Identifying Co-reference of Zibun and Caki: The Case of Reflexives in Japanese and Korean

This study examines the properties of co-reference in DPs and the Japanese reflexive zibun, and the Korean reflexive caki. We posit that the resolution of local and long distance binding ambiguity in Japanese and Korean is influenced by the case particles that mark the reflexives. Results from a truth-value judgment task showed that Japanese and Koreans not only have different binding patterns but local and long distance binding varies based on case-marked reflexives. Bonferroni post-hoc tests revealed that Japanese prefer local binding when zibun is marked by the nominative case and long distance binding for the dative and accusative cases, while the Koreans prefer long distance binding when caki is marked by the genitive, dative, and accusative cases. Overall, our results show that further studies of reflexives should closely examine the role of case markers in ambiguity resolution and also examine how native speakers parse and process ambiguous sentences

Eye-tracking as a window into assembled phonology in native and non-native reading

The past 30 years of reading research has confirmed the importance of bottom-up processing. Rather than a psycholinguistic guessing game (Goodman, 1967), reading is dependent on rapid, accurate recognition of written forms. In fluent first language (L1) readers, this is seen in the automatic activation of a word’s phonological form, impacting lexical processing (Perfetti & Bell, 1991; Rayner, Sereno, Lesch & Pollatsek, 1995). Although the influence of phonological form is well established, less clear is the extent to which readers are sensitive to the possible pronunciations of a word (Lesch & Pollatsek, 1998), derived from the varying consistency of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) (e.g., although ‘great’ has only one pronunciation, [ɡɹeɪt], the grapheme within it has multiple possible pronunciations: [i] in [plit] ‘pleat’, [ɛ] in [bɹɛθ] ‘breath’; Parkin, 1982). Further, little is known about non-native readers’ sensitivity to such characteristics. Non-native readers process text differently from L1 readers (Koda & Zehler, 2008; McBride-Chang, Bialystok, Chong & Li, 2004), with implications for understanding L2 reading comprehension (Rayner, Chace, Slattery & Ashby, 2006). The goal of this study was thus to determine whether native and non-native readers are sensitive to the consistency of a word’s component GPCs during lexical processing and to compare this sensitivity among readers from different L1s

Conducting Research at Language Centers: Practical Perspectives from the Field

The focus in this article is on research in language centers. Four center directors provide examples of the place of research in language centers and focus on how teachers and researchers work together to facilitate large action research projects. The first section describes a survey of instructors in U.S.‐based intensive English programs (IEPs). The other sections then illustrate how research is encouraged and developed through clear frameworks, incentives, and the involvement of teaching faculty in research projects of different scales

Finding the sweet spot: Learners’ productive knowledge of mid-frequency lexical items

Research into vocabulary knowledge often differentiates between breadth (how many words a person knows) and depth (how well the words are known). Both theoretical categories are essential for understanding language learners' lexical development but how the different aspects of vocabulary knowledge interconnect has not received the same attention as each individual dimension (Haomin & Bilü, 2017), especially in terms of productive knowledge (Mantyla & Huhta, 2014). This study analyzes lexis from mid-frequency lemmas in the K3-K9 frequency bands from the learner corpus PELIC (Juffs et al., 2020). Critically for learners, mastery of lexis in this frequency range is essential for achieving the English proficiency required for university study. From these mid-frequency items, a dataset of 7,554 tokens were collected from word families with multiple derivations and manually annotated. The findings showed high rates of collocational and derivational accuracy for the forms learners opted to use. However, compared to expert speaker texts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA; Davies, 2008-), learners overused the verb forms and underused the noun forms of these lexical items. These patterns provide evidence of the interplay between breadth and depth in learners’ productive vocabulary usage, suggesting that increased lexical depth will naturally lead to greater lexical breadth and vice versa. Pedagogical implications reaffirm the importance of developing learners’ explicit morphological awareness (Ishikawa, 2019) and collocational accuracy (Crossley et al., 2015). Suggestions for mid-frequency lexical items to prioritize in language learning are also provided, with a view to helping learners achieve academic readiness

The Influence of Moraic Structure on L2 English Syllable-Final Consonants

[Abstract not available

What kind of priming is most effective in the processing of relative clauses in context?

This paper examines the influence of different kinds of preceding contexts on the processing of Chinese relative clauses (RCs). We systematically compared the processing of RCs in a canonical, non-canonical, and "null" context. This paper is the first to systematically examine three accounts of priming (the thematic pattern priming account proposed by Lin (2014), in addition to both the verb phrase constituent priming account and the syntactic position sequence priming account proposed by Fedorenko, Piantadosi, and Gibson (2012)) in RC processing. Results showed discrepancies between predictions from each priming account and the actual results. None of the three priming accounts could sufficiently explain the results in Chinese. Alternative possible explanations were suggested, including: (1) having a context makes RC reading more natural and frequency effects less obvious; (2) the NPs inside the RCs are primed by the original thematic roles or grammatical functions of same NPs in the critical context sentence; (3) an interplay of all three different kinds of priming in the processing of RCs in context may occur

Multiword sequences in L2 English language learners’ speech: The relationship between trigrams and lexical variety across development.

Languages have formulaic multiword sequences (MWSs) that occur repeatedly in speech and writing (e.g., Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992; Siyanova-Chanturia & Pellicer-Sanchez, 2018). For learners, then, the production of MWSs is an important element in developing spoken language which is complex, accurate, and fluent. However, though the use of MWSs are important for achieving spoken proficiency, it is unclear whether the production of MWSs supports or hinders another aspect of proficiency, lexical variety. This paper is an exploration of the production of MWSs and the development of lexical variety, found in two-minute speeches (n = 294) from English L2 learners (n = 66) over time in an intensive English program (IEP). In this study, MWSs were operationalized as recurrent three-word trigrams. Using hierarchical linear modeling and correlation analysis, we found different patterns of development for the two measures. The use of MWSs increased and then decreased while the lexical variety scores slightly decreased and then sharply increased over time in the IEP. Although the impact of MWSs on oral fluency has been studied, this is the first study to consider how MWSs affect lexical variety

Modality-Independent Effects of Phonological Neighborhood Structure on Initial L2 Sign Language Learning

The goal of the present study was to characterize how neighborhood structure in sign language influences lexical sign acquisition in order to extend our understanding of how the lexicon influences lexical acquisition in both sign and spoken languages. A referent-matching lexical sign learning paradigm was administered to a group of 29 hearing sign language learners in order to create a sign lexicon. The lexicon was constructed based on exposures to signs that resided in either sparse or dense handshape and location neighborhoods. The results of the current study indicated that during the creation of the lexicon signs that resided in sparse neighborhoods were learned better than signs that resided in dense neighborhoods. This pattern of results is similar to what is seen in child first language acquisition of spoken language. Therefore, despite differences in child first language and adult second language acquisition, these results contribute to a growing body of literature that implicates the phonological features that structure of the lexicon is influential in initial stages of lexical acquisition for both spoken and sign languages. This is the first study that uses an innovated lexicon-construction methodology to explore interactions between phonology and the lexicon in L2 acquisition of sign language

Accurate Measurement of Lexical Sophistication in ESL with Reference to Learner Data

One commonly used measure of lexical sophistication is the Advanced Guiraud (AG; [9]), whose formula requires frequency band counts (e.g., COCA; [13]). However, the accuracy of this measure is affected by the particular 2000-word frequency list selected as the basis for its calculations [27]. For example, possible issues arise when frequency lists that are based solely on native speaker corpora are used as a target for second language (L2) learners (e.g., [8]) because the exposure frequencies for L2 learners may vary from that of native speakers. Such L2 variation from comparable native speakers may be due to first language (L1) culture, home country teaching materials, or the text types which L2 learners commonly encounter. This paper addresses the aforementioned problem through an English as a Second Language (ESL) frequency list validation. Our validation is established on two sources: (1) the New General Service List (NGSL; [4]) which is based on the Cambridge English Corpus (CEC) and (2) written data from the 4.2 million-word Pitt English Language Institute Corpus (PELIC). Using open-source data science tools and natural language processing technologies, the paper demonstrates that more distinct measurable lexical sophistication differences across levels are discernible when learner-oriented frequency lists (as compared to general corpora frequency lists) are used as part of a lexical measure such as AG. The results from this research will be useful in teaching contexts where lexical proficiency is measured or assessed, and for materials and test developers who rely on such lists as being representative of known vocabulary at different levels of proficiency. This research applies data-driven exploration of learner corpora to vocabulary acquisition and pedagogy, thus closing a loop between educational data mining and classroom applications

Reanalysis and lingering misinterpretation of linguistic dependencies in native and non-native sentence comprehension

Research on temporarily ambiguous “garden path” sentences (e.g., After Mary dressed the baby laughed) has shown that initially assigned misinterpretations linger after reanalysis of the temporarily ambiguous phrase in both native (L1) and non-native (L2) readers. L2 speakers have particular difficulty with reanalysis, but the source of this L1/L2 difference is debated. Furthermore, how lingering misinterpretation may influence other aspects of language processing has not been systematically examined. We report three offline and two online experiments investigating reanalysis and misinterpretation of filler-gap dependences (e.g., Elisa noticed the truck which the policeman watched the car from). Our results showed that L1 and L2 speakers are prone to lingering misinterpretation during dependency resolution. L1/L2 differences were observed such that L2 speakers had increased difficulty reanalysing some filler-gap dependencies, however this was dependent on how the dependency was disambiguated. These results are compatible with the “good enough” approach to language processing, and suggest that L1/L2 differences are more likely when reanalysis is particularly difficult