Preverbal Prediction in the Comprehension of Filler-gap Dependencies by Japanese Learners of English

Abstract

This study investigates whether Japanese learners of English form filler-gap dependencies in advance of a verb, predicting an upcoming verb’s information in English, using a self-paced reading experiment. The results demonstrate that Japanese learners of English, at least those who have experienced sufficient exposure to English in English-speaking countries, postulate a gap at the complement position of a verb before the actual verb is encountered and predict a verb that takes a complement while reading English relative clauses. This finding provides evidence that Japanese learners’ comprehension of filler-gap dependencies in English is predictive and is driven by the thematic motivation for early confirmation of the thematic role of the filler. This study also demonstrates that the predictive process in non-native language comprehension of filler-gap dependencies depends on the nature of exposure to a target language.言語