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Interpreting Scope Ambiguity INTERPRETING SCOPE AMBIGUITY IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGAUGE PROCESSING: UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIERS AND NEGATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS MAY 2009 By Sunyoung Lee Dissertation Committee: William O’Grady, Chairperson Kamil Ud Deen Amy Schafer Bonnie Schwartz Ho-min Sohn Shuqiang Zhang We certify that we have read this dissertation and that, in our opinion, it is satisfactory in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics. DISSERTATION COMMITTEE Chairperson ii © Copyright 2009 by Sunyoung Lee iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although working on the dissertation was never an easy task, I was very fortunate to have opportunities to interact with a great many people who have helped to make this work possible. First and foremost, the greatest debt is to my advisor, William O’Grady. He has been watching my every step during my PhD program throughout the good times and the difficult ones. He was not only extraordinarily patient with any questions but also tirelessly generous with his time and his expertise. He helped me to shape my linguistic thinking through his unparalleled intellectual rigor and critical insights. I have learned so many things from him, including what a true scholar should be. William epitomizes the perfect mentor! I feel extremely blessed to have worked under his guidance. I am also indebted to all of my committee members. I am very grateful to Amy Schafer, who taught me all I know about psycholinguistic research. She gave valuable feedback on my studies including this dissertation, from the experimental design to the interpretation of the results. Her strict and professional attitude toward academic research was always impressive. At the same time, Amy was warm-hearted, listening sincerely whenever I needed her help. Kamil Ud Deen showed much interest in my study and gave me new insights to improve the quality of the research from various angles. Bonnie Schwartz provided thought-provoking ideas through her detailed feedback on my study. I thank her for her many comments in blue ink, regarding both the substance and form of the dissertation draft. I am especially grateful that she continued her involvement with my iv studies even when circumstances kept her away from Hawai‘i. I am grateful to Ho-min Sohn for sparking my interest in the Korean language; I didn’t realize how interesting my mother tongue is until I took his classes. My appreciation also goes to Shuqiang Zhang, who taught me the fundamental concepts of statistics. Consultations with him on statistical analyses helped me understand what I should be careful with when interpreting the results. Special thanks go to the professors and the instructors at Kangwon National University in Korea, who offered me an opportunity to approach their students. Without their kind offer of a data collection site, it would have been very hard to find that many participants. My friends and fellow students deserve many thanks for their assistance and their friendship at various stages throughout my graduate study: to name a few, In-Sung Ko, Minsun Song, Kyung Sook Shin, Kyuseek Hwang, Jason Jackson, Hakyoon Lee, Bumyong Choi, Sorin Huh, Jin-Sook Kim, On-Soon Lee, Jinsun Kim, So-Young Kim, Heeyeon Dennison, Sang-Gu Kang, Hye-Young Kwak, Junghee Kim, Hyekyung Hwang, Jaehoon Jeong, Hunter Hatfield, Ai-Yu Tang, Mie Hiramoto, Tomoko Kozasa, Ryoko Hattori, Manami Sato, Jun Nomura, Tatjana Ilic, Kaori Ueki, Maria Faehndrich and Valerie Guerin. I also would like to thank Dan X. Hall and Laurie Durand for editing this dissertation despite their hectic schedule. Additionally, my deep gratitude extends to the secretaries, Jennifer Kanda and Nora Yogi in the department office and the lab technician, Kurt Brunner in the LAE labs. v In the doctoral program, I was supported with graduate assistantships from the Department of Linguistics. For my doctoral research, I also acknowledge with thanks the financial support provided by the Graduate Student Organization, the Arts & Sciences Advisory Council, and the Department of Linguistics Endowment Fund. I am very grateful to my parents, Moo-Kuen Lee and Jeong-Ae Kim, from the bottom of my heart for their everlasting love, support, and encouragement throughout my life. Without their trust in me, I would not have reached this far. I am also greatly indebted to my parents-in-law, Jeong-Suk Bahng and Yu-Soon Song. While I was in America, they took great care of my daughter, Ha-Yeon, and prayed for me. Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my husband and best friend, Seungjae Bahng. I just do not know enough words to explain how thankful I am to him for being with me. I have been comforted by his presence, love, and unfailing support all the time. This dissertation is as much his as it is mine. vi ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the interpretation of scopally ambiguous sentences involving a universal quantifier and negation (e.g., Every kid didn’t feed the doves in the park and Cindy didn’t light every candle last night) from a processing perspective. Using an off-line judgment task and an on-line truth-value judgment task combined with a self- paced reading technique, data were collected from native Korean speakers, native English speakers, and native Korean-speaking second language learners of English (L2 learners). The results indicate that native Korean speakers strongly preferred the full set interpretation (every > not) irrespective of the syntactic position of the universal quantifier (subject vs. direct object) in both off-line and on-line comprehension. In contrast, native English speakers showed no dominant preference in the off-line task, in cases where a universal quantifier in subject position interacts with negation, whereas they strongly preferred the full set interpretation (every > not) during the on-line task. For sentences involving a universally quantified direct object NP and negation, native English speakers strongly preferred the partitioned set interpretation (not > every) in both off-line and on-line experiments. L2 learners showed a developmental divergence according to the learners’ L2 proficiency. That is, the low proficiency group showed a strong preference for the full set interpretation (every > not) in both off-line and on-line tasks, regardless of the syntactic position of the universal quantifier. On the other hand, the advanced L2 learners showed a native-like pattern, except in the on-line processing of ambiguous sentences containing vii a universally quantified direct object NP and negation; in these cases, they showed no preference for either of the patterns, unlike native English speakers who strongly preferred the partitioned set interpretation (not > every). The main findings were examined within the framework outlined by O’Grady and Lee (2008) and O’Grady, Lee and Kwak (2008), who propose that the nature and acquisition of scopal contrasts are best understood with reference to the operation of an efficiency-based processor. This work adds crosslinguistic empirical data to the study of scope interpretation in first and second language processing research, and argues that the properties and consequences of scope interpretation are processing-induced. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements...........................................................................................................iv Abstract...........................................................................................................................vii List of Tables....................................................................................................................xiii List of Figures..................................................................................................................xvi List of Abbreviations.......................................................................................................xvii Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................1 PART I: BACKGROUND Chapter 2: Theoretical Foundations.…..........................................................................6 2.1 Scope facts.............................................................................................................6 2.1.1 English.......................................................................................................6 2.1.2 Korean.......................................................................................................9 2.1.2.1 Properties of negation.......................................................................9 2.1.2.2 Scope judgments........................................................................13 2.2 Scope theories.......................................................................................................16 2.2.1 Structure-based approach............................................................................17 2.2.2 Efficiency-based processing approach........................................................20 Chapter 3: Empirical Foundations................................................................................27 3.1 Scope interpretations in L1 acquisition................................................................27 3.2 Scope interpretations in L2 acquisition................................................................37 PART II: THE
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