parsing performance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 372–422.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, L., Gullberg, M., & Indefrey, P. (2008). Online pronoun resolution in L2 discourse: L1 influence and general learner effects. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 333–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivey, M. J., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Syntactic ambiguity resolution in discourse: Modeling the effects of referential context and lexical frequency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 24, 1521–1543.Google ScholarPubMed
Stowe, L. (1989). Thematic structures and sentence comprehension. In Carlson, G. & Tanenhaus, M. (Eds.). Linguistic structure in language processing (pp. 319–356). Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturt, P., & Crocker, M. (1996). Monotonic syntactic processing: A cross-linguistic study of attachment and reanalysis. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11, 449–494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturt, P., Pickering, M., & Crocker, M. (1999). Structural change and reanalysis difficulty in language comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, 136–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tabor, W., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1999). Dynamical models of sentence processing. Cognitive Science, 23, 491–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trueswell, J. C., & Kim, A. E. (1998). How to prune a garden path by nipping it in the bud: Fast priming of verb argument structure. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 102–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Gompel, R. P. G., & Pickering, M. J. (2001). Lexical guidance in sentence processing: A note on Adams, Clifton, and Mitchell (1998). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 851–857.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vasishth, S., & Lewis, R. L. (2006). Symbolic models of human sentence processing. In Brown, K. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed.). New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Weinberg, A. (1999). A minimalist theory of human sentence processing. In Epstein, S. & Hornstein, N. (Eds.), Working minimalism (pp. 283–315). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Williams, J. (2006). Incremental interpretation in second language sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, J., Möbius, P., & Kim, C. (2001). Native and non-native processing of English wh-questions: Parsing strategies and plausibility constraints. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 509–540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar