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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 10:5 (2020) ► pp.623–656

When actions and looks don’t line up

The contribution of referential and prosodic information in the processing of PP ambiguities in child-L2 speakers of English

| University of Texas at El Paso
| University of Pennsylvania
| Pennsylvania State University
| Pennsylvania State University

In two eye tracking experiments, we investigate how adult child-L2 speakers of English resolve prepositional phrase (PP) attachment ambiguity in their dominant language (English), and whether they use prosodic information to aid in the process of garden-path recovery. The findings showed an increased processing cost associated with the revision of temporary ambiguous sentences for the child-L2 adults relative to the native English speakers. When prosody was informative, the child-L2 adults were able to use prosodic information to guide the interpretation of their later acquired, dominant language. However, they performed revision significantly less successfully than the native speakers. Although processing was similar for the native English speakers and the adult child-L2 speakers of English, when it comes to sensitivity to prosodic information and referential context, the two groups differed with regards to reanalysis both in the presence and absence of salient prosodic and referential information.

Keywords: prepositional phrase ambiguity resolution, adult child-L2 speakers of English, syntactic processing, bilingualism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Syntactic processing in adult child-L2 speakers and other bilingual populations
    • 1.2The structure under investigation
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and design
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Predictions and results
      • Eye-tracking data
      • Actions data
      • Eye-tracking results
      • Actions results
    • Interim discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials and procedure
    • 3.3Results
      • Eye-tracking results
      • Off-line actions
    • Interim discussion
  • 4.Comparison between Experiment 1 and Experiment 2
  • General discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18001.con
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