Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-xq9c7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-15T04:21:11.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TRANSITIVITY IN THE PROCESSING OF INTRANSITIVE CLAUSES

A Category-Based Prediction in Low-Intermediate Learners of English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2016

Laurent Dekydtspotter  and
Hyun-Kyoung Seo
Laurent Dekydtspotter*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Hyun-Kyoung Seo
Affiliation:
Indiana University
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Laurent Dekydtspotter, Department of Second Language Studies, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall 802, 1020 East Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail: ldekydts@indiana.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We document weak garden paths after intransitive verbs, modulated by intransitivity type, in the treatment of DP1 Vintransitive DP2 V2 sequences as in As the journalist arrived the editor postponed the meeting in first language (L1) and second language (L2) sentence processing. In a noncumulative moving-window experiment, 25 English native speakers and 22 low-intermediate Korean learners of English with no naturalistic exposure read critical items in which a subordinate clause was either headed by an intransitive verb (unaccusative vs. unergative) or by a copular predicate. A linear mixed model revealed greater processing loads evidenced in longer reading times on V2 after intransitive verbs than after copular predicates. This finding echoes post hoc observations in Juffs (2004). These asymmetries were driven by significantly greater loads after unaccusative verbs than after copular predicates and unergative verbs. These asymmetries, found in both L1 and L2, are unexpected on the basis of valence information only, as one-place predicates should rule out a second argument. However, we argue that they receive an explanation if parsing involves the interaction of lexically encoded intransitivity information with a transitivity prediction.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 527 - 552
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We would like to thank Rex Sprouse and David Stringer for their advice during the development of this work. We benefited from comments offered by audiences at the Second Language Studies Colloquium at Indiana University and at Second Language Research Forum at Iowa State. We are very grateful to the Indiana Statistical Consulting Center for its expert assistance and to the students from Soonchunhyang University and Indiana University who generously participated in the study. Last but not least, we thank our colleagues at Studies in Second Language Acquisition, both the anonymous reviewers, who helped us improve our argumentation and clarify our language, and the editorial staff for their expert guidance.

References

REFERENCES

Adams, B. C., Clifton, C., & Mitchell, D. C. (1998). Lexical guidance in sentence processing? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5, 265–270.Google Scholar
Baker, M. (1988). Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boland, J. E. (1993). The role of verb argument structure in sentence processing: Distinguishing between syntactic and semantic effects. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 22, 133–152.Google Scholar
Brown, J. D. (1980). Relative merits of four methods for scoring cloze tests. Modern Language Journal, 64, 311–317.Google Scholar
Burzio, L. (1986). Italian syntax: A government-binding approach. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry, 36, 1–22.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006a). Grammatical processing in language learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006b). Continuity and shallow structures in language processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 107–126.Google Scholar
Clifton, C., Speer, S., & Abney, S. P. (1991). Parsing arguments: Phrase structure and argument structure as determinants of initial parsing decisions. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 251–271.Google Scholar
Coderre, E. L., Conklin, K., & van Heuven, W. (2011). Electrophysiological measures of conflict detection and resolution in the Stroop task. Brain Research, 1413, 51–59.Google Scholar
Coderre, E. L., Conklin, K., & van Heuven, W. (2013). The timing and magnitude of Stroop interference and facilitation in monolinguals and bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 420–441.Google Scholar
Dekydtspotter, L., & Renaud, C. (2015). On second language processing and grammatical development: The parser in second language acquisition. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4, 131–165.Google Scholar
Dekydtspotter, L., & Sprouse, R. A. (2003). L2 performance: Interlanguage representations, computations, and intuitions. In Liceras, J., & Zobl, H. (Eds.), Proceedings of generative approaches to second language acquisition (GASLA6) (pp. 45–54). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67, 547–619.Google Scholar
Dussias, P. E., & Cramer-Scaltz, T. R. (2008). Spanish-English L2 speakers’ use of subcategorization bias information in the resolution of temporary ambiguity during second language reading. Acta Psychologica, 128, 501–513.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dussias, P. E., Valdés Kroff, J. R., Guzzardo Tamargo, R. E., & Gerfen, C. (2013). When gender and looking go hand in hand: Grammatical gender processing in L2 Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35, 353–387.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1970). Three reasons for not deriving “kill” from “cause to die.” Linguistic Inquiry, 1, 429–438.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. D. (2002). Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. PROCEEDINGS-NELS, 1, 113–132.Google Scholar
Ford, M., Bresnan, J., & Kaplan, R. (1982). A competence-based theory of syntactic closure. In Bresnan, J. (Ed.), The mental representation of grammatical relations (pp. 727–796). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Frazier, L. (1987). Sentence processing: A tutorial review. In Coltheart, M. (Ed.), Attention and performance 12 (pp. 559–586). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Frazier, L. (1989). Against lexical generation of syntax. In Marslen-Wilson, W. (Ed.), Lexical representation and process (pp. 505–528). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, L. (1990). Parsing modifiers: Special purpose routines in human sentence processing mechanism. In Balota, D. A., Flores d’Arcais, G. B., & Rayner, K. (Eds.), Comprehension processes in reading (pp. 303–330). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Frenck-Mestre, C. (2002). An on-line look at sentence processing in the second language. Advances in Psychology, 134, 217–236.Google Scholar
Frenck-Mestre, C., & Pynte, J. (1997). Syntactic ambiguity resolution while reading in second and native languages. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A, 50, 119–148.Google Scholar
Grüter, T., Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A. (2012). Grammatical gender in L2: A production or a real-time processing problem? Second Language Research, 28, 191–215.Google Scholar
Grüter, T., Rhode, H., & Schafer, A. (2014). The role of discourse-level expectations in non-native speakers’ referential choices. In Orman, W. & Valleau, M. J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 179–191.Google Scholar
Hirakawa, M. (1999). L2 acquisition of Japanese unaccusative verbs by speakers of English and Chinese. In Kanno, K. (Ed.), The acquisition of Japanese as a second language (pp. 89–113). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofmeister, P. (2011). Representational complexity and memory retrieval in language comprehension. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 376–405.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hoover, M. L., & Dwivedi, V. D. (1998). Syntactic processing by skilled bilinguals. Language Learning, 48(1), 1–29.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2010). Ultimate attainment in L2 inflection: Performance similarities between non-native and native speakers. Lingua, 120, 901–931.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2013a). Grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition: relations between lexical and syntactic variability. Second Language Research, 29, 33–56.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2013b). Individual differences in the second language processing of object-subject ambiguities. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36, 129–173.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2015). The timing of lexical and syntactic processes in L2 sentence comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics. doi:10.1017/S0142716415000569.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (in press). Cross-linguistic lexical and syntactic co-activation in L2 sentence processing. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1993). On the role of conceptual structure in argument selection: A reply to Emonds. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 11, 279–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, T. F., Fedorenko, E., Hofmeister, P., & Gibson, E. (2008). Expectation based syntactic processing: Anti-locality effects outside of head-final languages. In: Oral presentation at the 21st annual CUNY sentence processing conference. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.Google Scholar
