Past Projects
Syntactic Parsing of Relative Clauses and Wh-Questions in L2 Italian
PI: Pamela Franciotti
This dissertation aims to research similarities and differences between L1 and L2 parsing strategies, the interaction between L2 grammatical representations and the parser during development and the effect of the L1 grammar in L2 parsing. To this aim, the study investigates the processing of relative clauses (RCs) and wh-questions in L1 English-L2 learners of Italian by testing whether: (i) L2 learners present the well-attested subject/object asymmetry in the processing of RCs and wh-questions, whereby subject-extracted dependencies are easier to process over object ones; (ii) a number feature mismatch between the two NPs hypothesized to attenuate the processing effort incurred by object RCs in L1 child and adult Italian has the same facilitatory effect in L2 processing; (iii) L2 learners are sensitive to verbal agreement to activate a structural reanalysis when it flags an OVS word order in RCs and wh-questions and can successfully recover from a subject initial interpretation. Four self-paced reading experiments, measuring both reading times and post-reading accuracy of responses to comprehension questions, were administered to a group of L1 English-L2 Italian learners at different levels of proficiency, as well as to a control group of Italian native speakers. Main results from the study show that, while learners experience a S/O asymmetry in both RCs and wh-questions as evidenced by native speakers, they are not facilitated in the processing of object RCs with number mismatched NPs as attested in native processing. Moreover, results reveal that only more advanced learners are sensitive and identify verbal agreement as indicating a word order structural reanalysis, while all learners, regardless of level of proficiency, eventually struggle in the reconstruction of the OVS word order in the offline comprehension of both RCs and wh-questions. These research findings demonstrate that in general, L2 learners adopt the same parsing strategies in the L2 as native speakers do in their L1 and support the hypothesis that syntactic principles drive parsing in the L2. Importantly, findings from this study also establish that although there exists an interaction between grammatical properties and the parser in L2 Italian, the interaction is not only modulated by proficiency level and L1 grammar influence, but it is particularly depended upon mastery of L2 grammar-specific properties (i.e., verbal morphology, VS word order) which in L2 development may not yet be fully acquired and stable. Overall, this research calls for a deeper investigation of the mapping between the L2 lexicon and the L2 syntax in second language processing.
Acquisition of English Articles by Mandarin Speakers.
PIs: Dr. Gita Martohardjono and Dr. Veneeta Dayal
Project Manager: Michael Stern
In many languages, articles (such as “the” or “a” in English) provide information about aspects of the world (particularly those aspects encoded as noun phrases or “NPs”). Some languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, lack articles of this sort, and theorists have argued that NPs in these languages lack the information normally expressed by articles. Moreover, experimental studies have found that adult language learners whose first language (L1) does not have articles have difficulty acquiring the article system of a second language (L2), such as English. The problem is hypothesized to be the ambiguity of article-less (or “bare”) NPs in the L1.
However, researchers have noted certain contexts in which a bare NP in a language without articles actually does express some of the information otherwise encoded by articles. This more textured view of article-less languages can provide new insights about L2 acquisition of article systems.
This study utilizes acceptability judgment tasks (where participants read and listen to a sentence and select a numerical rating of acceptability) and picture-sentence matching tasks (where participants read and listen to a sentence and choose the picture it best describes) to examine the interpretation of English articles by L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers who are intermediate learners of English. The goal is to examine whether and to what extent the constraints on ambiguity in the L1 affect the L2 acquisition of articles.
The results will have implications for our understanding of semantic transfer in second-language acquisition, and will allow language teachers, curriculum specialists and education administrators to more effectively serve students, particularly those from Mandarin-speaking backgrounds.
Sentence Processing in Spanish-English Bilinguals
PI: Dr. Gita Martohardjono
Research Coordinators: LeeAnn M. Stover & Michael C. Stern
This project is investigating the real-time mental processing of complex sentences in the first and second languages of Spanish-English bilinguals in NYC. Most studies of bilingual processing tend to focus on second-language acquisition in adult second-language learners, comparing them to monolingual control groups. This study examines processing in both the first and second languages of proficient bilinguals, comparing one group of bilinguals (heritage speakers) to another group of bilinguals (late bilinguals).
This study utilizes eye-tracking in the visual world paradigm. A camera records participants’ eye movements and tracks what point on a screen participants are looking at while they listen to sentences and choose the correct picture from an array of choices. This methodology allows us to avoid experimental confounds caused by reading and metalinguistic tasks, which are affected by participants’ experience with formal education.
The experimental sentences contain several sub-types of relative clauses. Previous literature has demonstrated a robust asymmetry in processing difficulty between different types of relative clauses across a range of languages using a number of methodologies. The robustness of this asymmetry allows us to explore the more subtle effects of sociolinguistic variables relating to use, exposure, and language attitudes.
The results of this research will contribute to our understanding of how sentences are processed differently among different types of bilinguals, particularly when the first language is not the socially dominant language.
(Click here to read an article we published in the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science.)
The Second-Generation Bilinguals Project
PIs: Dr. Gita Martohardjono, Dr. Ricardo Otheguy, Dr. Richard Schwartz, and Dr. Valerie Shafer
Project Manager: Cass Lowry
In this research project, conducted in cooperation with RISLUS, we are investigating the Spanish spoken by Spanish-English bilinguals in New York City. Our objective is to examine language change across generations in the bilingual Hispanic community by analyzing processing patterns for a variety of syntactic structures. We are using event-related potentials (ERP) to measure implicit brain responses to syntactic anomaly, as well as a secondary implicit measure, pupillometry. Explicit behavioral measures such as sentence acceptability judgments are also taken.
Implicit and explicit measures will be analyzed in relation to a wide range of speaker characteristics, including demographic and sociolinguistic variables. By measuring whether and how these characteristics predict processing patterns, we will be able to go beyond the usual comparisons that rely on categories of “native” vs. “heritage” speaker, while addressing questions related to short-term language change, including contact-induced change. Through this investigation, we hope to gain insight regarding the susceptibility of certain aspects of Spanish grammar to intergenerational change in environments where Spanish is not the socially dominant language, such as NYC.
We presented results from the pilot phase of this project at The 40th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC40) at the University of Pennsylvania on March 19, 2016 and at the Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Processing Conference (SVALP) at Virginia Tech on April 1, 2016.