Abstract
AbstractUsing both offline and online measures, the present study investigates attachment resolution in relative clauses in English natives (L1) and nonnatives (L2). We test how relative clause resolution interacts with linguistic factors and participant-level individual differences. Previous L1 English studies have demonstrated a low attachment preference and also an “ambiguity advantage” suggesting that L1ers may not have as strong a low attachment preference as is sometimes claimed. We employ a similar design to examine this effect in L1 and L2 comprehension. Offline results indicate that both groups exhibit a low attachment preference, positively correlated with reading span scores and with proficiency in the L2 group. Online results also suggest a low attachment preference in both groups. However, our data show that individual differences influence online attachment resolution for both native and nonnatives; higher lexical processing efficiency correlates with quicker resolution of linguistic conflicts. We argue that the current findings suggest that attachment resolution during L1 and L2 processing share the same processing mechanisms and are modulated by similar individual differences.
Highlights
The similarities and differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing are widely debated (e.g., Clahsen & Felser, 2006, 2018; Cunnings, 2017; Grüter & Rohde, 2013; Hopp, 2014; Kaan, 2014; McDonald, 2006)
To examine whether individual differences influence how nativelike L2 processing can become in this domain (Hopp, 2014), we investigated how individual differences in working memory, lexical processing and for L2ers proficiency, influence L1 and L2 relative clauses (RC) resolution offline and during processing
Analysis revealed a significant effect of Position, with the low attachment preference being stronger in object-modifying RCs than subject-modifying RCs in both groups
Summary
The similarities and differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing are widely debated (e.g., Clahsen & Felser, 2006, 2018; Cunnings, 2017; Grüter & Rohde, 2013; Hopp, 2014; Kaan, 2014; McDonald, 2006). Others have argued that L1 and L2 processing employ similar mechanisms and that L2ers construct syntactic analyses in the same way as L1ers (e.g., Cunnings, 2017; Hopp, 2014; Kaan, 2014) Under such accounts, observable differences between groups are argued to be non-qualitative. Hopp (2014) argued that lexical automaticity plays a role in native-like performance by L2ers, with more efficient lexical processing leading L2ers to behave more like L1ers during sentence processing
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