By Native Speakers and Foreign Language Learners of English

THE PROCESSING OF AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES BY NATIVE SPEAKERS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

A. INTRODUCTION 1. Background Ambiguity is a common phenomenon in human language. It exists in both spoken and written language. In other words, it is pervasive in human linguistic expressions (Vuong 2010). Interestingly, however, people almost never notice ambiguity in spoken language. When someone says “I went to the bank,” people tend to interpret it as “I visited a financial institution where people can invest or borrow money.” The word “bank” in this case is not interpreted as “the side of a river.” People appear to ignore the fact that a bank does not only mean a financial institution. Perhaps, this is because in everyday conversation contexts help people guess the meaning of a bank. If the sentence is examined “in isolation,” the sentence is lexically ambiguous. Ambiguity occurs because the word “bank” has more than one meaning. In addition to lexical ambiguity, sentences can have more than one interpretation due to structural ambiguity, which means ambiguity that occurs when a sentence has more than one syntactic structure. A famous example of structure ambiguity is “I saw the boy with the binoculars.” The ambiguous part of the sentence is the prepositional phrase “with the binoculars.” The prepositional phrase may be interpreted as “the tools that I used for seeing the boy” or “the tools that the boy was holding.” If the sentence is taken out of context, it is confusing because it may represent two different events. Observing the above examples, it is interesting to investigate how the human mind handles the interpretation of ambiguous sentences when contexts are not present. In other words, what strategies are used by people to determine the correct meaning of ambiguous sentences? Is there such a thing that applies universally when it comes to interpreting ambiguous sentences? Thus, this proposal will seek to examine the universality of the human sentence processing mechanism. The proposal will also explore whether there are cross-linguistic variations in parsing ambiguous sentences.

1 | P a g e 2. Statement of Problems The present study tries to answer the following questions: (1) What types of strategies are employed in interpreting ambiguous sentences by native speakers of English?, (2) What types of strategies are employed in interpreting ambiguous sentences by foreign language learners of English?, and (3) How do sentence processing theories explain the use of those strategies? Some concepts used in the present study can be understood as followas: (1) Ambiguity is undesrtood as a linguistic form that has more than one meaning such as words or syntactic structures; (2) Late Closure can be defined as the situation that: “requires that new incoming elements be attached to the phrase currently being processed.” This strategy is also called “low attachment” (3) Minimal Attachment is a condition in a sentence that “requires that new incoming material be attached in a way that the fewest necessary phrase structure nodes are used in accordance with the well-formedness of language rules. This strategy is also called “high attachment.”

3. Research Objectives The present study tries to describe: (1) the types of strategies employed in interpreting ambiguous sentences by native speakers of English?, (2) the types of strategies employed in interpreting ambiguous sentences by foreign language learners of English?, and (3) theoretical explanation that can be derived from the data found. This study will also look at the differences of the processing ambiguous sentences between native speakers of English and the respondents speaking English as a foreign language. It will reveal the whether the cognitive language processing between the different respondents are different.

2 | P a g e B. RESEARCH ROAD MAP Penelitian yang sudah Penelitian yang akan dilakukan dilakukan Didi Sukyadi 1) Coreferences in 1)The non-iconic clause ordering English and and discourse function of Indonesian detached sentence-initial adverbial participle clauses in students theses and 2) The prototype of dissertations “anger” and “hate” 2)The positioning of temporal 3) The metaphorical use adverbial clauses in Indonesian of English address 3)The visual iconicity of UN test terms item illustration 4) A Semiotic analysis 4)Phonasthemes in Sundanese of cyber emoticons 5)The metaphors used in Indonesian Cartoons

Penelitian saat ini The iconic construction of gestures used by science teachers using English as the language of instruction Dadang Sudana 1) Relating the Prefix 1) The study of the relation 1) The study of how fonem is {meng-} and {ber-} between botanical stored and accessed in our brain. to verb roots (2007) vocabulary and thought 2) The study of how lexical and 2) Semantic Mapping of and attitude towards the grammatical morphemes are Affixation: an preservation of accessed and retrieved from the attempt to explain environment. brain. affixation in Bahasa 2) The semantic study 3) The study of how formulaic Indonesia (2007) concerning the the expressions are stored and 3) Derivative – Based affixation process of single retrieved from the brain. Materials and double afix. 4) The study of how sentences are Development to formulated to store messages Improve Students, 5) Studying the phenomenon of Vocabulary language lost and language Acquisition (2006) deficiency 6) Studying the relation betwwn brain and language activities Ruswan Dallyono 1) The Role of 1) The acquisition of TLUS 1) Syntax Literacy Education to subject in Indonesian by 2) Morphology National foreign language Development. learners of Indonesian. Unpublished. 2) The use of modality in 2) The Use of British English in Multimedia in The written academic text Teaching of Speaking.

