{"pk":26168,"title":"The Comprehension of English Garden-path Sentences byMandarin and Korean Learners of English as a Second Language","subtitle":null,"abstract":"How the properties of a first language (Mandarin, Korean)influence the comprehension of sentences in a secondlanguage (English) was investigated in a series of self-pacedreading time studies. Native Mandarin- and Korean-speakinglearners of English were compared with native Englishspeakers on how they resolved a temporary ambiguity aboutthe relationship between a verb and the noun following it in asentence (e.g., The club members understood [that] thebylaws would be applied to everyone.). Frequency biases ofverbs’ subcategorization structure (direct-object-bias vs.sentential-complement-bias) was manipulated in Experiment1. Results showed that L1-Mandarin learners of L2-Englishwere able to use both the verb bias and the complementizercue, and their usage of these cues was not modulated byproficiency. L1-Mandarin learners’ use of the verb bias cuecontrasts with previously reported findings with L1-Koreanlearners of L2-English, who showed sensitivity to verb biasonly in higher proficiency learners (Lee, Lu, & Garnsey,2013). The difference between L1-Mandarin and L1-Koreanlearners suggests that L1 word order (Mandarin & English,SVO; Korean SOV) influences how quickly L2 learners learnword-order-dependent cues about structures in the L2.Experiment 2 added plausibility manipulation (e.g., The clubmembers understood the bylaws/the pool...). Neither thenative speakers or the L2 groups (L1-Mandarin L2-English &L1-Korean L2-English) used plausibility to disambiguatesentences, challenging the claims that L2 learners rely moreheavily on plausibility than syntactic cues during sentenceprocessing.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"verb bias; plausibility; garden-path sentences"},{"word":"L2sentence processing"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/58x1t7v6","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Zhiying","middle_name":"","last_name":"Qian","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Illinois","department":""},{"first_name":"Eun-Kyung","middle_name":"","last_name":"Lee","name_suffix":"","institution":"Yonsei University","department":""},{"first_name":"Dora","middle_name":"Hsin-Yi","last_name":"Lu","name_suffix":"","institution":"National Taipei University","department":""},{"first_name":"Susan","middle_name":"M.","last_name":"Garnsey","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Illinois","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2016-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26168/galley/15804/download/"}]}