PROCESSING AND INTERPRETATION OF GARDEN-PATH SENTENCES IN L2 SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH

Date

2023-8

Author

Yaman, Süleyman

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

428
views

166
downloads

Cite This

The current thesis aims to examine whether L1 and L2 speakers of English differ from each other in terms of parsing and comprehension of temporarily ambiguous or garden-path sentences. In a self-paced experiment, the ambiguity of the sentences and the type of comprehension questions (i.e. main vs. subordinate clause) were manipulated. The analysis of reading times revealed that both groups experienced garden-path effects at or following the disambiguation, with these effects being smaller and more volatile for the L2 group. With respect to the analysis of off-line comprehension accuracy, the well-known phenomenon of lingering misinterpretations was broadly replicated in both groups, as evidenced by the low accuracy rates to the subordinate clause questions following the ambiguous condition; however, significant ambiguity effects were also found in main clause questions. The L2 group was generally more likely to misinterpret the experimental sentences than the L1 group irrespective of ambiguity and question type. Finally, individual differences in (self-rated) English proficiency did not modulate either the online garden-path effects or comprehension accuracy among the L2 speakers. The observed pattern of results is discussed with respect to the accounts of L2 processing.

Subject Keywords

Psycholinguistics, L2 processing, garden path sentences, good-enough comprehension

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/104812

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis