Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:50:20.018Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Processing transfer: Language-specific processing strategies as a source of interlanguage variation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2010

Michael Harrington
Michael Harrington*
Affiliation:
International University of Japan
*
Michael Harrington, International University of Japan, Yamato-machi, Minami Uonuma-gun Niigata 949–72, Japan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A sentence interpretation experiment based on the functionalist Competition Model of speech processing (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982) was administered to three groups of university-age English L1, Japanese ESL, and Japanese L1 subjects (n = 12 per group) in an attempt to elicit evidence for (1) processing strategies characteristic of the Japanese and English L1 groups and, (2) transfer/influence of Japanese L1 strategies on the English sentence interpretations of the Japanese ESL group. Subjects selected the subject/actor of simple sentences incorporating word order, animacy, and stress cues in random converging and competing orders. The English L1 and ESL groups were tested on English sentences and the Japanese L1 group tested on Japanese sentences. The Japanese L1 interpretations were most heavily influenced by animacy cues, while the English L1 group showed a higher overall sensitivity to word order manipulations. The ESL group resembled the Japanese L1 group in reliance on animacy cues, with the exception of allowing inanimate nouns to act as subjects. While the ESL group showed greater sensitivity to word order effects than the Japanese L1 group, no “second-noun” strategy (i.e., systematically interpreting the NNV and VNN orders as left- and right-dislocated SOV and VOS orders) was evident.

Although the findings were generally consistent with previous research, the presence of contrasting response patterns in the English L1 group suggests caution in attempting to typify languages on the basis of processing strategies drawn from probablistic tendencies evident in grouped data, and leaves open the role of such processing strategy typologies as a potential source of variation in inter-language.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 351 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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

Ansell, B. J., & Flowers, C. R. (1982). Aphasics adults' use of heuristic and structural linguistic cues for sentence comprehension. Brain and Language, 16, 61–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1981). Second language acquisition from a functionalist perspective: pragmatic, semantic and perceptual strategies. In Winitz, H. (Ed.), Annals of the New York Academy of Science Conference on Native and Foreign Language Acquisition. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1982). Functionalist approach to grammar. In Gleitman, L. R. & Wanner, E. (Eds.), Language acquisition: State of the art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1985). Competition, variation and language learning: What is not universal in language acquisition. Manuscript. University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Bates, E., McNew, S., MacWhinney, B., Devescovi, A., & Smith, S. (1982). Functional constraints on sentence processing. Cognition, 11, 245–299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, E., MacWhinney, B., Caselli, C., Devescovi, A., Natale, F., & Venza, A. (1984). A cross-linguistic study of the development of sentence interpretation strategies. Child Development, 55, 341–354.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bever, T. G. (1970). The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In Hayes, J. R. (Ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Bridges, A. (1980). SVO comprehension strategies reconsidered: The evidence of individual patterns of response. Journal of Child Language, 7, 89–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chapman, R. S., & Miller, J. F. (1975). Word order in early two and three word utterances. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 18, 355–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corder, S. P. (1983). A role for the mother tongue. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Duff, P. A. (1985). Syntacticization of topic in Japanese and Mandarin students of English: A test of Rutherford's model. Department of ESL Occasional Paper No. 12, University of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eckman, F. (1981). On predicting phonological difficulty in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, 18–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felix, S. (1985). More evidence on competing cognitive systems. Second Language Research, 1, 47–72.Google Scholar
Frankel, D. G., & Arbel, T. (1981). Developmental changes in assigning agent relations in Hebrew: The interaction between word order and structural cues. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 32, 102–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallaher, A. J. (1981). Syntactic versus semantic performance of agrammatic Broca's aphasics on tests of constituent-element ordering. Journal of Speech and Hearning, 24, 217–228.Google ScholarPubMed
Gass, S. (1980). An investigation of syntactic transfer in adult L2 learners. In Scarcella, R. & Krashen, S. (Eds.), Research in second language acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Gass, S. (1983). Language transfer and universal grammatical relations. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Gass, S. (1985). Empirical basis for universal hypothesis in interlanguage. Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (Eds.) (1983). Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Givon, T. (1979). From discourse to syntax: Grammar as a processing strategy. In Givon, T. (Ed.), Syntax and Semantics. 12. Discourse and syntax. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Hakuta, K. (1982). Interaction between particles and word order in the acquisition of Japanese. Developmental Psychology, 18, 62–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. (1981). The semantic diversity of basic grammatical relations in English and German. Linguistiche Berichte, 75, 1–25.Google Scholar
Heeschen, C. (1980). Strategies for decoding actor–object relations. Cortex, 16, 5–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hyltenstam, K. (1977). Implicational patterns in interlanguage syntax. Language Learning, 27, 383–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordens, P. (1983). Discourse functions in interlanguage morphology. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Kellerman, E., & Smith, M. Sharwood. (Eds.), (1986). Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition. New York: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Kuno, S. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kuno, S. (1978). Japanese: A characteristic (S)OV language. In Lehmann, W. P. (Ed.), Syntactictypology. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Lehmann, W. P. (1978). English: A characteristic SVO language. In Lehmann, W. P. (Ed.), Syntactic typology. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B., Bates, E., & Kliegl, R. (1984). Cue validity and sentence interpretation in English, German and Italian. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 127–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maratsos, M., (1974). Children who get worse at understanding the passive: A replication of Bever. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 3, 65–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W., & Tyler, L. K. (1980). The temporal structure of spoken language understanding. Cognition, 8, 1–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Martin, S. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mazurkewich, I. (1984). The acquisition of the dative alternation by second language learners and linguistic theory. Language Learning, 34, 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olshtain, E. (1983). Sociocultural competence and language transfer: The case of apology. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Pauley, A., & Sidey, F. H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Richards, J. R. & Schmidt, R. W. (Eds.), Language and communication. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Rutherford, W. E. (1983). Language typology and language transfer. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Sajavaara, K. (1986). Transfer and second language speech processing. In Kellerman, E. & Smith, M. Sharwood (Eds.), Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition. New York: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Scarcella, B. (1983). Discourse accent in second language preformance. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Slobin, D., & Bever, T. G. (1982). Children use canonical sentence schemas: A cross-linguistic study of word order and inflections. Cognition, 12, 229–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. D., & Mimica, I. (1984). Agrammatism in a case-inflected language: Comprehension of agent-object relations. Brain and Language, 21, 274–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E. (1976). Semantic primacy in first and second language acquisition. Interlanguage studies bulletin, 1, 137–165.Google Scholar
SPSS Inc. (1985). SPSSX Advanced Statistical Guide. Chicago: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Strohner, H., & Nelson, K. (1974). The young child's development of sentence comprehension: The influence of event probability, non-verbal context, syntactic form and strategies. Child Development, 44, 737–740.Google Scholar
Tarone, E. (1980). Some influence of the syllabic structure of interlanguage phonology. International Review of Applied Linguistics 18, 139–152.Google Scholar
White, L. (1985). The pro-drop parameter in adult second language acquisition. Language Learning, 35, 47–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wulfeck, B. B., Juarez, L., Bates, E. A., & Kilborn, K. (1986). In Vaid, S. (Ed.), Language processing in bilinguals: Psycholinguisitic and neuropsychological perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Xia-Chun, Miao. (1981). Word order and semantic strategies in Chinese. International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 6, 109–122.Google Scholar
Zobl, H. (1983). L1 acquisition, age of L2 acquisition and learning of word order. In Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (Eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury.Google Scholar
Zobl, H. (1984). Typological control in interlanguage. Unpublished manuscript. Universitie de Moncton.Google Scholar