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INTEGRATION OF VERBAL AND CONSTRUCTIONAL INFORMATION IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE PROCESSING OF ENGLISH DATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2020

Hyunwoo Kim Open the ORCID record for Hyunwoo Kim [Opens in a new window] ,
Gyu-Ho Shin Open the ORCID record for Gyu-Ho Shin [Opens in a new window]  and
Haerim Hwang
Hyunwoo Kim
Affiliation:
Yonsei University
Gyu-Ho Shin*
Affiliation:
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Haerim Hwang
Affiliation:
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gyu-Ho Shin, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa,1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

This study investigated the effects of construction types on Korean-L1 English-L2 learners’ verb–construction integration in online processing by presenting the ditransitive and prepositional dative constructions and manipulating the verb’s association strength within these constructions. Results of a self-paced reading experiment showed that the L2 group spent longer times in the verb–construction integration in the postverbal complement region when processing the ditransitive construction, which is less canonical and highly avoided in the learners’ L1, than when processing the prepositional dative construction, which is more canonical and shares similar structural features with the L1 counterpart. In the following spillover region, L2 learners showed faster reading times as proficiency increased when the verb was strongly associated with the prepositional dative construction. Our findings expand the scope of current models on L2 sentence processing by suggesting that construction types and L2 proficiency may affect the L2 integration of verbal and constructional information.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , September 2020 , pp. 825 - 847
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Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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