Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T09:33:44.112Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

PARSING AMBIGUOUS RELATIVE CLAUSES IN L2 ENGLISH

LEARNER SENSITIVITY TO PROSODIC CUES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2020

Heather Goad Open the ORCID record for Heather Goad [Opens in a new window] ,
Natália Brambatti Guzzo Open the ORCID record for Natália Brambatti Guzzo [Opens in a new window]  and
Lydia White Open the ORCID record for Lydia White [Opens in a new window]
Heather Goad*
Affiliation:
McGill University
Natália Brambatti Guzzo
Affiliation:
McGill University
Lydia White
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
* Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Heather Goad, Department of Linguistics, McGill University, 1085 Dr. Penfield, Montreal, QC H3A 1A7, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We investigate effects of prosodic cues on interpretation of ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) in English by Spanish-speaking learners. English and Spanish differ in default preference for RC attachment: English has a weak low attachment (LA) preference (RC modifies NP2); Spanish has a stronger high attachment (HA) preference (RC modifies NP1). We conducted an interpretation task with auditorily presented stimuli to examine whether prosodic cues determine attachment. Target items were manipulated for position of break and length of RC, NP1, and NP2. For both groups, break and length are significant. For the learners, proficiency interacts with break suggesting L1 transfer: lower proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to LA; higher proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to HA. Lower proficiency learners are more likely to choose LA overall, suggesting a recency effect. Our results confirm the importance of using aural stimuli when testing interpretation of ambiguous sentences.

Keywords

Sentence parsingrelative clause attachment preferencesambiguity resolutionprosodic cuesconstituent length
Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 83 - 108
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

Footnotes

We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank our collaborators on earlier related work, Hyekyung Hwang and Moti Lieberman, as well as Alex Friesen, Dan Goodhue, Jennifer Morehouse, and Adèle-Elise Prévost for research assistance, and Guilherme Garcia for help with the statistics. This work was supported by grants from SSHRC 410-2011-0809, 435-2015-0490 and FRQSC 2010-SE-130727, 2016-SE-188196. All authors contributed equally.

