THE FINE-TUNING OF LINGUISTIC EXPECTATIONS OVER THE COURSE OF L2 LEARNING

This study investigates the degree to which native-English-speaking learners of Spanish can generate expectations for information likely to occur in upcoming portions of an unfolding linguistic signal. We examine Spanish clitic left dislocation, a long-distance dependency between a topicalized objec...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in second language acquisition 2017-09, Vol.39 (3), p.493-525
Main Authors: Leal, Tania, Slabakova, Roumyana, Farmer, Thomas A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural Occupations
Clitics
Cognition & reasoning
Comprehension
Discourse Analysis
English
English language
Expectation
Experimental psychology
Felicity
Gender
Grammar
Intonation
Language
Language Processing
Language Proficiency
Language Research
Linguistic Input
Linguistic Theory
Linguistics
Native Language
Native Speakers
Nouns
Phonology
Phrase Structure
Prediction
Reading
Reading Processes
Research Design
Second Language Learning
Semantics
Semiotics
Sentences
Spanish
Spanish as a second language learning
Spanish language
Syntax
Task Analysis
Value Judgment
Verbs
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study investigates the degree to which native-English-speaking learners of Spanish can generate expectations for information likely to occur in upcoming portions of an unfolding linguistic signal. We examine Spanish clitic left dislocation, a long-distance dependency between a topicalized object and an agreeing clitic, whose felicity depends on the discourse. Using a self-paced reading task, we tested the predictions of the shallow structure hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b) and the reduced ability to generate expectations hypothesis (Grüter, Rohde, & Schafer, 2014). Learners successfully demonstrated sensitivity to the violation of expectations set up by the syntactic and discourse context. In addition, the behavior of the second language (L2) learners was dependent on proficiency: the higher their proficiency, the more their behavior mirrored native-speaker processing. These results support a view of SLA in which knowledge of L2 discourse-grammatical relationships is acquired slowly over the course of L2 learning.
ISSN:0272-2631
1470-1545
DOI:10.1017/S0272263116000164