Ju, M.-K. (2000). Overpassivization errors by second language learners: The effect of conceptualizable agents in discourse. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 85–111.Google Scholar
Juffs, A. (1996). Learnability and the lexicon: Theories and second language acquisition research. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Juffs, A. (2004). Representation, processing and working memory in a second language. Transactions of the Philological Society, 102, 199–225.Google Scholar
Kaan, E. (2014). Predictive sentence processing in L2 and L1: What is different? Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4(2), 257–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, B., & Rappaport-Hovav, M. (1995). Unaccusativity: at the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, S., & Phillips, C. (2015). Aligning grammatical theories and language processing models. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 44, 27–46.Google Scholar
Liu, Y., & Perfetti, C. A. (2003). The time course of brain activity in reading English and Chinese: An ERP study of Chinese bilinguals. Human Brain Mapping, 18, 167–175.Google Scholar
Mazuka, R., & Lust, B. (1990). On parameter setting and parsing: Predictions for cross-linguistic differences in adult and child processing. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 10, 163–205.Google Scholar
McDonald, J. L. (2006). Beyond the critical period: Processing-based explanations for poor grammaticality judgment performance by late second language learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 381–401.Google Scholar
McDonald, J. L., & Roussel, C. C. (2010). Past tense grammaticality judgment and production in non-native and stressed native English speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 429–448.Google Scholar
Miller, K. A. (2011). Rethinking nonnative processing constraints: Evidence from L2 French. In Plonsky, L., & Schierloh, M. (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2009 second language research forum: Diverse contributions to SLA: Integrating the parts of a greater whole (pp. 109–120). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Miller, K. A. (2014). Accessing and maintaining referents in L2 processing of wh-dependencies. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4, 167–191.Google Scholar
Miller, K. A. (2015). Intermediate traces and intermediate learners: Evidence for the use of intermediate structure during sentence processing in second language French. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 37(3), 487–516.Google Scholar
Mitchell, D. C. (1987). Lexical guidance in human parsing: Locus and processing characteristics. In Coltheart, M. (Ed.), Attention and performance XII: The psychology of reading (pp. 601–618). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (1997). Transitivity alternations in second language acquisition: A crosslinguistic study of English, Spanish and Turkish. Montreal: McGill University.Google Scholar
O’Grady, W. (2005). Syntactic carpentry: An emergentist approach to syntax. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Omaki, A., Lau, E. F., White, I. D., Dakan, M. L., Apple, A., & Phillips, C. (2015). Hyper-active gap filling. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1–18.Google Scholar
Oshita, H. (1997). The unaccusative trap: L2 acquisition of English intransitive verbs. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.Google Scholar
Oshita, H. (2000). What is happened may not be what appears to be happening: a corpus study of passive unaccusatives in L2 English. Second Language Research, 16(5), 293–325.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, D. (1978). Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 5, 157–89.Google Scholar
Rayner, K., Carlson, M., & Frazier, L. (1983). The interaction of syntax and semantics during sentence processing: Eye movements in the analysis of semantically biased sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22(3), 358–374.Google Scholar
Rohde, D. (2001). Linger. Available at http://tedlab.mit.edu/∼dr/Linger/.Google Scholar
Rosen, C. (1984). The interface between semantic roles and initial grammatical relations. In Perlmutter, D. M. & Rosen, C. (Eds.), Studies in relational grammar 2 (pp. 38–77). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Segalowitz, N. S., & Segalowitz, S. J. (1993). Skilled performance, practice, and the differentiation of speed-up from automatization effects: Evidence from second language word recognition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 369–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, L. P., Nagel, H. N., & Levine, B. A. (1993). Preference for a verb’s complements and their use in sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 96–114.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2000). Gradients in auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs. Language, 76(4), 859–890.Google Scholar
Staub, A. (2007). The parser doesn’t ignore intransitivity, after all. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 550–569.Google Scholar
Trueswell, J. C., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Kello, C. (1993). Verb-specific constraints in sentence processing: Separating effects of lexical preference from garden paths. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 19, 528–553.Google Scholar
Van Gompel, R., & Pickering, M. (2001). Lexical guidance in sentence processing: A note on Adams, Clifton, and Mitchell (1998). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 851–857.Google Scholar
Van Valin, R. D. (1990). Semantic parameters of split intransitivity. Language, 66, 221–60.Google Scholar
Yuan, B. (1999). Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese. Linguistics, 37, 275–296.Google Scholar
Zobl, H. (1989). Canonical typological structures and ergativity in English L2 acquisition. In Gass, S. M., & Schachter, J. (Eds.), Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition (pp. 203–221). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar