L2 Learners’ Sensitivity to Gap Position in English Relative Clauses
2
조회
0
다운로드
5
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Previous studies have shown that even native English speakers have difficulty processing and interpreting object-extracted relative clauses compared to subject-extracted relative clauses (Ford, 1983, King & Just, 1991; Gibson, 1998). However, recent studies in English and Korean have shown that for sentences with high syntactic complexity, the relative difficulty of object-extracted relative clauses compared to subject relative clauses may be attenuated or eliminated (Kim, 2009, 2010). This study seeks to isolate the effects of gap position in English relative clauses by examining the comprehension of English relative clauses by Korean L2 learners of English, and also investigate whether these effects are correlated with L2 (English) proficiency. 15 students at a Korean university participated in an offline questionnaire study. The results showed that overall, the participants had lower accuracy scores on the object-extracted relative clauses, as compared to subject-extracted relative clauses (t= 4.70, p< .0001). In addition, the participants that had the lowest accuracy scores on the object-extracted relative clause comprehension questions were the participants with proficiency scores that were below average. These results suggest that the absence of gap effects in earlier studies (Kim, 2009, 2010) was indeed due to high levels of syntactic complexity that exceeded their threshold, and that the relative difficulty due to the position of the gap in the relative clause may be modulated by factors such as sentence complexity and L2 proficiency.
Abstract
Previous studies have shown that even native English speakers have difficulty processing and interpreting object-extracted relative clauses compared to subject-extracted relative clauses (Ford, 1983, King & Just, 1991; Gibson, 1998). However, recent studies in English and Korean have shown that for sentences with high syntactic complexity, the relative difficulty of object-extracted relative clauses compared to subject relative clauses may be attenuated or eliminated (Kim, 2009, 2010). This study seeks to isolate the effects of gap position in English relative clauses by examining the comprehension of English relative clauses by Korean L2 learners of English, and also investigate whether these effects are correlated with L2 (English) proficiency. 15 students at a Korean university participated in an offline questionnaire study. The results showed that overall, the participants had lower accuracy scores on the object-extracted relative clauses, as compared to subject-extracted relative clauses (t= 4.70, p< .0001). In addition, the participants that had the lowest accuracy scores on the object-extracted relative clause comprehension questions were the participants with proficiency scores that were below average. These results suggest that the absence of gap effects in earlier studies (Kim, 2009, 2010) was indeed due to high levels of syntactic complexity that exceeded their threshold, and that the relative difficulty due to the position of the gap in the relative clause may be modulated by factors such as sentence complexity and L2 proficiency.
참고문헌 (20)
- Caplan, D., "Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, pp.77~126 (1999)
- Clahsen, H., "Grammatical processing in language learners", Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, pp.3~42 (2006)
- Cuetos, F., "Parsing in different languages, In Language processing in Spanish", pp.145~187 (1996), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
- Doughty, C., "Second language instruction does make a difference : Evidence from an empirical study of SL relativization", Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13, pp.431~469 (1991)
- Doughty, C., "The handbook of second language acquisition" (2003), Blackwell
- Fodor, J., "Learning to parse?", Journal of PsycholinguisticResearch, pp.285~319 (1998)
- Fodor, J., "Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading", pp.113~132 (2002), GLSAPublications
- Ford, M., "A method for obtaining measures of local parsing complexity throughout sentences", Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, pp.203~218 (1983)
- Gass, S., "Language transfer and grammatical relations", LanguageLearning, 29, pp.327~344 (1979)
- Gibson, E., "Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependency", Cognition, 68, pp.1~76 (1998)
- Gibson, E., "The Dependency Locality Theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity, In Image, language, brain", pp.95~126 (2000), MIT Press
- Hawkins, J., "Acquisition of relative clauses in relation to language universals", Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 29, pp.337~344 (2007)
- Izumi, S., "Processing difficulty in comprehension and production of relative clauses by learners of English as a second language", Language Learning, 53, pp.285~323 (2003)
- Jun, S., "Prosodic phrasing and attachment preferences", Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, pp.219~249 (2003)
- Keenan, E., "Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar", Linguistic Inquiry, 8, pp.63~99 (1977)
- King, J., "Individual differences in syntactic processing : The role of working memory", Journal of Memory and Language, 30, pp.580~602 (1991)
- 김지현, "Sentence processing in Korean: Effects of sentence complexity", 담화와 인지, 16(2), pp.21~39 (2009), 담화·인지언어학회
- Kim, J., "The influence of sentence complexity and working memory on relative clause ambiguity resolution", Language and Linguistics, 48, pp.1~26 (2011)
- Lightbown, P., "How languages are learned" (2006), Oxford University Press
- Warren, T., "The influence of referential processing on sentence complexity", Cognition, 85, pp.79~112 (2002)