Acceptability Judgment Research Articles

What does the processing of chunks by learners of Chinese tell us? An acceptability judgment investigation

Abstract Chunks are multi-word sequences that constitute an important component of the mental lexicon. In second language (L2) acquisition, chunking is essential for attaining fluency and idiomaticity. In the present study, in order to examine whether chunks provide a processing advantage over non-chunks for L2 learners at different levels of proficiency, three groups (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) English-speaking learners of Chinese participated in an online acceptability judgment task and a familiarity rating task. Our results revealed that the participants in all three groups processed chunks faster and with fewer errors than they did non-chunks. It was also found that the observed processing advantage of chunks could not be explained by a familiarity effect alone, thus suggesting that L2 learners across the board store chunks as holistic units. The implications of chunk instruction in relation to input frequency and variability in L2 settings are also discussed.

“Sounds like home”: The effect of listener on matching guise in regional accent on syntactic acceptability

This study unites sociophonetic speech perception and syntax research by matching or mismatching social expectations of participants during a syntactic grammaticality judgement task. I hypothesize that regional syntactic structures are more acceptable when heard in their corresponding local, regional accent compared to a nonlocal accent. The experiment focuses on Southern American English as spoken in western Kentucky as the local accent and personal datives and double modals as matching, regional grammatical structures, along with a set of nonlocal filler sentences. 81 University of Kentucky participants completed a between-subjects matched guise survey. Regional structures are consistently rated more acceptable in the local accent than the nonlocal. Self-identified Kentuckian Participants rated local structures higher than non-Kentuckian participants, regardless of which accent they heard. This is prominent in ratings of the nonlocal audio; Kentuckian participants rated both local structures in the nonlocal accent approximately fifteen points higher than non-Kentuckians. In contrast, non-Kentuckian participants mark filler sentences in the local audio lower than the nonlocal, a variation absent from Kentuckian participants’ ratings. These results suggest that grammaticality judgements result from an interplay of sociocultural expectations with the phonological and syntactic structure of an utterance. Judgement of structural grammaticality is not independent of social expectation.

The role of crosslinguistic morphological congruency and L2 proficiency in the L3 acquisition of English plural marking

ABSTRACT Plural marking differs across languages. Some must mark plurality using an overt morpheme (e.g. English, Russian), while others mark it optionally (e.g. Korean) or lack an explicit plural morpheme (e.g. Chinese). This crosslinguistic difference in plural marking has received much attention in research exploring language transfer in the context of L2 acquisition, but little in the context of L3 acquisition. This study tests the effects of L1 and L2 knowledge on L3 acquisition with two groups of multilingual children (n = 68; 11–13 years old) with different L1s (Chinese or Russian) but the same L2 (Korean) and L3 (English). We also investigated whether L2 proficiency modulates influence of the previously learned language in L3 acquisition. The participants completed a timed acceptability judgment designed to investigate their knowledge of English plural marking. Results showed that the L1-Russian children were better able to distinguish between felicitous and infelicitous plural marking than the L1-Chinese children. In addition, the L1-Chinese children showed poorer performance as their L2 proficiency increased. The study discusses these results in light of theoretical approaches to L3 acquisition.

Linguistic Awareness or Grammatical Competence: What Dominates the Saudi Undergraduate EFL Classroom?

Globalization leading to massive geopolitical changes around the world has made it meaningful to reconsider the state of English education in Saudi Higher Education Institutions to gain a realistic understanding of their role and contribution in preparing native Arabic speaking Saudi EFL learners to establish themselves as global citizens. This study weaves around the twin axes of linguistic awareness and grammatical competence by evaluating these factors in a random sample of student participants (N= 120) from Hail University, KSA. They are exposed to two remotely administered tests the first of which measures their grammatical skills in English. In addition, linguistic awareness is measured using participants’ acceptability judgements to four types of English syntactical constructions to gain a deeper understanding of their language awareness. Results show that just 17% of the participants could correctly answer the grammar test while 83% of them answered the test incorrectly. Further, in the acceptability judgement test, students answer the syntax with rare collocations (Yes=52.7%, No=47.3%), syntax with unusual collocation (Yes=41.3%, No=58.8%), syntax with frequent collocation (Yes=49.2%, No=50.8%), and syntax with wrong collocation (Yes=5.2%, No=94.8%). Language being a cognitive, social, and cultural construct, a comparative analysis of the results obtained from these two kinds of data is likely to bring the spotlight on the dominant component in the Saudi university EFL classroom, and hence, help identify the precise factors that need to be boosted.

Teaching foreign language grammar to primary-school children with developmental language disorder: A classroom-based intervention study

IntroductionChildren with developmental language disorder (DLD) start learning foreign languages, usually English as a foreign language (EFL), at an increasingly young age. However, current scholarship lacks crucial insights into how children with DLD respond to language learning in classroom settings and how they can be supported in doing so. The purpose of this early efficacy study is to determine whether a business-as-usual curriculum or a new teaching method tailored to the specific needs of pupils with DLD results in (greater) progress in the foreign language (English) and in the school language (Dutch). MethodThe participants were 75 pupils with DLD in the last three years of primary school, learning EFL in special education in the Netherlands. The intervention group (n=41) received 12 lessons following the CodeTaal approach, including metalinguistic instruction of grammar rules, explicit cross-linguistic contrasts and multimodal interaction with the material. The control group (n=34) received their regular English lessons. The study used a pre- to post-test design and compared the performance of the two groups on a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) in English and a narrative task in both English and Dutch. ResultsOnly the intervention group significantly improved in their ability to identify ungrammaticalities in English and generalised the learnt rules to new sentences. Although the performance on the GJT predicted accuracy of English narratives, neither group showed a significant decrease of error rates in English. In contrast, the accuracy of Dutch narratives showed improvement, but only in the intervention group. However, the effects were small and there was significant variability in responsiveness to the intervention. ConclusionWe conclude that pupils with DLD are able to make progress in foreign language learning in a classroom setting if provided with adequate support.

The role of priming in grammatical acceptability judgements for native versus non-native speakers: Effects of intelligibility

Comprehenders frequently need to adapt to linguistic variability between talkers and dialects. Previous research has shown, given repeated exposure to quasi-grammatical structures, comprehenders begin to perceive them as more grammatical (Luka & Barsalou 2005, Luka & Choi 2012). We examined whether grammatical acceptability judgements differ for native versus non-native speech. In an exposure phase, native English speakers listened to, retyped, and rated the grammaticality of quasi-grammatical sentences (e.g., What Emily is thankful for is that she is here) spoken by a native or non-native speaker. In a subsequent test phase, participants rated additional sentences, some of which had the same structure as exposure sentences. Participants rated native-accented sentences as more grammatical, demonstrating a role for talker identity in perceptions of grammaticality. Furthermore, structures previously heard during the exposure phase were rated as more grammatical than novel unprimed structures, but only for the native speaker. Subset analyses suggest this effect is driven by speaker intelligibility, which holds implications for communication between native and non-native speakers.

Education and Grammaticality Judgments on Persian Principles and Parameters

Introduction: The innateness of language faculty and universal constraints, especially its independency from other mental disciplines, is a robust theory yet under investigation. This study is another contribution to making decisions on competence through performance.
 Methodology: The project applied an expressive grammaticality judgment task on principles and parameters of the Persian language and tested 24 native speakers’ claims on the statements in question.
 Results: The children judged sentence stimuli of two types (principles and parameters), each having two subcategories (Structure dependency and Projection principles, Head and Null-subjects (5-year-old) performance on principle- and parameter-judgments differed from their older counterparts (9-year-old), indicating the superior ability of the school-age group in distinguishing grammatically well-formed and ill-formed Persian principles and parameters.
 Conclusion: Since the older group attended elementary level (third grade), the interpretation of such results may pertain to education

Too True to Be Good? The Non-Uniformity of Extraction from Adjunct Clauses in English

Adjunct clauses are traditionally assumed to be strong islands for extraction across languages. However, the universal island status of adjunct clauses has been challenged by studies showing that extraction is possible from finite adjunct clauses in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. The possibility of extraction in these languages appears to be affected by various factors, including the type of adjunct clause, the type of extraction dependency, and the presence of contextual facilitation. These findings call for a re-evaluation of the islandhood of adjunct clauses in English. We conducted an acceptability judgment study on relativization from three types of finite adjunct clauses in English (if-, when-, and because-clauses) in the presence of supporting context. We found that the three clause types showed rather non-uniform acceptability patterns: extraction from when- and because-clauses both yielded significantly lower ratings than extraction from if-clauses, which patterned with non-island that-clauses. Our results suggest that at least for relativization, if- and when-adjuncts are not invariably strong islands in English, and that extra-grammatical factors may be key in understanding island structures traditionally assumed to be purely syntactic in nature.

The Acquisition of Arabic and English Relative Clauses by L2 English and Arabic Learners

This study explored the acquisition of Arabic and English relative clauses by L2 English and Arabic learners. It examined the extent to which the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) (Keenan and Comrie 1977) and the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) (Eckman 1977) account for the acquisition of English and Arabic relative pronouns by English and Arabic L2 learners. Twenty Arabic-speaking learners of English and twenty English-speaking learners of Arabic were selected. To this end, four different tasks were used in this regard, namely the Sentence Combination task, the Multiple-Choice task, the Picture Description task, and the Grammaticality Judgement task. The results of this study showed that Arabic learners of English were able to comprehend and produce relative pronouns successfully. However, their performance was found to be affected by the system of relative pronouns of Arabic. For example, they were found better in producing who than whom. Additionally, the study found that the performance of Arabic learners of English was influenced by the type of the task (i.e., Sentence Combination Task is harder than the Multiple-Choice Task). On the other hand, the English-speaking learners of Arabic (i.e., the L2 Arabic group) produced and comprehended the Arabic relative pronouns easily despite their L1 language interference. The overall results showed that the NPAH and the MDH were able to predict the mistakes made by L2 learners of Arabic and English.

The cognitive construction-grammar approach to teaching the Chinese Ba construction in a foreign language classroom

Abstract The present study introduces a novel instructional approach to teaching a Chinese construction to college students in a foreign language classroom. Based on the framework of the construction-grammar approach to language acquisition, this study tested the effect of construction-based teaching, which integrates formal and semantic aspects of language with contextually meaningful visual scenes, in Korean-speaking Chinese learners’ acquisition of the Chinese Ba construction. Two groups of Chinese learners, who were enrolled in second-semester college-level Chinese classes, received constructional (n = 33) or form-focused instruction (n = 33) for 13 weeks. Results from elicited production and grammaticality judgment tasks implemented preceding and following the instruction showed that the constructional instruction group had improvements to a greater extent than the form-focused instruction group. These findings underscore the validity of the construction-grammar approach as an effective teaching method in foreign language learning settings.

L2 acquisition of the Chinese plural marker -men by English and Korean speakers

Abstract This article investigates the L2 acquisition of the Chinese plural maker -men by English and Korean speakers within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere, 2009). The Chinese plural suffix -men, the Korean plural suffix -tul, and the English plural suffix -s share some properties and differ on others. Thirty-two English-speaking learners and thirty-five Korean-speaking learners of Chinese of advanced and intermediate proficiency were tested using a truth value judgment task and a grammaticality judgment task. Results show that: (i) all the L2 groups have acquired the target feature set of -men (i.e., [plural, specific, human]); (ii) the two English groups and the advanced Korean group but not the intermediate Korean group have acquired the conditions on the overt realization of -men (i.e., optionality with demonstratives and prohibition with classifiers). The results are consistent with the FRH: differences in how features are assembled in lexical items and differences in conditions on feature realization between the L1 and L2 lead to acquisition difficulty; such difficulty can be overcome, though native-like performance is not guaranteed.

Bidialectal and monodialectal differences in morphosyntactic processing of AAE and MAE: Evidence from ERPs and acceptability judgments

IntroductionAfrican American English (AAE) has never been examined through neurophysiological methods in investigations of dual-language variety processing. This study examines whether contrastive and non-contrastive morphosyntactic features in sentences with and without AAE constructions elicit differing neural and/or behavioral responses in bidialectal speakers of AAE and Mainstream American English (MAE), compared to monodialectal MAE speakers. We compared electroencephalographic (EEG) and behavioral (grammatical acceptability judgment) data to determine whether two dialects are processed similarly to distinct languages, as seen in studies of bilingual codeswitching where the P600 event related potential (ERP) has been elicited when processing a switch between language varieties. MethodsBidialectal AAE-MAE speakers (n = 15) and monodialectal MAE speakers (n = 12) listened to sentences in four conditions, while EEG was recorded to evaluate time-locked brain responses to grammatical differences between sentence types. The maintained verb form in the present progressive tense sentences (e.g., The black cat lap/s the milk) was the morphosyntactic feature of interest for comparing P600 responses as an indicator of error detection. Following each trial, responses and reaction times to a grammatical acceptability judgment task were collected and compared. ResultsFindings indicate distinct neurophysiological profiles between bidialectal and monodialectal speakers. Monodialectal speakers demonstrated a P600 response within 500–800ms following presentation of an AAE morphosyntax feature, indicating error detection; this response was not seen in the bidialectal group. Control sentences with non-contrasting grammar revealed no differences in ERP responses between groups. Behaviorally, bidialectal speakers showed greater acceptance of known dialectal variation and error (non-contrastive) sentence types compared to the monodialectal group. ConclusionsERP and behavioral responses are presented as preliminary evidence of dual-language representation in bidialectal speakers. Increased consideration of AAE language processing would enhance equity in the study of language at large, improving the work of clinicians, researchers, educators and policymakers alike.

Mixed Compounds: Where Morphology Interfaces with Syntax

In this work, we investigate a special type of CS below word level, which is observed in mixed compound words. In particular, we discuss mixed Italian–German compounds; this combination is particularly interesting since, in the two languages, the process of compounding follows different rules for what concerns the position of the head, as well as gender and number inflection. An Acceptability Judgment Task was administered to some bilingual speakers, who assessed the acceptability of mixed compounds inserted in both German and Italian clauses. Our conclusion is that it is possible to have mixed compounds, though this option is severely constrained, especially because of the different word order parameters exhibited by the two languages.

Cognitive and contextual factors modulating grammar learning at older ages.

Second language learning has been shown more difficult for older than younger adults, however, the research trying to identify the sources of difficulty and possible modulating factors is scarce. Extrinsic (learning condition and complexity) and intrinsic factors (executive control) have been related to L2-grammar learning in younger adults. In the present study, we aim to assess whether extrinsic and intrinsic factors are also modulating grammar learning in older adults. We compared the learning performance of younger and older adults in a L2 learning task. 162 Spanish native-speakers (81 young) learnt Japañol (Japanese syntaxis and Spanish lexicon) in either an intentional (metalinguistic explanation) or an incidental (comprehension of sentences) context. The complexity of the sentences was also manipulated by introducing (or not) a subordinate clause. Individual differences in proactivity were measured with the AX-CPT task. After the learning phase, participants performed a Grammatical Judgment Task where they answered if the presented sentences were grammatically correct. No differences between older and younger adults were found. Overall, better results were found for the intentional-condition than for the incidental-condition. A significant interaction between learning context and the proactivity index in the AX-CPT task showed that more proactive participants were better when learning in the incidental-condition. These results suggest that both extrinsic and intrinsic factors are important during language learning and that they equally affect younger and older adults.

Island sensitivity in L2 learners: Evidence from acceptability judgments and event-related potentials

This study investigates the processing of wh-dependencies in English by native speakers and advanced Mandarin Chinese-speaking learners. We examined processing at a filled gap site that was in a licit position (non-island) or located inside an island, a grammatically unlicensed position. Natives showed N400 in the non-island condition, which we take as evidence of gap prediction; no N400 emerged within the island. Learners yielded P600 in the non-island condition, suggesting learners did not predict a gap, but rather experienced syntactic integration difficulty. Like natives, learners showed no effects inside the island. Island sensitivity was also observed for both natives and learners in an offline acceptability judgment task. We also explored whether event-related potentials (ERP) responses were related to attentional control (AC), a cognitive ability that has been related to predictive processing in native speakers, in order to examine whether variability in processing in learners and native speakers is similarly explained. Results showed that increased AC was associated with larger N400s for natives and larger P600s for learners in the non-island condition, suggesting that increased AC may be related to prediction for natives and to integration effort for learners. Overall, learners demonstrated island sensitivity offline and online, suggesting that second language (L2) processing is indeed grammatically-guided. However, ERP results suggest that predictive processing in the resolution of wh-dependencies may be limited, at least for learners whose first language (L1) does not instantiate overt wh-movement.

Measuring Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge in Second Language Acquisition

Previous research shows that due to non-facilitative first language (L1) transfer, second language (L2) speakers do not develop implicit knowledge of certain grammatical structures. Therefore, the present paper investigates whether L1-Sinhala–L2-English speakers could acquire implicit knowledge of English object pronouns. To achieve this goal, the paper compares data collected via an untimed grammaticality judgment task (untimed GJT) and an oral production task (OPT). The untimed GJT measured explicit knowledge, whereas implicit knowledge was measured by the OPT. The two tasks tested the knowledge of object pronouns by L2 English speakers. The object pronominalization differs in Sinhala and English. Object pronouns are expressed overtly in English. Sinhala has overt and null object pronouns. However, null object pronouns are ungrammatical in English. Under the facilitative transfer from Sinhala, L2 speakers would accept overt object pronouns (grammatical structure). On the other hand, under the non-facilitative transfer, they would accept null object pronouns (ungrammatical structure). A prediction was also made regarding the two tasks. If L2 English speakers had acquired explicit and implicit knowledge of object pronouns, they would be target-like on object pronouns in the two tasks. In the untimed GJT, the L2 speakers differentiated between grammatical and ungrammatical structures. However, they frequently used ungrammatical structures in the OPT. Therefore, the results suggest that implicit knowledge of object pronouns is still unavailable in Sinhala–English interlanguage.

Remnant connectivity in pseudogapping: Experimental evidence for a direct generation approach

This paper reports the results of two acceptability judgment experiments that examine the effect of PP remnants with mismatching correlates in the antecedent clause (either a PP, with a distinct preposition, or an NP) on the acceptability of pseudogapping as well as non-elliptical controls. Across both experiments, three novel findings emerge: First, utterances with mismatching PPs across the ellipsis clause and its antecedent were consistently degraded relative to their preposition-matched counterparts. Second, this mismatch penalty arose for elliptical and non-elliptical variants alike with only minor differences between the two. Finally, a significant portion of the mismatch penalties was explained away by the degree of semantic similarity between the thematic relations established by the mismatching prepositions with respect to the antecedent verb which was measured in a separate norming experiment. We examine the consequences of these new empirical results for current theories of pseudogapping, namely (i) the remnant-raising analysis, according to which the remnant XP is raised leftward out of the VP prior to VP ellipsis, licensed under identity with its antecedent; and (ii) the direct generation analysis, under which auxiliaries are verbal proforms that recover their referent anaphorically without the need for remnant movement or syntactic identity between the verb and its antecedent. We conclude that the data are more naturally accounted for under the direct generation approach.

Compound-internal anaphora: evidence from acceptability judgements on Italian argumental compounds

The particular properties of argumental compounds in Italian pose interesting theoretical challenges, and investigations of possible syntactic operations within this type of complex words have resulted in conflicting conclusions. Regarding compound-internal anaphora, some researchers exclude the possibility that pronouns can refer to the non-head, while others do not. However, these findings have been based on researchers’ intuitions and on occurrences in language corpora, and while intuitions have been shown to give contrasting results, the absence of a grammatical structure in a corpus should not be taken as evidence that the structure is not possible. The present study aims to experimentally determine the possibility of compound-internal pronominal reference based on structural properties of compounds and referential expressions. Judgements were obtained from 140 Italian native speakers who rated the acceptability of sentences containing a pronoun (null or overt) referring to the argument element of an argumental compound. The results indicate that compound-internal anaphoric reference is acceptable in the case of left-headed compounds and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of verb-noun compounds. The argument element of right-headed compounds, however, does not appear to be available to anaphoric reference. Referential expressions also play a role in the degree of acceptability, with left-headed compounds allowing null form anaphora to a greater extent. These results provide new evidence on compound-internal pronominal reference and give important insights into the processing of argumental compounds.

Effectiveness of explicit and implicit corrective feedback in a video-based SCMC environment

The facilitative role of corrective feedback (CF) in second language (L2) acquisition has been attested in numerous empirical studies. However, despite the increasing popularity of video-supported tools in language education, few studies have examined the effectiveness of CF delivered through video chat. To address this gap, the current study investigated the effect of explicit and implicit corrective feedback (CF) on the acquisition of third person singular –s in a video-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) environment. Fifty-six Chinese learners of English were recruited and randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: explicit CF, implicit CF, and control. They completed two interactive tasks over two treatment sessions during which CF was delivered through video chat to the two treatment groups. The effect of CF treatment was assessed by an untimed grammaticality judgement task and an oral elicited imitation task at the time of pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest. The results indicated that the two treatment groups outperformed the control group on both assessment tasks and that there was no significant difference between the two treatment groups. These results point to the benefits of CF in video-based SCMC and challenge the superiority of explicit CF over implicit CF.

Processing of Transitivity Alternations and Frequency-Based Accounts in Greek Adult Language

The processing and resolution of syntactically ambiguous structures is accounted for by serial autonomous and multiple constraint satisfaction models differently. We investigated the extent to which frequency affects native speakers’ processing and interpretation of ‘voice (non)-alternating’ anticausative Greek verbs which differ in the availability or lack of voice alternation on the verb when it appears in intransitive structures. The accessibility of interpretations was measured with an online self-paced reading (SPR) task and an offline acceptability judgment (AJ) task addressed to 45 monolingual Greek-speaking adults. In order to investigate whether processing load is affected by statistical records in the parser, we compared empirical data with the frequency of the available readings that these verbs receive in formal and informal registers (ILSP, Web-Based Corpus). The online processing study indicated that the parser is sensitive to morphological cues ((N)ACT voice marking), while semantic factors such as animacy are integrated in subsequent stages of processing. A frequency effect was found in accordance with ‘coarse-grained’ models of sentence processing, while more ‘fine-grained’ models could not be validated with respect to frequency alone. The majority of acceptability judgements attributed to the verbs investigated correlated with the most frequent interpretations of verb forms in intransitive structures in corpora.