Ambiguities and anomalies: What can eye-movements and event-related potentials reveal about second language sentence processing?

Second language sentence processing is examined here in light of several monolingual psycholinguistic models of parsing, as well as that of linguistic theories specifically adapted to account for second language acquisition in adult learners. We first examine studies that have primarily recorded eye-movements to trace syntactic processing. Syntactic-ambiguity resolution is used in these studies to address various current models of parsing, both in monolinguals and bilinguals. To illustrate how these models can be tested, we discuss a particular type of structural ambiguity: reduced relative clauses. Thereafter, we focus our attention on studies that have recorded event-related potentials during the processing of spoken and written sentences in bilinguals. In these studies, the accent is placed upon how semantic and syntactic anomalies, rather than ambiguities, are treated. We conclude with a quick comparison of these two approaches

The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English

This study compares the way English-speaking children and adult second language learners of English resolve relative clause attachment ambiguities in sentences such as The dean liked the secretary of the professor who was reading a letter. Two groups of advanced L2 learners of English with Greek or German as their L1 participated in a set of off-line and on-line tasks. While the participants ' disambiguation preferences were influenced by lexical-semantic properties of the preposition linking the two potential antecedent NPs (of vs. with), there was no evidence that they were applying any structure-based ambiguity resolution strategies of the type that have been claimed to influence sentence processing in monolingual adults. These findings differ markedly from those obtained from 6 to 7 yearold monolingual English children in a parallel auditory study (Felser, Marinis, & Clahsen, submitted) in that the children's attachment preferences were not affected by the type of preposition at all. We argue that whereas children primarily rely on structure-based parsing principles during processing, adult L2 learners are guided mainly by non-structural informatio

Semantic indeterminacy in object relative clauses

This article examined whether semantic indeterminacy plays a role in comprehension of complex structures such as object relative clauses. Study 1 used a gated sentence completion task to assess which alternative interpretations are dominant as the relative clause unfolds; Study 2 compared reading times in object relative clauses containing different animacy configurations to unambiguous passive controls; and Study 3 related completion data and reading data. The results showed that comprehension difficulty was modulated by animacy configuration and voice (active vs. passive). These differences were well correlated with the availability of alternative interpretations as the relative clause unfolds, as revealed by the completion data. In contrast to approaches arguing that comprehension difficulty stems from syntactic complexity, these results suggest that semantic indeterminacy is a major source of comprehension difficulty in object relative clauses. Results are consistent with constraint-based approaches to ambiguity resolution and bring new insights into previously identified sources of difficulty. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Resolving anaphoric references on deficient syntactic descriptions

Syntactic coindexing restrictions are by now known to be of central importance to practical anaphor resolution approaches. Since, in particular due to structural ambiguity, the assumption of the availability of a unique syntactic reading proves to be unrealistic, robust anaphor resolution relies on techniques to overcome this deficiency. In this paper, two approaches are presented which generalize the verification of coindexing constraints to de cient descriptions. At first, a partly heuristic method is described, which has been implemented. Secondly, a provable complete method is specified. It provides the means to exploit the results of anaphor resolution for a further structural disambiguation. By rendering possible a parallel processing model, this method exhibits, in a general sense, a higher degree of robustness. As a practically optimal solution, a combination of the two approaches is suggested