Pub Date : 2024-03-07DOI: 10.1177/02676583241229280
Manfred Pienemann, Anke Lenzing, Howard Nicholas
In this article we address two key questions in the application of dynamical systems theory (DST) to second language acquisition (SLA) that have not been resolved in recent debates about this issue. The first question relates to reductionism. Is an antireductionist position a necessary element of DST? We show that the radical antireductionist stance put forward by key movers of the application of DST to SLA neither follows from the mathematics of DST nor from the application of DST to science and that radical antireductionism results in an impasse for empirical research. In contrast, we argue that reductionism offers ways in which theory-derived hypotheses can be formed about subsystems that can be studied empirically using DST mathematics. The second question relates to intentionality. Are physical systems and mental systems similar enough to justify applying DST principles based in the physical sciences to processes in the human mind? Following Tschacher, we argue that current evidence suggests that there is a limited class of mental phenomena that can arise from physical phenomena. It is only this class of mental phenomena that can currently be modeled using DST mathematics. We offer a discussion of these perspectives to indicate how important it is to resolve these fundamental questions. In our view, these fundamental issues need resolution to put the application of DST to SLA on a solid conceptual and empirical footing.
{"title":"Can dynamical systems theory be applied to second language acquisition? The issues of reductionism and intentionality","authors":"Manfred Pienemann, Anke Lenzing, Howard Nicholas","doi":"10.1177/02676583241229280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583241229280","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we address two key questions in the application of dynamical systems theory (DST) to second language acquisition (SLA) that have not been resolved in recent debates about this issue. The first question relates to reductionism. Is an antireductionist position a necessary element of DST? We show that the radical antireductionist stance put forward by key movers of the application of DST to SLA neither follows from the mathematics of DST nor from the application of DST to science and that radical antireductionism results in an impasse for empirical research. In contrast, we argue that reductionism offers ways in which theory-derived hypotheses can be formed about subsystems that can be studied empirically using DST mathematics. The second question relates to intentionality. Are physical systems and mental systems similar enough to justify applying DST principles based in the physical sciences to processes in the human mind? Following Tschacher, we argue that current evidence suggests that there is a limited class of mental phenomena that can arise from physical phenomena. It is only this class of mental phenomena that can currently be modeled using DST mathematics. We offer a discussion of these perspectives to indicate how important it is to resolve these fundamental questions. In our view, these fundamental issues need resolution to put the application of DST to SLA on a solid conceptual and empirical footing.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140076448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-04DOI: 10.1177/02676583241232218
Shuo Feng, Kailun Zhang
The present study aims to explore how second language (L2) speakers process four types of presupposition triggers in an online self-paced reading task and an offline acceptability judgment task. The four types of triggers are definite expressions with the, the factive verb know, the change-of-state verb stop and the additive particle also. Of particular interest is L2 speakers’ ability to accommodate a presupposition when it is neither falsified nor supported in the context. The results showed that the L2 speakers accommodated presuppositions in a native-like manner in the offline judgment task, and that accommodation was taxing and less automatic in online processing. Additionally, advanced L2 speakers’ interpretations were affected by the types of presupposition triggers. We discuss the results in connection to the Interface Hypothesis and hope to contribute to a more precise understanding of information integration in L2 processing, as well as L2 acquisition at the semantics–pragmatics interface.
{"title":"Online processing and offline judgments of different types of presupposition triggers by second language speakers","authors":"Shuo Feng, Kailun Zhang","doi":"10.1177/02676583241232218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583241232218","url":null,"abstract":"The present study aims to explore how second language (L2) speakers process four types of presupposition triggers in an online self-paced reading task and an offline acceptability judgment task. The four types of triggers are definite expressions with the, the factive verb know, the change-of-state verb stop and the additive particle also. Of particular interest is L2 speakers’ ability to accommodate a presupposition when it is neither falsified nor supported in the context. The results showed that the L2 speakers accommodated presuppositions in a native-like manner in the offline judgment task, and that accommodation was taxing and less automatic in online processing. Additionally, advanced L2 speakers’ interpretations were affected by the types of presupposition triggers. We discuss the results in connection to the Interface Hypothesis and hope to contribute to a more precise understanding of information integration in L2 processing, as well as L2 acquisition at the semantics–pragmatics interface.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140036296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-31DOI: 10.1177/02676583231217166
James Turner
This study analyses the production of French /y/ and /u/ by 42 native English learners of French (ELoF) at the start and end of a Residence Abroad (RA) in a French-speaking country. As an approximation of both phonological and phonetic development, categorical change is teased apart from gradient change using k-medoid clustering of acoustic data and different input measures are tested as predictors of both types of development. Results of the phonological analysis reveal that while no change occurs for /y/, the proportion that learners correctly use their back vowel in /u/ contexts increases over the RA. The quantity of French input declared over the RA is a significant predictor of this categorical change, especially the amount of auditory and visual engagement (e.g. listening and reading in French). Results of the phonetic analysis indicate, instead, that /y/ becomes more target-like over the RA, while /u/ makes less progress, suggesting a partial mismatch between the phonological and phonetic levels. Nevertheless, the phonetic development of /u/ is more substantial for individuals who: (1) have been learning French longer, (2) have yet to experience naturalistic exposure by the start of the RA, and (3) are English language teachers over the RA rather than students at a foreign institution. Taken together, these results have implications for the link between second language (L2) input and L2 production, the assumptions of L2 speech models, and the relationship between different levels of linguistic representation in L2 speech learning.
本研究分析了 42 名母语为英语的法语学习者（ELoF）在法语国家的海外学习（RA）开始和结束时的法语 /y/ 和 /u/ 的发音情况。作为语音和音素发展的近似值，利用声学数据的 k-medoid 聚类将分类变化与梯度变化区分开来，并测试不同的输入测量作为两种发展类型的预测因子。语音分析结果表明，虽然/y/没有发生变化，但学习者在/u/语境中正确使用后元音的比例随着 RA 的增加而增加。在RA期间，法语输入的数量对这一分类变化具有重要的预测作用，尤其是听觉和视觉参与的数量（如法语听力和阅读）。语音分析的结果表明，/y/在RA过程中变得更像目标音，而/u/则进展较小，这表明语音和语音水平之间存在部分不匹配。尽管如此，/u/的语音发展在以下人群中更为显著：(1) 学习法语的时间较长，(2) 在 RA 开始时尚未经历自然接触，(3) 在 RA 期间是英语教师而不是外国院校的学生。总之，这些结果对第二语言（L2）输入和 L2 生产之间的联系、L2 语音模型的假设以及 L2 语音学习中不同语言表征水平之间的关系都有影响。
{"title":"The role of L2 input in developing a novel L2 contrast phonetically and phonologically: Production evidence from a residence abroad context","authors":"James Turner","doi":"10.1177/02676583231217166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231217166","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyses the production of French /y/ and /u/ by 42 native English learners of French (ELoF) at the start and end of a Residence Abroad (RA) in a French-speaking country. As an approximation of both phonological and phonetic development, categorical change is teased apart from gradient change using k-medoid clustering of acoustic data and different input measures are tested as predictors of both types of development. Results of the phonological analysis reveal that while no change occurs for /y/, the proportion that learners correctly use their back vowel in /u/ contexts increases over the RA. The quantity of French input declared over the RA is a significant predictor of this categorical change, especially the amount of auditory and visual engagement (e.g. listening and reading in French). Results of the phonetic analysis indicate, instead, that /y/ becomes more target-like over the RA, while /u/ makes less progress, suggesting a partial mismatch between the phonological and phonetic levels. Nevertheless, the phonetic development of /u/ is more substantial for individuals who: (1) have been learning French longer, (2) have yet to experience naturalistic exposure by the start of the RA, and (3) are English language teachers over the RA rather than students at a foreign institution. Taken together, these results have implications for the link between second language (L2) input and L2 production, the assumptions of L2 speech models, and the relationship between different levels of linguistic representation in L2 speech learning.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"71 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139130500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-06DOI: 10.1177/02676583231214070
Sílvia Perpiñán, Michael T. Putnam
This special issue revisits a classic topic in linguistic theory, A-bar movement, applied to developing and bilingual grammars. We claim that A-bar movement, or filler-gap dependencies, is still the quintessential linguistic phenomenon to illustrate the interaction between the biological endowment, the experience with language (past and present), and other cognitive considerations non-specific to the faculty of language (i.e. the three factors in language design discussed in contemporary Chomskyan approaches). These three factors are present in non-native and bilingual populations, in which asymmetries between grammatical knowledge and other factors are even more apparent, in such a way that we can observe the role of each of these components independently. The appearance of new data from unique populations of bilinguals and novel experimental methodologies justify the collection of articles gathered in this volume. These studies inform new and old theoretical debates about the accessibility to Universal Grammar (UG) in nonnative grammars, the relationship between the grammar and the parser, and the role of individual differences.
{"title":"Filler-gap dependencies in bi- and multilingual grammars: Findings, challenges, and unknowns","authors":"Sílvia Perpiñán, Michael T. Putnam","doi":"10.1177/02676583231214070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231214070","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue revisits a classic topic in linguistic theory, A-bar movement, applied to developing and bilingual grammars. We claim that A-bar movement, or filler-gap dependencies, is still the quintessential linguistic phenomenon to illustrate the interaction between the biological endowment, the experience with language (past and present), and other cognitive considerations non-specific to the faculty of language (i.e. the three factors in language design discussed in contemporary Chomskyan approaches). These three factors are present in non-native and bilingual populations, in which asymmetries between grammatical knowledge and other factors are even more apparent, in such a way that we can observe the role of each of these components independently. The appearance of new data from unique populations of bilinguals and novel experimental methodologies justify the collection of articles gathered in this volume. These studies inform new and old theoretical debates about the accessibility to Universal Grammar (UG) in nonnative grammars, the relationship between the grammar and the parser, and the role of individual differences.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"30 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138595353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-30DOI: 10.1177/02676583231202609
Yi-ching Su, Ho-Yun Hsieh, Devin Tankersley, Chia-Hsing Chen
This study reports on findings from two experiments investigating the interpretive patterns of overt pronouns in an embedded subject position with three types of matrix subjects (i.e. a referential NP, a quantified NP, or a wh-phrase) in Mandarin, English, and Japanese. According to the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC), overt pronouns in null-subject languages cannot have bound-variable interpretation, i.e. they cannot be bound by a quantified NP or a wh-phrase. This constraint has been assumed to be universal and accessible for learners at early stages of second language (L2) acquisition. The results of Experiment 1 show that, although Mandarin is a null-subject language, Mandarin and English native speakers as well as L2 learners of both languages demonstrated similar patterns of interpretation, accepting both coreference readings and bound-variable readings, the latter being contrary to the prediction of the OPC. The results of Experiment 2 show that Japanese native speakers differed from Mandarin native speakers in that the former accepted both coreference readings and bound-variable readings at chance levels. These findings clearly demonstrate that the OPC cannot be characterized as a property of null-subject languages generally, given the lack of effect in Mandarin, and there are cross-linguistic variations in interpretive patterns for overt pronouns among languages that exhibit the effect.
{"title":"On null-subject languages and the Overt Pronoun Constraint: A comparison of English, Mandarin and Japanese","authors":"Yi-ching Su, Ho-Yun Hsieh, Devin Tankersley, Chia-Hsing Chen","doi":"10.1177/02676583231202609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231202609","url":null,"abstract":"This study reports on findings from two experiments investigating the interpretive patterns of overt pronouns in an embedded subject position with three types of matrix subjects (i.e. a referential NP, a quantified NP, or a wh-phrase) in Mandarin, English, and Japanese. According to the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC), overt pronouns in null-subject languages cannot have bound-variable interpretation, i.e. they cannot be bound by a quantified NP or a wh-phrase. This constraint has been assumed to be universal and accessible for learners at early stages of second language (L2) acquisition. The results of Experiment 1 show that, although Mandarin is a null-subject language, Mandarin and English native speakers as well as L2 learners of both languages demonstrated similar patterns of interpretation, accepting both coreference readings and bound-variable readings, the latter being contrary to the prediction of the OPC. The results of Experiment 2 show that Japanese native speakers differed from Mandarin native speakers in that the former accepted both coreference readings and bound-variable readings at chance levels. These findings clearly demonstrate that the OPC cannot be characterized as a property of null-subject languages generally, given the lack of effect in Mandarin, and there are cross-linguistic variations in interpretive patterns for overt pronouns among languages that exhibit the effect.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":" 16","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139197514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-30DOI: 10.1177/02676583231202608
Alejandro Cuza, Laura Solano-Escobar
The present study examined the production of inalienable possession with body parts in Spanish among 20 school-age children of Mexican-born parents born and raised in the United States. The results were compared to those of 20 first-generation immigrant parents (main input providers), 27 Spanish-dominant children of similar age, and 12 Spanish monolingual parents living in Mexico. Group and individual results obtained via a question-and-answer task showed low proportion of clitic se plus the definite determiner (e.g. Ella se rompió el brazo ‘She broke her arm’) among the heritage children in their production of the inalienable construal. The heritage children significantly overextended the possessive determiner instead of the definite determiner in contrast to their parents, the Spanish-dominant children and monolingual parents. Results also showed a significant role for dominance and language experience in the degree of morphosyntactic variability among heritage children, supporting recent research. The higher the Spanish dominance and the more Spanish contact and use the heritage children had, the more they aligned closer to their parents and the Spanish-dominant children in the use of the definite determiner. There were no divergences with the use of the definite determiner in alienable contexts. We argue for protracted development in child heritage Spanish stemming from crosslinguistic influence effects, minority language dominance and linguistic experience.
本研究考察了在美国出生和长大的墨西哥裔父母的 20 名学龄儿童用西班牙语对身体部位进行不可分割占有的情况。研究结果与 20 名第一代移民父母（主要输入者）、27 名年龄相仿的西班牙语儿童和 12 名居住在墨西哥的西班牙语单语父母的结果进行了比较。通过问答任务获得的小组和个人结果显示，在制作不可分割构式时，传统儿童使用se加定语从句的比例较低（例如：Ella se rompió el brazo'她摔断了胳膊'）。与他们的父母、西班牙语占主导地位的儿童和只会一种语言的父母相比，传承儿童明显过度扩展了占有定语而不是定语从句。研究结果还显示，主导地位和语言经验在遗传儿童的形态句法变异程度中起着重要作用，这与最近的研究结果相吻合。西班牙语主导地位越高、接触和使用西班牙语越多的后裔儿童，在定语从句的使用上就越接近其父母和西班牙语主导地位的儿童。在可疏远的语境中，定语从句的使用没有差异。我们认为，跨语言影响效应、少数民族语言主导地位和语言经验都会导致儿童传承西班牙语的长期发展。
{"title":"Protracted development in child heritage Spanish: Evidence from inalienable possession","authors":"Alejandro Cuza, Laura Solano-Escobar","doi":"10.1177/02676583231202608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231202608","url":null,"abstract":"The present study examined the production of inalienable possession with body parts in Spanish among 20 school-age children of Mexican-born parents born and raised in the United States. The results were compared to those of 20 first-generation immigrant parents (main input providers), 27 Spanish-dominant children of similar age, and 12 Spanish monolingual parents living in Mexico. Group and individual results obtained via a question-and-answer task showed low proportion of clitic se plus the definite determiner (e.g. Ella se rompió el brazo ‘She broke her arm’) among the heritage children in their production of the inalienable construal. The heritage children significantly overextended the possessive determiner instead of the definite determiner in contrast to their parents, the Spanish-dominant children and monolingual parents. Results also showed a significant role for dominance and language experience in the degree of morphosyntactic variability among heritage children, supporting recent research. The higher the Spanish dominance and the more Spanish contact and use the heritage children had, the more they aligned closer to their parents and the Spanish-dominant children in the use of the definite determiner. There were no divergences with the use of the definite determiner in alienable contexts. We argue for protracted development in child heritage Spanish stemming from crosslinguistic influence effects, minority language dominance and linguistic experience.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"13 31","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139197350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-31DOI: 10.1177/02676583231202606
Panpan Yao, Xin Jiang, Xinwei Chen, Xingshan Li
The present study explored the processing units of high-proficiency second language (L2) Chinese learners in on-line reading in an eye-tracking experiment. The critical aim was to investigate how learners segment continuous characters into words without the aid of word boundary demarcations. Based on previous studies, the embedded words of 2- and 3-character incremental words were manipulated to be either plausible or implausible with the preceding verbs, while the incremental words themselves were always plausible. The results revealed an effect of the plausibility manipulation, which suggested that L2 Chinese learners activated embedded words first and integrated embedded words with previous sentence context as soon as they read them.
{"title":"Explore the processing unit of L2 Chinese learners in on-line Chinese reading","authors":"Panpan Yao, Xin Jiang, Xinwei Chen, Xingshan Li","doi":"10.1177/02676583231202606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231202606","url":null,"abstract":"The present study explored the processing units of high-proficiency second language (L2) Chinese learners in on-line reading in an eye-tracking experiment. The critical aim was to investigate how learners segment continuous characters into words without the aid of word boundary demarcations. Based on previous studies, the embedded words of 2- and 3-character incremental words were manipulated to be either plausible or implausible with the preceding verbs, while the incremental words themselves were always plausible. The results revealed an effect of the plausibility manipulation, which suggested that L2 Chinese learners activated embedded words first and integrated embedded words with previous sentence context as soon as they read them.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"88 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135872008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article introduces the CELI corpus, a new learner corpus of written Italian consisting of ca. 600,000 tokens, evenly distributed among CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) proficiency levels B1, B2, C1 and C2. The collected texts derive from the language certification exams administered by the University for Foreigners of Perugia all around the world. The corpus contains rich metadata pertaining to text-related and learner-related variables. It expands the domain of learner corpora by being, among other things, both freely available online to the research community, and by focusing on a target language other than English. The article also presents and evaluates the POS-tagging procedure, thus contributing to best practices in learner corpus annotation.
