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Incremental interpretation in second language sentence processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2006

JOHN N. WILLIAMS
JOHN N. WILLIAMS
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Abstract

The degree to which native and non-native readers interpret English sentences incrementally was investigated by examining plausibility effects on reanalysis processes. Experiment 1 required participants to read sentences word by word and to make on-line plausibility judgements. The results showed that natives and non-natives immediately computed the plausibility of the preferred structural analysis, which then affected ease of reanalysis. Experiment 2 required participants to read the same sentences word by word in order to perform a memory task. The natives showed a similar pattern of results to Experiment 1, whereas for the non-natives plausibility effects were delayed. However, the non-natives still appeared to be performing immediate syntactic reanalysis. It is concluded that syntactic processing was person- and task-independent, whereas the incrementality of interpretation was more dependent on task demands for the non-natives than for the natives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 71 - 88
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2006

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Footnotes

Thanks to Ernest Lee for helping collect the data for Experiment 1, and to the reviewers and David Green for helpful comments and advice.