Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T06:17:13.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adaptation to syntactic structures in native and nonnative sentence comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2018

EDITH KAAN Open the ORCID record for EDITH KAAN [Opens in a new window] ,
CORINNE FUTCH ,
RAQUEL FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES ,
SONJA MUJCINOVIC  and
ESTHER ÁLVAREZ DE LA FUENTE
EDITH KAAN*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
CORINNE FUTCH
Affiliation:
University of Florida
RAQUEL FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES
Affiliation:
University of Valladolid
SONJA MUJCINOVIC
Affiliation:
University of Valladolid
ESTHER ÁLVAREZ DE LA FUENTE
Affiliation:
University of Valladolid
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Edith Kaan, Department of Linguistics, University of Florida, Box 115454, Gainesville, FL 32611. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Previous research suggests that native speakers quickly adapt to the properties of the language in the surrounding context. For instance, as they repeatedly read a structure that is initially nonpreferred or infrequent, they show a reduction of processing difficulty. Adaptation has been accounted for in terms of error-based learning: the error resulting from the difference between the expected and actual input leads to an adjustment of the knowledge representation, which changes future expectations. The present study tested whether experiencing an error is sufficient for adaptation. We compared native English speakers and second language (L2) learners’ processing of, and adaptation to, two types of temporarily ambiguous structures that were resolved toward the nonpreferred interpretation. Whereas both native English and L2 speakers showed increased reading times at the disambiguating word versus a nonambiguous control, our data suggest that only native English speakers adapted, and only to one of the two structures. These results suggest that experiencing an error is not sufficient for adaptation, and that factors such as ease of revision and task effects may play a role as well.

Keywords

coordinationfilled-gap effectsecond language processingsentence processingsyntactic adaptation
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 3 - 27
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aldwayan, S., Fiorentino, R., & Gabriele, A. (2010). Evidence of syntactic constraints in the processing of wh-movement. A study of Najdi Arabic learners of English. In B. VanPatten & J. Jegerski (Eds.), Research in second language reading and parsing (pp. 65–86). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Atkinson, E., & Omaki, A. (2016). Adaptation of gap predictions in filler-gap dependency processing. Paper presented at the 29th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Gainesville, FL.Google Scholar
Baayen, H., & Milin, P. (2010). Analyzing reaction times. International Journal of Psychological Research, 3, 12–28.Google Scholar
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1987). Markedness and salience in second-language acquisition. Language Learning, 37, 385–407. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1987.tb00577.x Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory & Language, 68 255–278. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001 Google Scholar
Bates, D., Kliegl, R., Vasishth, S., & Baayen, H. (2015). Parsimonious mixed models. ArXiv e-print. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.04967 (ArXiv e-print).Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48. doi: 10.18637/jss.v067.i01 Google Scholar
Bernolet, S., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2010). Does verb bias modulate syntactic priming? Cognition, 114, 455–461. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.11.005 Google Scholar
Bock, K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 355–387. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(86)90004-6 Google Scholar
Box, G. E., & Cox, D. R. (1964). An analysis of transformations. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B (Methodological), 26, 211–252.Google Scholar
Brennan, S. E., & Clark, H. H. (1996). Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 1482–1493. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.22.6.1482 Google Scholar
Brennan, S. E., & Hanna, J. E. (2009). Partner-specific adaptation in dialog. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1, 274–291. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01019.x Google Scholar
Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113, 234–272. doi: 10.1037/0033-295x.113.2.234 Google Scholar
Christianson, K., Hollingworth, A., Halliwell, J. F., & Ferreira, F. (2001). Thematic roles assigned along the garden path linger. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 368–407. doi: 10.1006/cogp.2001.0752 Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.Google Scholar
Conroy, M. A., & Antón-Méndez, I. (2015). A preposition is something you can end a sentence with: Learning English stranded prepositions through structural priming. Second Language Research, 31, 211–237. doi: 10.1177/0267658314555945 Google Scholar
Crain, S., & Fodor, J. D. (1985). How can grammars help parsers? In D. R. Dowty, L. Karttunen & A. M. Zwicky (Eds.), Natural language parsing: Psychological, computational, and theoretical perspectives (pp. 94–128). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cunnings, I. (2017). Parsing and working memory in bilingual sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20, 659–678.Google Scholar
Dallas, A. C. (2008). Influences of verbal properties on second-language filler-gap resolution: A cross-methodological study (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida).Google Scholar
Davies, M. (2008–). The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 520 million words, 1990–present. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ Google Scholar
Dekydtspotter, L., Schwartz, B. D., & Sprouse, R. A. (2006). The comparative fallacy in L2 processing research. In M. G. O’Brien, C. Shea, & J. Archibald (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2006) (pp. 33–40). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Dussias, P. E., & Cramer Scaltz, T. R. (2008). Spanish-English L2 speakers’ use of subcategorization bias information in the resolution of temporary ambiguity during second language reading. Acta Psychologia, 128, 501–513.Google Scholar
Farmer, T. A., Fine, A. B., Yan, S., Cheimariou, S., & Jaeger, T. F. (2014). Error-driven learning of higher-level expectancies during reading. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2181–2186). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Felser, C., Cunnings, I., Batterham, C., & Clahsen, H. (2012). The timing of island effects in nonnative sentence processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34, 67–98. doi: 10.1017/S0272263111000507 Google Scholar
Fine, A. B., & Jaeger, T. F. (2013). Evidence for implicit learning in syntactic comprehension. Cognitive Science, 37, 578–591. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12022 Google Scholar
Fine, A. B., Jaeger, T. F., Farmer, T. A., & Qian, T. (2013). Rapid expectation adaptation during syntactic comprehension. PLOS ONE, 8, 1–18. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077661 Google Scholar
Fodor, J. D., & Inoue, A. (2000). Syntactic features in reanalysis: Positive and negative symptoms. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 25–36. doi:10.1023/A:1005168206061 Google Scholar
Frazier, L. (1987). Syntactic processing: Evidence from Dutch. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 5, 519–559.Google Scholar
Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (1989). Successive cyclicity in the grammar and the parser. Language and Cognitive Processes, 4, 93–126. doi:10.1080/01690968908406359 Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68, 1–76. doi: 10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00034-1 Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (2000). The dependency locality theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In A. Marantz, Y. Miyashita, & W. O’Neil (Eds.), Image, language, brain (pp. 95–126). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hale, J. (2001). A probabilistic Earley parser as a psycholinguistic model. Paper presented at the second meeting of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics on Language Technologies, Pittsburgh, June 1–7, 2001.Google Scholar
Harrington Stack, C. M., James, A. N., & Watson, D. G. (2018). A failure to replicate rapid syntactic adaptation in comprehension. Memory & Cognition, 46, 864–877. doi: 10.3758/s13421-018-0808-6.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., & Westenberg, C. (2000). Word order priming in written and spoken sentence production. Cognition, 75, B27–B39. doi: 10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00080-3 Google Scholar
Hoeks, J. C. J., Vonk, W., & Schriefers, H. (2002). Processing coordinated structures in context: The effect of topic-structure on ambiguity resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 99–119. doi: 10.1006/jmla.2001.2800 Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2015). Semantics and morphosyntax in predictive L2 sentence processing. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 53, 277–306. doi: 10.1515/iral-2015-0014 Google Scholar
Howes, D. H., & Solomon, R. L. (1951). Visual duration threshold as a function of word probability. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 41, 401–410.Google Scholar
Jacob, G., & Felser, C. (2016). Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69, 907–925. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2014.984231 Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F., & Snider, N. E. (2013). Alignment as a consequence of expectation adaptation: Syntactic priming is affected by the prime’s prediction error given both prior and recent experience. Cognition, 127, 57–83. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.10.013 Google Scholar
Kaan, E. (2015). Knowing without predicting, predicting without learning. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 5, 482–486. doi: 10.1075/lab.5.4.07kaa Google Scholar
Kaan, E., & Chun, E. (2018). Priming and adaptation in native speakers and second-language learners. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21, 228−242. doi: 10.1017/S1366728916001231 Google Scholar
Kaan, E., Kirkham, J., & Wijnen, F. (2016). Prediction and integration in native and second-language processing of elliptical structures. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19, 1–18. doi: 10.1017/S1366728914000844 Google Scholar
Kaschak, M. P., & Borreggine, K. L. (2008). Is long-term structural priming affected by patterns of experience with individual verbs? Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 862–878. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2006.12.002 Google Scholar
Kaschak, M. P., & Glenberg, A. M. (2004). This construction needs learned. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 450–467. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.3.450 Google Scholar
Kaschak, M. P., Loney, R. A., & Borreggine, K. L. (2006). Recent experience affects the strength of structural priming. Cognition, 99, B73–B82. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.07.002 Google Scholar
Klein, E. C. (1995). Evidence of a wild grammar. When PPs rear their empty heads. Applied Linguistics, 16, 87–117.Google Scholar
Klein, E. C. (2003). Toward second language acquisition. A study of null-prep. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Kleinmann, H. H. (1978a). Avoidance behavior in adult second language acquisition. Language Learning, 27, 93–107.Google Scholar
Kleinmann, H. H. (1978b). The strategy of avoidance in adult second language acquisition. In W. C. Ritchie (Ed.), Second language acquisition research: Issues and implications (pp. 157–174). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kraljic, T., Samuel, A. G., & Brennan, S. E. (2008). First impressions and last resorts: How listeners adjust to speaker variability. Psychological Science, 19, 332–338.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Christensen, R. H. B. (2016). lmerTest: Tests in linear mixed effects models (Version R package version 2.0-33). Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lmerTest Google Scholar
Lemhöfer, K., & Broersma, M. (2012). Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid lexical test for advanced learners of English. Behavioral Research, 44, 325–343. doi: 10.3758/s13428-011-0146-0 Google Scholar
Levy, R. (2008). Expectation-based syntactic comprehension. Cognition, 106, 1126–1177. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.05.006 Google Scholar
Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A. (2010). Real-time processing of gender-marked articles by native and non-native Spanish speakers. Journal of Memory and Language, 63, 447–464. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2010.07.003 Google Scholar
Martin, C., Thierry, G., Kuipers, J.-R., Boutonnet, B., Foucart, A., & Costa, A. (2013). Bilinguals reading in their second language do not predict upcoming words as native readers do. Journal of Memory and Language, 69, 574–588. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2013.08.001 Google Scholar
Myslín, M., & Levy, R. (2016). Comprehension priming as rational expectation for repetition: Evidence from syntactic processing. Cognition, 147, 29–56. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.021 Google Scholar
Omaki, A., Lau, E. F., Davidson White, I., Dakan, M. L., Apple, A., & Phillips, C. (2015). Hyper-active gap filling. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00384Google Scholar
Omaki, A., & Schulz, B. (2011). Filler-gap dependencies and island constaints in second-language sentence processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 563–588. doi: 10.1017/S0272263111000313 Google Scholar
Pajak, B., Fine, A. B., Kleinschmidt, D. F., & Jaeger, T. F. (2016). Learning additional languages as hierarchical probabilistic inference: Insights from first language processing. Language Learning, 66, 900–944. doi: 10.1111/lang.12168 Google Scholar
Peter, M., Chang, F., Pine, J. M., Blything, R., & Rowland, C. F. (2015). When and how do children develop knowledge of verb argument structure? Evidence from verb bias effects in a structural priming task. Journal of Memory and Language, 81, 1–15. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2014.12.002 Google Scholar
Pozzan, L., & Trueswell, J. C. (2015). Revise and resubmit: How real-time parsing limitations influence grammar acquisition. Cognitive Psychology, 80, 73–108. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2015.03.004 Google Scholar
Pozzan, L., & Trueswell, J. C. (2016). Second language processing and revision of garden-path sentences: A visual word study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19, 636–643. doi: 10.1017/S1366728915000838 Google Scholar
R Core Team (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Reitter, D., Keller, F., & Moore, J. D. (2011). A computational cognitive model of syntactic priming. Cognitive Science, 35, 587–637. doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01165.x Google Scholar
Roberts, L., & Felser, C. (2011). Plausibility and recovery from garden paths in second language sentence processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 299–331. doi:10.1017/S0142716410000421 Google Scholar
Schmid, H.-J. (2007). Entrenchment, salience, and basic levels. In D. Geeraerts, H. Cuyckens, & H.-J. Schmid (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 117–138). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stowe, L. A. (1986). Parsing WH-constructions: Evidence for on-line gap location. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1, 227–245. doi:10.1080/01690968608407062 Google Scholar
Swets, B., Desmet, T., Clifton, C., & Ferreira, F. (2008). Underspecification of syntactic ambiguities: Evidence from self-paced reading. Memory & Cognition, 36, 201–216. doi: 10.3758/mc.36.1.201 Google Scholar
Traxler, M., & Tooley, K. (2008). Priming in sentence comprehension: Strategic or syntactic? Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 609–645. doi: 10.1080/01690960701639898 Google Scholar
van Gompel, R. P. G., Pickering, M. J., Pearson, J., & Jacob, G. (2006). The activation of inappropriate analyses in garden-path sentences: Evidence from structural priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 335–362. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.06.004 Google Scholar
Víquez, A. J. C. (2012). Online processing of wh-dependencies in English by native speakers of Spanish. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas).Google Scholar
Wells, J. B., Christiansen, M. H., Race, D. S., Acheson, D. J., & MacDonald, M. C. (2009). Experience and sentence processing: Statistical learning and relative clause comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 250–271. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.08.002.Google Scholar
Williams, J. N., Möbius, P., & Kim, C. (2001). Native and non-native processing of English wh-questions: Parsing strategies and plausibility constraints. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 509–540.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Kaan et al. supplementary material

Kaan et al. supplementary material

Download Kaan et al. supplementary material(File)
File 1.5 MB