Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:08:29.382Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How do second language learners build syntactic structure?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2006

Eva M. Fernández
Eva M. Fernández
Affiliation:
Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Understanding the mechanisms learners use to process target language input is crucial to developing a complete model of both first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. If adult L2 learners are found to process the target language with mechanisms that differ from those used by child L1 learners and adult native speakers, what implications might this have for the developing grammar? Clahsen and Felser review evidence that appears to point to such differences, generalizing their findings under a shallow structure hypothesis about how adult learners process input in L2.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 59 - 64
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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

Altenberg E. P., & Vago R. M. 2004. The role of grammaticality judgments in investigating first language attrition: A cross-disciplinary perspective. In M. S. Schmid, B. Köpke, M. Keijzer, & L. Weilemar (Eds.), First language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues (pp. 105– 129). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cuetos F., & Mitchell D. C. 1988. Cross-linguistic differences in parsing: Restrictions on the use of the late closure strategy in Spanish. Cognition, 30, 73– 105.Google Scholar
Dussias P. E. 2003. Syntactic ambiguity resolution in second language learners: Some effects of bilinguality on L1 and L2 processing strategies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 529– 557.Google Scholar
Felser C., Roberts L., Gross R., & Marinis T. 2003. The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 453– 489.Google Scholar
Fernández E. M. 1998. Language dependency in parsing: Evidence from monolingual and bilingual processing. Psychologica Belgica, 38, 197– 230.Google Scholar
Fernández E. M. 1999. Processing strategies in second language acquisition: Some preliminary results. In E. C. Klein & G. Martohardjono (Eds.), The development of second language grammars: A generative approach (pp. 217– 239). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fernández E. M. 2003. Bilingual sentence processing: Relative clause attachment in English and Spanish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fodor J. D. 2002. Psycholinguistics cannot escape prosody. Speech Prosody 2002 electronic proceedings [on-line]. Retrieved from http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr/sp2002/pdf/fodor.pd.
Frazier L. 1978. On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Frazier L., & Clifton C. 1996. Construal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Frenck-Mestre C. 2002. An on-line look at sentence processing in the second language. In R. R. Heredia & J. Altarriba (Eds.), Bilingual sentence processing (pp. 217– 236). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Igoa J. M., & Teira C. 2004. Prosody and relative clause attachment in Spanish: Evidence for early but asymmetric effects. Poster presented at Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing (AMLaP) 2004, September 16–18, Aix-en-Provence, France. Abstract [on-line]. Retrieved from http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr/~AMLaP2004/Final_Abstracts_pdf/igoa.pd.
Johnson J. S., & Newport E. L. 1989. Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60– 99.Google Scholar
Maia M., & Maia J. 2005. A compreensão de orações relativas por falantes monolíngües e bilíngües de Português e de Inglês. In M. Maia & I. Finger (Eds.), Processamento da linguagem (pp. 163– 178). Pelotas, Brazil: Editora Educat.
Papadopoulou D., & Clahsen H. 2003. Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 501– 528.Google Scholar
Papadopoulou D., Marinis T., & Roberts L. 2003. Lexical effects in sentence processing: evidence from modifier attachment in Greek and English. Paper presented at Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP) 2003, August 25–27, Glasgow, Scotland.
Scheepers C. 2003. Syntactic priming of relative clause attachments: Persistence of structural configuration in sentence production. Cognition, 89, 179– 205.Google Scholar
VanPatten B. 2005. The fundamental similarities and fundamental differences in first and second language acquisition. Manuscript submitted for publication.