3 | P a g e Unpublished. (2008) 3) The Use of heading in Academic Discourse. Educationalist Journal.

C. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE The mental sentence processing theories have been revolutionized by Fodor (1983) who wrote a book entitled “The modularity of the Mind” which says that we should not analogize the mind as a massive maximally interconnected network, such that, one's language processing can probably be influenced by what was eaten in the morning or the colour of one's eyes (Jackendoff 2000). According to this modular theory, the mind has distinct parts that have their own functions. They still constitute one system but they are not directly connected to one another. Sentence processing is not an exception. There must be one or several functions in the brain that take cake of the mechanisms involved. There are a number of theories that have developed within the modular framework, expounding how the mind works when an individual processes a sentence. One of these functions is the part that is called the parser. This function has an essential role in sentence processing. The parser is defined as something that determines the way a sentence is syntactically analyzed (Field 2004). Interestingly, the parser seems to work in a rule-based manner so that it does not randomly choose or prefer one specifically rather than another. Several theories will be described as to how the human parsing mechanisms work in the mind. According to the universal models of sentence processing, the human parsing mechanism has the same patterns across different languages and the parsing actions are dictated by grammatical constraints (Abney 1989; Crocker 1996; Gorrell 1995; Philips 1996; Pritchett 1988, 1992 in Papadopoulou 2006). In this perspective, people are predicted to interpret ambiguous sentences in relatively the same ways. Most universal parsing theories argue that parsing preferences are controlled by a locality principle which requires new information to be attached to the phrase being processed and which is thought to come from grammatical constraints (Philips 1996; Weinberg 2001 in Papadopoulou 2006). The locality principle maintains that the parser will attach a clause to the closest DP. This principle is also called “low attachment.”

4 | P a g e Philips (1996) says that by drawing upon the principle-based model, the grammar and the parser actually embody the same system. Thus, they are like two sides of a coin. They only differ in the sense that the parser is the type of grammar which operates within limited resources such as memory constraints and expectations. These are psycholinguistic variables that might interfere in interpreting ambiguous sentences (Papadopoulou 2006). Philips argues that all syntactic considerations involved in interpreting ambiguous sentences depend on a single universal principle called Branch Right. This syntactic tendency is determined by the mental grammar of the individual and is justified by an economy principle of grammar. The Branch Right principle requires that grammatical derivations move from left to right. In Frazier's term, this phenomenon is called Late Closure (Frazier 1978 in Papadopoulou 2006) or in Gibson's term it is called Recency (Gibson et al. 1996A, 1999 in Papadopoulou 2006 ). Nonetheless, the locality principle has failed to explain cross-linguistic experimental findings. Spanish subjects, for example, were found to prefer the minimal attachment strategy in interpreting ambiguous sentences (Fernandez and Cairns 2011). Another perspective to the processing of ambiguity is the Garden Path model. This model presupposes that there is a serial, modular and phrase-structure driven parsing mechanism in interpreting ambiguous sentences. According to this model, in responding to an ambiguous sentence, the parser chooses one analysis rather than using multiple syntactic analyses or postponing analyses of input (Clifton et al. 1991; Frazier 1987; Frazier and Rayner 1988 and Fodor1998 in Papadopoulou 2006). In cases, the first analysis is found to be inappropriate, the parser goes to the garden path and reanalyze the sentence. There are two phases to this model, namely the parsing and the interpretation phases. In the parsing phase the parser determines a structural analysis to the input received based on phrase structure rules. In this phase, the parser draws on syntactic information to get to the initially preferred analysis. Thus, the parsing phase represents a purely syntactic analysis, ignoring non-syntactic information such as semantics and pragmatics (Frazier 1987; Ferreira and Clifton 1986 in Papadopoulou 2006). The interpretation phase, however, makes use of all the non-syntactic resources such as semantics, pragmatics and other general knowledge. In this phase, the parser comes to a conclusion whether the analysis is correct or incorrect (Papadopoulou 2006). The parser has two principles of parsing, namely Late Closure and Minimal Attachment. The Late Closure principle states that new constituents should be attached to the phrase being processed. This principle is also known as the lower attachment strategy. The Minimal

