Article published in:
Research in Second Language Processing and ParsingEdited by Bill VanPatten and Jill Jegerski
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 53] 2010
► pp. 87–110
Constraints on L2 learners’ processing of wh-dependencies
Evidence from eye movements
Ian Cunnings | University of Essex
Claire Batterham | University of Essex
Claudia Felser | University of Essex
Harald Clahsen | University of Essex
Using the eye-movement monitoring technique, the present study examined whether wh-dependency formation is sensitive to island constraints in second language (L2) sentence comprehension, and whether the presence of an intervening relative clause island has any effects on learners’ ability to ultimately resolve long wh-dependencies. Participants included proficient learners of L2 English from typologically different language backgrounds (German, Chinese), as well as a group of native English-speaking controls. Our results indicate that both the learners and the native speakers were sensitive to relative clause islands during processing, irrespective of typological differences between the learners’ L1s, but that the learners had more difficulty than native speakers linking distant wh-fillers to their lexical subcategorizers during processing. We provide a unified processing-based account for our findings.
Published online: 15 December 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.53.04cun
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.53.04cun
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