English Speakers’ Comprehension of Embedded Relative Clauses in L2 Japanese

Abstract

This study investigated native English speakers’ comprehension of Japanese sentences in which relative clauses are embedded. Specifically, this study contrasted between (a) short-before-long sentences with center-embedded relative clauses and (b) long-before-short sentences with non-center-embedded relative clauses. Sentence-type (a) indicates a sentence that includes a short phrase before a long phrase and includes a relative clause that is embedded in the middle of the sentence, e.g., Onna-ga Ken-ga kiratteiru giin-o hometa ‘The woman praised the senator who Ken hated’. Sentence-type (b) indicates a sentence with a long phrase before a short phrase and includes a relative clause that is embedded peripherally, e.g., Ken-ga kiratteiru onna-ga giin-o hometa ‘The woman who Ken hated praised the senator’. Experiment 1 revealed that native English speakers, who are learners of Japanese, comprehended the type (b) sentences with long-before-short phrases and with non-center-embedded relative clauses more accurately than the type (a) sentences with short-before-long phrases with center-embedded relative clauses. The results indicate that the preference for the non-center-embedded clauses to center-embedded clauses is universal across languages, while the preference for short-before-long phrases is language-specific. However, Experiment 2 indicated that the different accuracy rates in comprehensions of (a) and (b) disappeared when the matrix subjects are marked by the topic-morpheme wa. The outcome indicated that the topic phrases are immediately interpreted as a part of main clauses.