The processing of the ambiguous object pronoun in German monolingual and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian

Abstract

Aims and objectives: The current study examines the role of grammatical and positional parallelism on ambiguous German pronoun resolution in monolingual speakers and highly proficient L2 speakers with L1 Georgian. In particular, the study asks whether an object pronoun ihn in a sentence initial position could refer to the non-subject antecedent in a preceding subject–verb–object sentence. Furthermore, it investigates whether L1 and L2 speakers show similar preferences when resolving ambiguous object pronouns. Methodology: Two visual world eye-tracking and two offline experiments were conducted with L1 and L2 speakers of German. During the eye-tracking session, the task was simply to look and listen, while in the offline test, participants were required to decide on the assumed referent of the ambiguous pronoun. Data and analysis: Linear-mixed effect models were applied to the eye-movement data. Two-sample t tests were used in the analysis of the offline data. Findings and conclusions: Eye-movement results revealed a bias toward the subject antecedent in L1 speakers, while the L2 speakers showed a non-subject preference when resolving the referent of the object pronoun. The offline experiments supported the eye-tracking findings of both groups, particularly as regards the role of grammatical parallelism in the resolution of ambiguous pronouns by the L2 speakers. These findings are interpreted in the context of language-specific processing strategies in anaphora resolution. It appears that L1 and L2 speakers may be using different information-structural cues to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Concretely, a less strongly internalized knowledge of the target language or the influence of the first language may produce alternative processing mechanisms in L2 speakers. Originality: This study fills the research gap on ambiguous object pronoun resolution of L1 and L2 speakers of German. Implications: The findings of this study add additional information to the growing body of research into pronoun resolution. It focuses on the resolution of the German object pronoun within an information-structural framework of language processing in L1 and L2.