5 | P a g e Attachment, however, states that new constituents should be attached in such a way that the fewest obligatory phrase nodes are employed for the sake of linguistic well-formedness (Papadopoulou 2006). These structural principles function to maximize the speed and efficiency for integrating new information into the occurring analysis. These two principles merge into what is called the First Analysis Constraint. The parser, therefore, is thought to be universal and all parsing differences occurring cross-linguistically are caused by specific grammatical variations among differing languages (Papadopoulou 2006). Fodor (1998: 291–293 in Papadopoulou 2006) assumes that the human sentence processor is designed to make a ‘least effort’ and its goal is to parse as fast as possible, therefore in his view the First Analysis Constraint tends to construct the simplest analysis, which is actually due to the ‘laziness’ property of the parser. The Closure principle is normally used in (1) and it dictates that the constituent to Sue should be attached to the last DP constituent (the letter) instead of the higher DP(the memo, the note) or to the VP (read):

(1) Alex read the note, the memo, and the letter to Sue.

This prediction has reaffirmed by several studies (Ferreira and Henderson 1991a; Frazier and Rayner 1982; Kennedy and Murray1984; Mitchell 1987a in Papadopoulou 2006). Nevertheless, the universal applicability of Late Closure has been questioned by Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) in (Papadopoulou 2006), who investigated RC attachment choices in English and Spanish. The Garden Path model presupposes that parsing principles are universal and valid across different languages. In sentences such as (2), Late Closure predicts that people will attach the RC low to the second DP, the actress:

(2) Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.

This prediction has been validated by empirical findings in such languages as English (Cuetos and Mitchell, 1988; Frazier and Clifton, 1996; Gilboy et al., 1995; off-line studies undertaken by Traxler et al. 1998), Swedish (Ehrlich et al. 1999), Norwegian (Ehrlich et al., 1999), Romanian (Ehrlich et al., 1999), Brazilian Portuguese (Miyamoto, 1998), and Arabic (Abdelghany and Fodor, 1999), where the RC is suitably attached low, that is, to the second DP. Nonetheless, the traditional Garden Path model has failed to expound the

6 | P a g e tendency to choose the first DP attachment in Spanish by Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) and also by subsequent studies in Spanish (Carreiras and Clifton, 1993, 1999; Gilboy et al., 1995 in Papadopoulou 2006).

Construal theory A more refined parsing theory is the Construal theory (Frazier and Clifton, 1996, 1997 in Papadopoulou 2006). The Construal theory is presupposes different parsing mechanisms for different structures. Syntactic constructions are categorized into two parts: primary and non-primary phrases. Primary relations or primary phrases cover the subject and main predicate of any finite clause in addition to the complements and necessary constituents of primary phrases (Frazier and Clifton, 1996: 41 in Papadopoulou 2006). Other types of relations are classified as non-primary relations. The Construal theory asserts that only primary relations are parsed in a definite manner, as explained by the Garden Path model (Papadopoulou 2006). Non-primary relations are parsed in an non-definite fashion and they are associated to one domain in terms of the Construal principle including thematic and interpretation processes. Thus, an underspecified analysis is given only to non-primary relations; in that case, the Construal theory is about syntactic underspecification and might be viewed as a development of parsing options that stressed the difference between argument and adjunct attachment (Igoa et al., 1998 in Papadopoulou 2006). Crocker (1996: 220–221 in Papadopoulou 2006) considers modifier attachment to be an example of local reanalysis, instead of simple attachment because modifiers are not predicted. Crocker further contends that ‘statistical or interpretative knowledge might be employed in such cases to conduct reanalysis’ (Crocker, 1996: 221 in Papadopoulou 2006), although he does not explain how to specifically describe modifier attachment ambiguities in terms of quantitative analysis. In the Construal framework, the distinction between primary and non-primary phrases is triggered by the fact that non-primary relations are not compulsory (Frazier and Clifton, 1996: 46–47, 1997: 285–286 in Papadopoulou 2006). In order to rapidly construct an analysis, the parser can, first of all, neglect the non-primary relations. However, in reality underspecification of primary relations may lead to inconsistent analyses of the sentence in disambiguating the input material. As Traxler et al. (1998: 586) say, mis-attachment of a modifier has no serious consequences for the overall grammatical meaning of the rest of the sentence (Papadopoulou 2006).

7 | P a g e The Construal theory posits that relative clauses belong to non-primary phrases because they are nominal modifiers. This argument means that, if a RC can be attached to two heads, it will not be directly attached to the second DP, as Late Closure tends to predict, but it will be associated to the extended maximal projection of the last theta-role assigner. If more than one potential head is available in the present thematic domain, then interpretative principles establish the attachment choices for the RC. (Frazier and Clifton, 1997 in Papadopoulou 2006). A good example is given in a sentence such as (10), the last thematic domain is determined by the lexical preposition with:

(10) Someone was looking at the servant with the actress who was on the balcony.

