Processing of English Sentences Consisting of Frequency Adverbs by Japanese EFL Learners

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that, adverbs can have comparatively free positioning to that of other parts of speech in English language. This study focused on frequency adverbs which represent number of occurrences of an action or a condition. Since different positioning may produce relatively different meaning (or focus) of given sentences, processing of such sentences is assumed to be complex especially for L2 learners. Therefore, this study investigated how L2 learners process English sentences consisting of adverbs in different positions. The main goal of this study is to reveal which information-structure is mostly identified among Japanese EFL learners. A sentence-correctness-decision task was conducted with a group of university students (n=30). Stimuli were selected via a free-production written task. The data were analyzed using SPSS statistics with repeated measures (i.e., ANOVAs). A simple comparison between alternative ordering showed that, the sentences consisting of adverbs in between-positioning were processed faster to that of initial-positioning, assumable due to the different information flow. Thus, according to this study, English sentences consisting of frequency adverbs with the between-positioning [S (A (VO))] is likely to possess a high acceptability among Japanese EFL learners to that of initial-positioning sentences [A (S (VO))].