On the impact of mode of presentation and age on parsing structurally ambiguous relative clauses

Mehdi Sarkhosh; Mehdi Ghaedrahmat

doi:10.29038/eejpl.2023.10.1.sar

Authors

Mehdi Sarkhosh * Urmia University, Iran
Mehdi Ghaedrahmat Urmia University, Iran

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29038/eejpl.2023.10.1.sar

Keywords:

age, attachment preferences, offline presentation, online presentation, Persian, English

Abstract

The relative clause Attachment preferences of female Persian learners of English were investigated regarding their age and modes of presentation (online/offline and holistic/segmented). 50 female native speakers of Persian ranging in age from 15 to 25 participated in the study. The instruments used in the present research included two tests of ambiguous sentences: 1) a grammaticality judgment test, and 2) the main test which was presented in three separate forms: a) Offline, b) online complete presentation (timed) and c) online segment by segment sentence (Self-Paced). This study used the method employed by Kim and Christianson (2013) for determining the attachment preferences of the participants. The results revealed that the participants' age affected the attachment preferences significantly in that adolescents had a clear determiner phrase 1 preference. There was also a statistically significant difference among the three modes of presenting the materials. The findings revealed that learners transferred their attachment strategies from their mother tongue to English, which provided support for transfer hypothesis. The research findings on whether L2 learners can achieve native like patterns of ambiguity resolution is still less than conclusive and findings seem to suggest that L2 learners apply parsing strategies which are less automatized than native speakers and even at odds with some studies reporting no transfer of L1 parsing strategies. Language teachers should make their learners cognizant of relative clause attachment preferences in English to avert their transfer of their mother tongue strategies in determining the antecedents of the relative clauses.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

* Corresponding author: Mehdi Sarkhosh,

0000-0002-2483-4662 ma.sarkhosh@urmia.ac.ir

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Arabmofrad, A., & Marefat, H. (2008). Relative clause attachment ambiguity resolution in Persian. Iranian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 12, 29-49.

Bidaoui, A., Foote, R., & Abunasser, M. (2016). Relative clause attachment in native and L2 arabic. International Journal of Arabic Linguistics, 2(2), 75–95.

Cuetos, F., & Mitchell, D. (1988). Cross-linguistic differences in parsing: Restrictions on the use of the late closure strategy in Spanish. Cognition, 30, 73–105.

Dussias, P. E. (2003). Syntactic ambiguity resolution in L2 learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 529–557. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263103000238

Fernandez, E. (1999). Bilingual sentence processing: Relative clause attachment in English and Spanish. John Benjamins.

Fodor, J. D. (1998). Learning to parse? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27, 285–319. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023258301588

Frenck–Mestre, C. (1997). Examining second language reading: An on-line look. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcok (eds.). Proceedings of the GALA 1997 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 474–478). Human Communications Research Center.

Frenck–Mestre. (2002). An on-line look at sentence processing in the second language. In R. Herrida and J. Altarriba (Eds.), Bilingual sentence processing. North Holland

Gilboy, E., Sopena, J. M., Clifton, C., & Frazier, L. (1995). Argument structure and association preferences in Spanish and English complex NPs. Cognition, 54, 131–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(94)00636-y

Hawkins, J. A. (1999). Processing complexity and filler-gap dependencies across grammars. Language, 75, 244–285. https://doi.org/10.2307/417261

Hemforth, B., Fernandez, S., Clifton, C. Jr., Frazier, L., Konieczny, L., & Walter, M. (2015). Relative clause attachment in German, English, Spanish and French: Effects of position and length. Lingua, 166, 43– 64. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.08.010

Juffs, A. (2001). Psycholinguistically oriented second language research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 207–220. https://10.1017/S0267190501000125

Karimi, M. N; Samadi, E, & Babaii, E. (2021). Relative clause attachment ambiguity resolution in L1-persian learners of L2 English: The effects of semantic priming and proficiency. Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies, 8(3), 153–185.

Kim, J. H., & Christianson, K. (2017). Working memory effects on L1 and L2 processing of ambiguous relative clauses by Klein, E. (1999). Just parsing through. In E. Klein & G. Martohardjono (Eds.), The development of second language grammars: A generative approach (pp. 197–216). John Benjamins.

Marefat, H., & Meraji, M.(2005). Parsing preferences in structurally ambiguous relative clauses: L1 vs. L2. Journal of Humanities, 12(1), 111–127.

Marefat, H., & Samadi, E. (2015). Semantic priming effect on relative clause attachment ambiguity resolution in L2. Applied Research on English Language, 4(2), 78-94.

Marefat, H., & Farzizade, B. (2018). Relative clause ambiguity resolution in L1 and L2: are processing strategies transferred? Iranian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 21(1), 125–161. http://ijal.khu.ac.ir/article-1-2855-en.html

Papadopoulou, D., & Clahsen, H. (2003). Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25(4), 501–528. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263103000214

Papadopoulou, D., & Clahsen, H. (2005). Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Unpublished Master's thesis. University of Essex.