In examples such as (10) only the second DP is within the last theta-domain and thus, it is the only available node for the RC and, therefore, a low-attachment choice can be projected. This prediction has been affirmed by a number of studies across different languages (Gilboy et al., 1995; Traxler et al., 1998, 2000 for English, Gilboy et al., 1995 for Spanish, Hemforth et al., 1996, 1998 for German and Frenck-Mestre and Pynte, 2000 for French). The consideration of thematic clues for the construction of initial input analyses has also been used as a component in previous parsing models (cf. Pritchett, 1988, 1992) in Papadopoulou (2006). As for a sentence such as (2) rewritten here as (11), its last thematic domain, however, covers both DPs because the preposition “of” does not instantiate a new thematic domain:

(11) Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.

In (11) the RC tends to be associated to the extended maximal projection of the final theta-assigner (the first DP) and, hence both DPs should be evenly available nodes for the RC. The Garden Path model and its refinements also use of thematic information to explicate processing patterns discovered in various languages (Papadopoulou 2006).

D. RESEARCH METHOD This research proposal will primarily employ a qualitative method. However, it will also use simple statistics to compute percentages to show the distribution of strategies used by the participants. This is a case study of how the participants interpret ambiguous sentences in English.

8 | P a g e Participants The participants of this study will be eight English native speakers (four Americans and four English people) and eight Indonesian students from the English department (all of whom are seniors). The native speaker participants will be selected based on their education. Preferably, they should hold a master's degree, but at least they should have a bachelor's degree.

Research Procedure 1. A research instrument will be prepared consisting of 15 syntactically ambiguous sentences. 2. These ambiguous sentences will be read by a native speaker of English and recorded. 3. Each participant will be asked to listen to each ambiguous sentence once and then they will be asked to figure out what the sentence means by choosing an answer provided by the researcher. 4. The data will be classified and then computed in the form of percentages. 5. The quantified data will presented in tabular form and interpreted based on the existing theories.

9 | P a g e E. RESEARCH SCHEDULE No Activities Months . August September October November Decembe r 1. Instrumet validation V V 2. Data collection V V 3. Data display V V 4. Data analysis V V 5. Drawing conclusion V V 6. Writing research report V 7. Writing journal article V 8. Dissemination V

F. REFERENCES Fernandez & Cairns, 2011. Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Limited. Field, J. 2004. Psycholinguistics: The Key Concepts. London & New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Jackendoff, R. in Grodzinsky, Y., Shapiro, L., & Swinney, D. (Eds.) Language and the Brain: Representation and Processing. New York, London, & Tokyo: Academic Press. Papadopoulou, D. 2006. Cross-linguistic Variation in Sentence Processing; Evidence from RC Attachment Preferences in Greek. Dordrecht: Springer. Vuong, L. C. 2010. The Role of Executive Control in Garden Path Reinterpretation. Houston: UMI Dissertation Publishing

10 | P a g e 11 | P a g e APPENDIX Research Instrument Answer the following questions: 1. Someone shot the maid of the actress who was on the balcony. (Fernandez 2011) Who was on the balcony in the event? a. the actress b. the maid 2. The student told the professor that everyone hated a lie? What did the student tell the professor? a. A lie b. that everyone hated a lie 3. I met the manager of the actress who had a scandal. Who had a scandal? a. the manager b. the actress 4. I saw the boy with the binoculars. Whom did I see? a. the boy (the binoculars were the tools that I used for seeing the boy) b. the boy carrying the binoculars 5. Sue met the woman with her husband. Whom did Sue meet? a. the woman b. her husband 6. Paul loves the woman along with her children. Whom does Paul love? a. the woman b. her children 7. They were not those of the girls who went to the mall. Who went to the mall? a. Those of the girls b. the girls 8. James met the father of the boys who went to London last year. Who went to London?

12 | P a g e a. the father b. the boys 9. I saw the man with the telescope. What happened? a. I used the telescope to see the man b. I saw the man carrying the telescope 10. I saw the mother of the girl who found the wallet yesterday. Who found the wallet? a. the mother b. the girl 11. Jack spoke to the man from the village that is very nice. Who/which is very nice? a. the man b. the village 12. Lucia did not like the shape of the fruit which is thorny. Which is thorny? a. the shape b. the fruit 13. Daniel sat on the chair of the king that is very old. What/who is very old? a. the chair b. the king 14. Jamie kissed the the mother of three children who came to the event. Whom did Jamie kissed? a. the mother b. three children 15. I visited the grandmother of the girl who was sick. Who was sick? a. the grandmother b. the girl

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