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ANAPHORA RESOLUTION AND REANALYSIS DURING L2 SENTENCE PROCESSING

Evidence from the Visual World Paradigm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2016

Ian Cunnings ,
Georgia Fotiadou  and
Ianthi Tsimpli
Ian Cunnings*
Affiliation:
University of Reading, UK
Georgia Fotiadou
Affiliation:
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Ianthi Tsimpli
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, UK
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Ian Cunnings, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK, RG6 7BE, E-mail: i.cunnings@reading.ac.uk
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Abstract

In a visual world paradigm study, we manipulated gender congruence between a subject pronoun and two antecedents to investigate whether second language (L2) learners with a null subject first language (L1) acquire and process overt subject pronouns in a nonnull subject L2 in a nativelike way. We also investigated whether L2 speakers revise an initial interpretation assigned to an ambiguous pronoun when information in the visual context subsequently biased against it. Our results indicated both L1 English speakers and Greek L2 English speakers rapidly used gender information to guide pronoun resolution. Both groups also preferentially coindexed ambiguous pronouns to a sentence subject and current discourse topic, despite the fact that overt subject pronouns in the learners’ L1 index a topic shift. We also observed that L2 English speakers were less likely to revise their initial interpretation than L1 English speakers. These results indicate that L2 speakers from a null subject background can acquire the interpretive preferences of overt pronouns in a nonnull subject L2. The eye-movement data indicate that anaphora processing can become qualitatively similar in native and nonnative speakers in the domain of subject pronoun resolution, but indicate reanalysis may cause difficulty during L2 processing.

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Articles
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 621 - 652
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

We would like to thank Maria Katsiperi and Eleni Fleva for help with data collection, and the editors and reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Any remaining errors are our own.

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