Resolving ambiguous pronouns in a second language: A visual-world eye-tracking study with Dutch learners of German

Abstract

This study examined whether resolving ambiguous pronouns in a second language is guided by the L1 preferences of the learners. Given the fact that the typologically closely related languages, German and Dutch, have both been found to use personal pronouns (German <italic>er</italic>, Dutch <italic>hij</italic>; ‘he’) to refer to topical antecedents, and d-pronouns (German <italic>der</italic>, Dutch <italic>die</italic>; ‘he’) for non-topical co-reference (Ellert 2010; Kaiser 2011; Kaiser and Trueswell 2004), it was asked whether Dutch L2 learners of German would exhibit similar preferences when resolving the two pronominal forms in their L2. This was examined with the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm and an off-line referent assignment task. The results showed differences in resolution patterns: the Dutch learners of German showed an overall topic preference across pronouns which became more target-like at higher proficiency levels. This suggests that L2 information organization cannot be merely explained by L1 influences, but needs to take more general L2 learner effects into account.