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PARSING AMBIGUOUS RELATIVE CLAUSES IN L2 ENGLISH

LEARNER SENSITIVITY TO PROSODIC CUES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2020

Heather Goad Open the ORCID record for Heather Goad [Opens in a new window] ,
Natália Brambatti Guzzo Open the ORCID record for Natália Brambatti Guzzo [Opens in a new window]  and
Lydia White Open the ORCID record for Lydia White [Opens in a new window]
Heather Goad*
Affiliation:
McGill University
Natália Brambatti Guzzo
Affiliation:
McGill University
Lydia White
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
* Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Heather Goad, Department of Linguistics, McGill University, 1085 Dr. Penfield, Montreal, QC H3A 1A7, Canada. E-mail: heather.goad@mcgill.ca
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Abstract

We investigate effects of prosodic cues on interpretation of ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) in English by Spanish-speaking learners. English and Spanish differ in default preference for RC attachment: English has a weak low attachment (LA) preference (RC modifies NP2); Spanish has a stronger high attachment (HA) preference (RC modifies NP1). We conducted an interpretation task with auditorily presented stimuli to examine whether prosodic cues determine attachment. Target items were manipulated for position of break and length of RC, NP1, and NP2. For both groups, break and length are significant. For the learners, proficiency interacts with break suggesting L1 transfer: lower proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to LA; higher proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to HA. Lower proficiency learners are more likely to choose LA overall, suggesting a recency effect. Our results confirm the importance of using aural stimuli when testing interpretation of ambiguous sentences.

Keywords

Sentence parsingrelative clause attachment preferencesambiguity resolutionprosodic cuesconstituent length
Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 83 - 108
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank our collaborators on earlier related work, Hyekyung Hwang and Moti Lieberman, as well as Alex Friesen, Dan Goodhue, Jennifer Morehouse, and Adèle-Elise Prévost for research assistance, and Guilherme Garcia for help with the statistics. This work was supported by grants from SSHRC 410-2011-0809, 435-2015-0490 and FRQSC 2010-SE-130727, 2016-SE-188196. All authors contributed equally.

References

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