Abstract
Syntactic ambiguity resolution is influenced by multiple constraints. A sentence-picture matching task tested the attachment of prepositional phrase (PP) such as on the chair within an utterance like Mary ate the apple on the chair. PP attaching to NP2 (the apple) is called low attachment (LA), while PP attaching to V (ate) is called high attachment (HA). A comprehension task tested the attachment of adverb such as quickly within an utterance like the story Mary was reading quickly put her little sister into sleep. The checked adverbs attaching to the verb of the embedded clause (VEC) and to the verb of the main clause (VMC) were analyzed. Cantonese-English bilinguals were grouped according to their L2 proficiency. Results reflected that 1) both groups showed preference to HA for PP, 2) LP group showed preference to VMC for adverb attachment; 3) there is a large gap in LA between LP and HP, suggesting that syntactic ambiguity resolution involves interaction of all the information available. The relationship between language proficiency and parsing is not so definitely supported by the results.
Highlights
Introduction and Literature ReviewSyntactically ambiguous structures can be utilized to test parsing strategies
Results reflected that 1) both groups showed preference to HA for PP, 2) LP group showed preference to VMC for adverb attachment; 3) there is a large gap in low attachment (LA) between LP and high proficiency group (HP), suggesting that syntactic ambiguity resolution involves interaction of all the information available
Compared with models highlighting purely syntactic information, interactionist model favored by MacDonald (1997) assumes that learners rely on all the information available, including syntactic information (Branigan, Pickering, & McLean, 2005; Clifton, Speer et al, 1991), lexical information (Frenck-Mestre et al 1997), and semantic information (Boland & Blodgett, 2006; Carson & Gibson, 1999)
Summary
Ambiguous structures can be utilized to test parsing strategies. When it comes to language processing, two kinds of models are put forward. Models like garden-path model (Frazier & Fodor, 1978) claim that learners merely resort to pure syntactic information in syntactic ambiguity. Compared with models highlighting purely syntactic information, interactionist model favored by MacDonald (1997) assumes that learners rely on all the information available, including syntactic information (Branigan, Pickering, & McLean, 2005; Clifton, Speer et al, 1991), lexical information (Frenck-Mestre et al 1997), and semantic information (Boland & Blodgett, 2006; Carson & Gibson, 1999). It is worth noting that things become more complicated in L2 disambiguation because of a wide range of factors, namely L2 exposure, possible transfer of parsing mechanism from L1 to L, syntactic information such as argument structure, lexical information and referential context
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