Main Verb Versus Reduced Relative Clause Ambiguity Resolution in L2 Sentence Processing

Abstract

This study investigated how adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) process sentences containing verbs that are temporarily ambiguous in interpretation between a main verb and a reduced relative clause. Seventeen Chinese, 17 Korean or Japanese, and 17 Romance learners with advanced ESL proficiency and a comparison group of 17 monolingual native speakers (NSs) of English provided word‐by‐word reading times for 6 sentence types. The evidence showed that they used both verb subcategorization information and post‐ambiguity cues to resolve main verb/reduced relative clause ambiguity. The data also indicated that bad post‐ambiguity cues misled some ESL users more than others, differences that can be attributed to their first languages (L1s). These results suggest that (a) like native speakers, ESL speakers are sensitive to the complex interaction of information sources when parsing a sentence; (b) adult ESL learners are influenced by typological properties of their L1s that are linked to L1 parsing strategies when processing ESL.