References

REFERENCES

Akaike, H. (1974). A new look at the statistical model identification. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 19, 716–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D. M. (2010). lme4: Mixed-effects modeling with R [Unpublished manuscript]. Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235709638Google Scholar
Bergmann, A., Armstrong, M., & Maday, K. (2008). Relative clause attachment in English and Spanish: A production study. In Barbosa, P. A., Madureira, S., & Reis, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2008 (pp. 505–508). International Speech Communication Association.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2019). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 6.0.46) [Computer software]. http://www.praat.orgGoogle Scholar
Carreiras, M., & Clifton, C. Jr. (1993). Relative clause interpretation preferences in Spanish and English. Language and Speech, 36, 353–372.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carreiras, M., & Clifton, C. Jr. (1999). Another word on parsing relative clauses: Eyetracking evidence from Spanish and English. Memory & Cognition, 27, 826–833.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carreiras, M., Salillas, E., & Barber, H. (2004). Event-related potentials elicited during parsing of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish. Cognitive Brain Research, 20, 98–105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuetos, F., & Mitchell, D. C. (1988). Cross-linguistic differences in parsing: Restrictions on the use of the late closure strategy in Spanish. Cognition, 30, 73–105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cunnings, I. (2017). Parsing and working memory in bilingual sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20, 659–678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dekydtspotter, L., Donaldson, B., Edmonds, A. C., Liljestrand Fultz, A., & Petrush, R. A. (2008). Syntactic and prosodic computations in the resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguity by English-French learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 453–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Cruz-Pavía, I., & Elordieta, G. (2015). Prosodic phrasing of relative clauses with two possible antecedents in Spanish: A comparison of Spanish native speakers and L1 Basque bilingual speakers. Folia Linguistica, 49, 185–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dussias, P. E. (2003). Syntactic ambiguity resolution in L2 learners: Some effects of bilinguality on L1 and L2 processing strategies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 529–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dussias, P. E., & Sagarra, N. (2007). The effect of exposure on syntactic parsing in Spanish-English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 101–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., Marinis, T., & Clahsen, H. (2003). Children’s processing of ambiguous sentences: A study of relative clause attachment. Language Acquisition, 11, 127–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., Roberts, L., Marinis, T., & Gross, R. (2003). The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 453–489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández, E. M. (1999). Processing strategies in second language acquisition: Some preliminary results. In Klein, E. C. & Martohardjono, G. (Eds.), The development of second language grammars: A generative approach (pp. 217–239). John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández, E. M. (2002). Relative clause attachment in bilinguals and monolinguals. In Heredia, R. R. & Altarriba, J. (Eds.), Bilingual sentence processing (pp. 187–215). North-Holland/Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández, E. M. (2003). Bilingual sentence processing: Relative clause attachment in English and Spanish. John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández, E. M. (2005). The prosody produced by Spanish–English bilinguals: A preliminary investigation and implications for sentence processing. Revista da Associação Brasileira de Linguística, 4, 109–141.Google Scholar
Fernández, E. M. (2010). Reading aloud in two languages: The interplay of syntax and prosody. In VanPatten, B. & Jegerski, J. (Eds.), Research in second language processing and parsing (pp. 297–317). John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. D. (1998). Learning to parse. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27, 285–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. D. (2002). Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In Hirotani, M. (Ed.), NELS 32: Proceedings of the thirty-second annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (pp. 113–132). GLSA.Google Scholar
Frazier, L. (1978). On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.Google Scholar
Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (1996). Construal. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (1997). Construal: Overview, motivation and some new evidence. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26, 277–295.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frenck-Mestre, C. (2002). An on-line look at sentence processing in the second language. In Heredia, R. R. & Altarriba, J. (Eds.), Bilingual sentence processing: Advances in psychology (pp. 217–236). North-Holland/Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, E., Pearlmutter, N., Canseco-González, E., & Hickok, G. (1996). Recency preference in the human sentence processing mechanism. Cognition, 59, 23–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibson, E., Pearlmutter, N., & Torrens, V. (1999). Recency and lexical preferences in Spanish. Memory & Cognition, 27, 603–611.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilboy, E., Sopena, J.-M., Clifton, C., & Frazier, L. (1995). Argument structure and association preferences in Spanish and English complex NPs. Cognition, 54, 131–167.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gussenhoven, C. (2004). The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hemforth, B., Fernandez, S., Clifton, C., Frazier, L., Konieczny, L., & Walter, M. (2015). Relative clause attachment in German, English, Spanish and French: Effects of position and length. Lingua, 166, 43–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopp, H. (2014). Working memory effects in the L2 processing of ambiguous relative clauses. Language Acquisition, 21, 250–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hwang, H., Lieberman, M., Goad, H., & White, L. (2011). Syntactic ambiguity resolution: Effects of prosodic breaks and prosodic length. In Washburn, M. B., McKinney-Bock, K., Varis, E., Sawyer, A., & Tomaszewicz, B. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 267–274). Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Igoa, J. M., Carreiras, M., & Meseguer, E. (1998). A study on late closure in Spanish: Principle-grounded vs. frequency-based accounts of attachment preferences. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51A, 561–592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jegerski, J. (2018). Sentence processing in Spanish as a heritage language: A self-paced reading study of relative clause attachment. Language Learning, 68, 598–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jegerski, J., Keating, G. D., & VanPatten, B. (2016). On-line relative clause attachment strategy in heritage speakers of Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism, 20, 254–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jun, S.-A. (2003). Prosodic phrasing and attachment preferences. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 219–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jun, S.-A. (2010). The implicit prosodic hypothesis and overt prosody in English. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25, 1201–1233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakshmanan, U. (2009). Child second language acquisition. In Ritchie, W. C. & Bhatia, T. K. (Eds.), The new handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 377–399). Emerald.Google Scholar
Liljestrand Fultz, A. (2007). Prosody in syntactic disambiguation in English–French interlanguage. In Caunt-Nulton, H., Kulatilake, S., & Woo, I.-H. (Eds.), BUCLD 31: Proceedings of the 31st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 394–405). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Pan, H.-Y., Schimke, S., & Felser, C. (2015). Referential context effects in non-native relative clause ambiguity resolution. International Journal of Bilingualism, 19, 298–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson Education Inc. (2008). Versant English Test. https://www.versanttests.com/Google Scholar
Pynte, J., & Colonna, S. (2000). Decoupling syntactic parsing from visual inspection: The case of relative clause attachment in French. In Kennedy, A., Radach, R., Heller, D., & Pynte, J. (Eds.), Reading as a perceptual process (pp. 529–547). Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, D., Abdelghany, H., & Fodor, J. D. (2000). More evidence of implicit prosody in silent reading: French, English and Arabic relative clauses. Poster presented at the 13th annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, La Jolla, CA.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team. (2019). R: A language and environment for statistical computing.Google Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user’s guide. Psychology Software Tools Inc.Google Scholar
Swets, B., Desmet, T., Hambrick, D., & Ferreira, F. (2007). The role of working memory in syntactic ambiguity resolution: A psychometric approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 64–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed