Search

Learners of a nonnull subject language (e.g., English) whose first language (L1) is a null subject language (e.g., Spanish) can show some optionality in the interpretation of overt subject pronouns in the second language (L2). By exposing L2 learners to nativelike interpretations of pronouns in discourse, we aim at understanding how exposure can promote implicit learning of pronoun comprehension biases in a L2. A sentence comprehension task was used with intermediate-proficiency English L2 speakers (L1 Spanish) that included a pretest, an exposure phase using the priming technique, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest administered 6--10 days later. English learners showed a significant increase in nativelike pronoun interpretations both in the immediate posttest and in the delayed posttest, in comparison to the pretest. The results show that exposure through priming can be effective in changing L2 participants' interpretations and that effects of exposure are persistent and may aid in the successful acquisition of pronoun resolution biases.

Existing research on second language (L2) pronoun resolution has not yet looked at immediate and cumulative priming effects. By using a sentence comprehension task, the present study aims at priming dis-preferred interpretations for ambiguous pronouns. We test a group of native speakers and a group of intermediate-proficiency L2 learners of English, whose first language (L1) is Mexican Spanish. The results suggest that the magnitude of the immediate priming effect is comparable in L2 and native speakers. In addition, we found that priming at the discourse level can be persistent for L2 speakers that have successfully acquired pronoun interpretation constraints in the L2. Based on the findings, we hypothesize that priming can be determined by the degree to which the structure is a stable representation in the leaner's system, regardless of the amount of experience with that structure/preference.

We test the interpretation of pronominal forms in L2 speakers of English whose L1 is Spanish. Previous research on learners of nonnull subject languages has shown conflicting results. The aim of the present study is to reconcile previous evidence and shed light on the factors that determine learners' difficulty to interpret pronominal forms in the L2. In six comprehension experiments, we found that intermediate L2 speakers did not show increased difficulty compared to native speakers in integrating multiple sources of information (syntactic, discourse, pragmatic) to resolve ambiguous pronouns in intrasentential anaphora and cataphora conditions. However, we also found that when two referents with equal prominence are introduced using a conjoined noun phrase in the preceding context, the learner's performance is significantly different than the performance of the native speakers, both in intrasentential and intersentential anaphora. We suggest that L2 speakers may encounter difficulties evaluating the salience of the antecedents during pronoun resolution.

Aims and Objectives: Bilingual speakers that speak a null subject (Spanish) and a non-null subject language (English) may show some indeterminacy in referential choice in their nondominant language in comparison to monolingual speakers. The present study tests the production of referring expressions in the two languages of bilingual speakers (Spanish and English) to assess attainment at the discourse level and explore the role of language dominance on referential choice. Methodology: A group of 49 Spanish–English bilinguals participated in a picture description task in English and Spanish measuring referential choice in contexts of reference maintenance and topic-shift. Data and Analysis: The results of our study show that at a group level, bilingual speakers produced more underspecified references in maintenance contexts than English monolingual speakers and produced more overspecified references in topic-maintenance and topic-shift contexts than Spanish monolingual speakers. The results further show that language dominance in the target language is associated with more monolingual-like referential choice. Conclusions: We discuss the role of language dominance in the development of bilingual referential choice patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that children demonstrate similar sentence processing reflexes to those observed in adults, but they have difficulties revising an erroneous initial interpretation when they process garden-path sentences, passives, and "wh"-questions. We used the visual-world paradigm to examine children's use of syntactic and non-syntactic information to resolve syntactic ambiguity by extending our understanding of number features as a cue for interpretation to "which"-subject and "which"-object questions. We compared children's and adults' eye-movements to understand how this information shapes children's commitment to and revision of possible interpretations of these questions. The results showed that English-speaking adults and children both exhibit an initial preference to interpret an object-"which" question as a subject question. While adults quickly override this preference, children take significantly longer, showing an overall processing difficulty for object questions. Crucially, their recovery from an initially erroneous interpretation is speeded when disambiguating number agreement features are present.

Language processing plays a crucial role in language development, providing the ability to assign structural representations to input strings (e.g., Fodor, 1998). In this paper we aim at contributing to the study of children's processing routines, examining the operations underlying the auditory processing of relative clauses in children compared to adults. English-speaking children (6;0-8;11) and adults participated in the study, which employed a self-paced listening task with a final comprehension question. The aim was to determine (i) the role of number agreement in object relative clauses in which the subject and object NPs differ in terms of number properties, and (ii) the role of verb morphology (active vs. passive) in subject relative clauses. Even though children's off-line accuracy was not always comparable to that of adults, analyses of reaction times results support the view that children have the same structural processing reflexes observed in adults.

Are bilingual speakers' representations of pronominal expressions completely independent in the two languages, or is there sharing of discourse-level representations cross-linguistically? In the present study, we address this question by using a sentence comprehension task that implements the cross-linguistic priming technique at the discourse-level. In two experiments conducted with Spanish–English bilinguals, we prime dis-preferred interpretations for ambiguous pronouns in the second language (English) by using first language (Spanish) pronoun interpretation primes. In experiment 1, Spanish null pronouns prime second-mentioned/object interpretations in English, showing an effect of priming. In experiment 2, Spanish explicit pronouns prime second-mentioned/object interpretations in English, indicating that an effect of priming approaches significance. The results demonstrate that bilinguals' inferences about probability distributions and coherence relations are susceptible to cross-linguistic influence. The strength of the priming effect is discussed within models of cross-language abstract representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L2 learners who speak a null subject (L1 Spanish) and a non-null subject language (L2 English) may experience cross-linguistic interference from the L2 on L1 pronoun interpretation. In this study, we test pronoun interpretation in the L1 and L2 of adult learners, in comparison with two groups of monolingual speakers, to assess if L1 pronoun interpretation can change as a result of L2 acquisition at intermediate-advanced levels of L2 proficiency and in the absence of long L2 immersion.A group of L2 English speakers (L1 Spanish) participated in two offline sentence comprehension tasks where they interpreted pronouns in the L1 and L2. The results are compared with English and Spanish monolingual speakers.We find that adult English learners comprehend pronouns in their L1 (Spanish) differently than Spanish monolingual speakers, demonstrating a strong subject bias for interpreting null and overt pronouns. In addition, we show that pronoun interpretation patterns acquired in the L2 explain the changes to L1 interpretation biases.The results of this study significantly advance the understanding of the factors that contribute to bilingual language comprehension, showing the permeability of the L1 comprehension system at the discourse level as soon as the L2 sets in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learners of a nonnull subject language (e.g., English) whose first language (L1) is a null subject language (e.g., Spanish) can show some optionality in the interpretation of overt subject pronouns in the second language (L2). By exposing L2 learners to nativelike interpretations of pronouns in discourse, we aim at understanding how exposure can promote implicit learning of pronoun comprehension biases in a L2. A sentence comprehension task was used with intermediate-proficiency English L2 speakers (L1 Spanish) that included a pretest, an exposure phase using the priming technique, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest administered 6–10 days later. English learners showed a significant increase in nativelike pronoun interpretations both in the immediate posttest and in the delayed posttest, in comparison to the pretest. The results show that exposure through priming can be effective in changing L2 participants' interpretations and that effects of exposure are persistent and may aid in the successful acquisition of pronoun resolution biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on second language (L2) pronoun resolution has not yet looked at immediate and cumulative priming effects. By using a sentence comprehension task, the present study aims at priming dis-preferred interpretations for ambiguous pronouns. We test a group of native speakers and a group of intermediate-proficiency L2 learners of English, whose first language (L1) is Mexican Spanish. The results suggest that the magnitude of the immediate priming effect is comparable in L2 and native speakers. In addition, we found that priming at the discourse level can be persistent for L2 speakers that have successfully acquired pronoun interpretation constraints in the L2. Based on the findings, we hypothesize that priming can be determined by the degree to which the structure is a stable representation in the leaner's system, regardless of the amount of experience with that structure/preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the Interface Hypothesis, bilinguals' non-nativelike referential choices may be influenced by the increased cognitive demands and less automatic processing of bilingual production. We test this hypothesis by comparing pronoun production in the L2 of nonbalanced Spanish–English bilinguals to that of English monolinguals in two cognitively challenging contexts. In Experiment 1, both monolinguals and bilinguals produced more explicit references when part of the information was unavailable to their addressee (privileged ground) than when all information was shared (common ground), evidencing audience design. In Experiment 2, verbal load led to more unspecified references than visual load and no load (an effect statistically indistinguishable between groups but numerically driven by the monolingual group). While bilinguals produced overall more pronouns than monolinguals in both experiments, there was no indication that bilinguals' referential choice was disproportionally affected by increased cognitive demand, contrary to the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two eye tracking experiments, we investigate how adult child-L2 speakers of English resolve prepositional phrase (PP) attachment ambiguity in their dominant language (English), and whether they use prosodic information to aid in the process of garden-path recovery. The findings showed an increased processing cost associated with the revision of temporary ambiguous sentences for the child-L2 adults relative to the native English speakers. When prosody was informative, the child-L2 adults were able to use prosodic information to guide the interpretation of their later acquired, dominant language. However, they performed revision significantly less successfully than the native speakers. Although processing was similar for the native English speakers and the adult child-L2 speakers of English, when it comes to sensitivity to prosodic information and referential context, the two groups differed with regards to reanalysis both in the presence and absence of salient prosodic and referential information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns in Spanish–English bilingual adults, in contexts in which social–communicative cues (looking-only or looking-and-pointing) are used. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that pronoun interpretation is guided by the first-mention bias, which is modulated by the presence of the social–communicative cues both in monolinguals and in bilinguals. In Experiment 2, we show that if the speaker using the social–communicative cues is a non-native speaker of English, bilinguals rely more strongly on the social–communicative cues than monolinguals. Experiment 3 shows that stronger reliance on social–communicative cues in bilinguals' interpretations is not the result of more accurate speech comprehension. Our results demonstrate that the ability to utilize the looking-only and looking-and-pointing cues is not driven by a superior ability to accurately read social cues in bilingual adults. In addition, monolinguals show lower sensitivity to the speaker's intent when the speaker is a non-native speaker of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that children demonstrate similar sentence processing reflexes to those observed in adults, but they have difficulties revising an erroneous initial interpretation when they process garden-path sentences, passives, and wh-questions. We used the visual-world paradigm to examine children's use of syntactic and non-syntactic information to resolve syntactic ambiguity by extending our understanding of number features as a cue for interpretation to which-subject and which-object questions. We compared children's and adults' eye-movements to understand how this information shapes children's commitment to and revision of possible interpretations of these questions. The results showed that English-speaking adults and children both exhibit an initial preference to interpret an object-which question as a subject question. While adults quickly override this preference, children take significantly longer, showing an overall processing difficulty for object questions. Crucially, their recovery from an initially erroneous interpretation is speeded when disambiguating number agreement features are present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the production of relative clauses in Italian children aged 3 years, 4 months to 8 years, 10 months and in adults, focusing on object relatives (ORs). For both adults and older children, we test the production of passive ORs (PORs) as an alternative to the production of active ORs. We also test the comprehension of active ORs and PORs in older children, showing that the comprehension of the latter is significantly more accurate than the former. The persistent difficulty that children experience with ORs is interpreted as due to intervention, following Friedmann, Belletti, and Rizzi (2009). We assume Collins’ (2005) approach to passive and account for the increasing use and more accurate comprehension of PORs as a consequence of lack of intervention, as in Belletti (2009a). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Language processing plays a crucial role in language development, providing the ability to assign structural representations to input strings (e.g., Fodor, 1998). In this paper we aim at contributing to the study of children's processing routines, examining the operations underlying the auditory processing of relative clauses in children compared to adults. English-speaking children (6;0–8;11) and adults participated in the study, which employed a self-paced listening task with a final comprehension question. The aim was to determine (i) the role of number agreement in object relative clauses in which the subject and object NPs differ in terms of number properties, and (ii) the role of verb morphology (active vs. passive) in subject relative clauses. Even though children's off-line accuracy was not always comparable to that of adults, analyses of reaction times results support the view that children have the same structural processing reflexes observed in adults. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]