{"title":"The CELI corpus: Design and linguistic annotation of a new online learner corpus","authors":"Stefania Spina, Irene Fioravanti, Luciana Forti, Fabio Zanda","doi":"10.1177/02676583231176370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231176370","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the CELI corpus, a new learner corpus of written Italian consisting of ca. 600,000 tokens, evenly distributed among CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) proficiency levels B1, B2, C1 and C2. The collected texts derive from the language certification exams administered by the University for Foreigners of Perugia all around the world. The corpus contains rich metadata pertaining to text-related and learner-related variables. It expands the domain of learner corpora by being, among other things, both freely available online to the research community, and by focusing on a target language other than English. The article also presents and evaluates the POS-tagging procedure, thus contributing to best practices in learner corpus annotation.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"253 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136102548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-12DOI: 10.1177/02676583231195306
Marisa Nagano, Gita Martohardjono
Research on second language (L2) pronoun use in null-argument languages has traditionally focused on whether or not a speaker’s first language (L1) also allows null pronouns. However, recent studies have pointed out that it is equally important to consider the specific linguistic properties of overt pronouns in the L1 and L2, which may differ even across two null-argument languages. This study investigates the interpretation and processing of overt pronouns in Japanese by speakers whose L1 (English) and L2 (Japanese) differ not only in whether they allow null arguments, but also in the relative involvement of structural and pragmatic constraints on overt pronoun interpretation. This combination of languages is particularly interesting because English and Japanese overt third-person subject pronouns can be considered at extreme ends of a spectrum: in English they are largely structurally constrained and show a consistent preference for a local subject antecedent, while in Japanese they are loosely constrained by pragmatic factors and show no consistent interpretation preference. Both interpretation and eye-tracking data is recorded, with results suggesting that the unique nature of overt pronouns in Japanese, including their rarity in the input, leads to partial knowledge of them on the lexical level rather than implicating the larger syntactic system or syntax–pragmatics interface.
{"title":"Language-specific properties and overt pronoun interpretation:The case of L2 Japanese","authors":"Marisa Nagano, Gita Martohardjono","doi":"10.1177/02676583231195306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583231195306","url":null,"abstract":"Research on second language (L2) pronoun use in null-argument languages has traditionally focused on whether or not a speaker’s first language (L1) also allows null pronouns. However, recent studies have pointed out that it is equally important to consider the specific linguistic properties of overt pronouns in the L1 and L2, which may differ even across two null-argument languages. This study investigates the interpretation and processing of overt pronouns in Japanese by speakers whose L1 (English) and L2 (Japanese) differ not only in whether they allow null arguments, but also in the relative involvement of structural and pragmatic constraints on overt pronoun interpretation. This combination of languages is particularly interesting because English and Japanese overt third-person subject pronouns can be considered at extreme ends of a spectrum: in English they are largely structurally constrained and show a consistent preference for a local subject antecedent, while in Japanese they are loosely constrained by pragmatic factors and show no consistent interpretation preference. Both interpretation and eye-tracking data is recorded, with results suggesting that the unique nature of overt pronouns in Japanese, including their rarity in the input, leads to partial knowledge of them on the lexical level rather than implicating the larger syntactic system or syntax–pragmatics interface.","PeriodicalId":47414,"journal":{"name":"Second Language Research","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135969233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-12DOI: 10.1177/02676583231199426
Chia-Hsuan Liao, Ellen Lau
Event concepts of common verbs (e.g. eat, sleep) can be broadly shared across languages, but a given language’s rules for subcategorization are largely arbitrary and vary substantially across languages. When subcategorization information does not match between first language (L1) and second language (L2), how does this mismatch impact L2 speakers in real time? We hypothesized that subcategorization knowledge in L1 is particularly difficult for L2 speakers to override online. Event-related potential (ERP) responses were recorded from English sentences that include verbs that were ambitransitive in Mandarin but intransitive in English (* My sister listened the music). While L1 English speakers showed a prominent P600 effect to subcategorization violations, L2 English speakers whose L1 was Mandarin showed some sensitivity in offline responses but not in ERPs. This suggests that computing verb–argument relations, although seemingly one of the basic components of sentence comprehension, in fact requires accessing lexical syntax which may be vulnerable to L1 interference in L2. However, our exploratory analysis showed that more native-like behavioral accuracy was associated with a more native-like P600 effect, suggesting that, with enough experience, L2 speakers can ultimately overcome this interference.
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