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Processing of English Relative Clauses by Adult L2 Learners CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository PROCESSING OF ENGLISH RELATIVE CLAUSES BY ADULT L2 LEARNERS BY SOONDO BAEK DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Assistant Professor Tania Ionin, Chair Associate Professor Kiel Christianson Associate Professor Susan M. Garnsey Professor Hye Suk James Yoon Abstract The ability to use a second language learned after childhood is an important aspect of the human mind. A better understanding of the characteristics of the L2 sentence processing mechanism deployed by adult L2 learners would provide valuable insights into this important human ability. The present dissertation is an attempt to draw a detailed picture of the L2 sentence processing mechanism by comparing L1 speakers and adult L2 learners in terms of the use of different sources of information and the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in the course of sentence processing. In three self-paced reading experiments with L1 speakers of English (Chapter 6) and three parallel experiments with adult L1-Korean L2-English learners (Chapter 7), the processing of subject- and object-extracted relative clauses (SRs and ORs) in English were tested with the animacy of nouns systematically manipulated. The effect of individual differences in WMC was also explored. The results from L1 speakers corroborated previous findings (i) that ORs are more difficult to comprehend than SRs, indicating greater syntactic complexity of the former, (ii) that ORs with inanimate head nouns (i.e., objects) and animate subjects are easier to comprehend then those with animate head nouns and inanimate subjects, reflecting the role of canonical noun animacy-grammatical role associations (i.e., animate nouns are typically subjects and inanimate nouns are typically objects), and (iii) that individual differences in WMC correlate with individual differences in the ability to incorporate noun animacy information into syntactic analyses but not with individual differences in syntactic complexity effects, suggesting a dissociation between processing resources recruited for structural computation and those recruited for semantic evaluation (e.g., Traxler, Williams, Blozis, & Morris, 2005). The behaviors of L2 learners were similar to those of L1 speakers in several respects. They found ORs more difficult than SRs, and ORs with animate subjects and inanimate head nouns easier than those with inanimate subjects and animate head nouns. The results suggest that adult L2 learners are able to take into account both syntactic and semantic information in native- like ways during online sentence processing. In addition, L2 learners showed a potential dissociation between processing resources underlying syntactic computation and semantic evaluation, further suggesting a similarity between L1 and L2 sentence processing mechanisms. Unlike L1 speakers, however, they did not benefit from animate subjects in processing ORs when head nouns were also animate, suggesting a reduced ability to revise an initially ii constructed, plausible interpretation (under the assumption that an animate head noun leads to the expectation of an SR, which must be discarded when the expectation turns out to be wrong). The results taken together suggest that L1 speakers and adult L2 learners of a language employ similar kinds of processes and processing resources to comprehend sentences in the language, but L2 learners experience greater difficulty revising the currently built structure to which they have made a commitment due to its plausible interpretation. Implications of these findings are discussed for the theoretical understanding of L2 sentence processing by adult L2 learners. iii to Do Hong Kim, my mom iv Acknowledgements I would like to give my deepest thanks to my advisor Tania Ionin. Her valuable advices and encouragements made possible much of what I could do in Illinois, including this dissertation. I also truly thank my committee members, James Yoon, Kiel Christianson and Susan Garnsey for their helpful comments on the dissertation and kind answers to my not-so-well articulated questions. I owe special thanks to Prof. James Yoon for giving me the opportunity to study at UIUC and supporting my graduate life in many important ways. I owe much to other faculty members at UIUC. I especially thank Cindy Fisher for sharing so much of her time with me to discuss many things in psycholinguistics and for allowing me to work as her research assistant. I am also indebted to Silvina Montrul, who supervised one of my qualifying papers and allowed me to work for the SLATE program. I wish to thank Annie Tremblay and Duane Watson as well. Most of what I learned about L1 and L2 sentence processing came from their classes. I much enjoyed working on experimental phonology with Jennifer Cole, to whom I would like to extend my special thanks. I wish to take the opportunity to thank Professor Oryang Kwon, who supervised my master’s thesis in Korea and officiated my wedding. Both my academic and marital lives began with him. I am grateful to my friends with whom I had the luck to share not a little time at Urbana and Champaign: Tae-jin Yoon, Young-Il Oh, Matt Garley, Ben Slade, Hee Youn Cho, Keun Young Shin, Young Sun Lee, Theeraporn Ratitamkul, Yoonsook Mo, Ju Hyeon Hwang and her husband Jungman Park, and Donghee Om and his wife Eunkyung Lee. They all greatly helped me and Eunah transition to Urbana and live through the graduate life. My wholehearted thanks and love go to my wife Eunah Kim for her constant support and love. She has been my best friend and colleague who went through both good and bad days together at Urbana. My deepest gratitude goes to my parents, who made possible what I have been and will be, and what I have done and will do. Finally I would like to thank National Science Foundation for providing me with a doctoral dissertation research grant (Award ID: 1021455, PI: Tania Ionin), which allowed me to run experiments for the present study and attend conferences for presentation of the results. v Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Sentence processing in native and second language ...................................................... 5 2.1. Sentence processing in native language ............................................................................... 5 2.2. Issues and previous findings on second language sentence processing ............................... 9 Chapter 3 Working memory capacity in sentence processing ...................................................... 29 3.1. Measurements of WMC ..................................................................................................... 30 3.2. Different views on the nature of cognitive resources underlying sentence processing ..... 32 3.3. Previous findings on the role of WMC in second language sentence processing .............. 36 Chapter 4 Previous findings on relative clause processing in L1 and L2 ..................................... 40 4.1. Relative clause processing in the native language: experimental findings and theoretical accounts ..................................................................................................................................... 40 4.2. Processing relative clauses in L2 ....................................................................................... 54 Chapter 5 Overview of the present study ...................................................................................... 60 5.1. Overview of the experiments ............................................................................................. 60 5.2. Results of WM span tests ................................................................................................... 68 Chapter 6 Experiments with native speakers of English .............................................................. 73 6.1. Experiment 1E .................................................................................................................... 73 6.2. Experiment 2E .................................................................................................................... 77 6.3. Experiment 3E .................................................................................................................... 90 6.4. General discussion of L1 processing of English RCs ...................................................... 101 Chapter 7 Experiments with L2 learners of English ................................................................... 107 7.1. Experiment 1K ................................................................................................................. 107 7.2. Experiment 2K ................................................................................................................. 113 7.3. Experiment 3K ................................................................................................................. 126 7.4. General discussion of L2 processing of English RCs ...................................................... 137 Chapter 8 Conclusion and future research .................................................................................. 143 Appendix
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