@misc{PanSchimkeFelser2015, author = {Pan, Hui-Yu and Schimke, Sarah and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Referential context effects in non-native relative clause ambiguity resolution}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {398}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-404785}, pages = {16}, year = {2015}, abstract = {We report the results from two experiments investigating how referential context information affects native and non-native readers' interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses in sentences such as The journalist interviewed the assistant of the inspector who was looking very serious. The preceding discourse context was manipulated such that it provided two potential referents for either the first (the assistant) or the second (the inspector) of the two noun phrases that could potentially host the relative clause, thus biasing towards either an NP1 or an NP2 modification reading. The results from an offline comprehension task indicate that both native English speakers' and German and Chinese-speaking ESL learners' ultimate interpretation preferences were reliably influenced by the type of referential context. In contrast, in a corresponding self-paced-reading task we found that referential context information modulated only the non-native participants' disambiguation preferences but not the native speakers'. Our results corroborate and extend previous findings suggesting that non-native comprehenders' initial analysis of structurally ambiguous input is strongly influenced by biasing discourse information.}, language = {en} } @book{SchroederSchellhardtAkincietal.2015, author = {Schroeder, Christoph and Schellhardt, Christin and Akinci, Mehmet-Ali and Dollnick, Meral and Dux, Ginesa and G{\"u}lbeyaz, Esin I{\c{s}}{\i}l and J{\"a}hnert, Anne and Ko{\c{c}}-G{\"u}lt{\"u}rk, Ceren and K{\"u}hmstedt, Patrick and Kuhn, Florian and Mezger, Verena and Pfaff, Carol and {\"U}rkmez, Bet{\"u}l Sena}, title = {MULTILIT}, editor = {Schroeder, Christoph and Schellhardt, Christin}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-80390}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2015}, abstract = {This paper presents an overview of the linguistic analyses developed in the MULTILIT project and the processing of the oral and written texts collected. The project investigates the language abilities of multilingual children and adolescents, in particular, those who have Turkish and/or Kurdish as a mother tongue. A further aim of the project is to examine from a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspective the extent to which competence in academic registers is achieved on the basis of the languages spoken by the children, including the language(s) spoken at the home, the language of the country of residence and the first foreign language. To be able to examine these questions using corpus linguistic parameters, we created categories of analysis in MULTILIT. The data collection comprises texts from bilingual and monolingual children and adolescents in Germany in their first language Turkish, their second language German und their foreign language English. Pupils aged between nine and twenty years of age produced monologue oral and written texts in the two genres of narrative and discursive. On the basis of these samples, we examine linguistic features such as lexical expression (lexical density, lexical diversity), syntactic complexity (syntactic and discursive packaging) as well as phonology in the oral texts and orthography in the written texts, with the aim of investigating the pupils' growing mastery of these features in academic and informal registers. To this end the raw data have been transcribed by the use of transcription conventions developed especially for the needs of the MULTILIT data. They are based on the commonly used HIAT and GAT transcription conventions and supplemented with conventions that provide additional information such as features at the graphic level. The categories of analysis comprise a large number of linguistic categories such as word classes, syntax, noun phrase complexity, complex verbal morphology, direct speech and text structures. We also annotate errors and norm deviations at a wide range of levels (orthographic, morphological, lexical, syntactic and textual). In view of the different language systems, these criteria are considered separately for all languages investigated in the project.}, language = {en} } @article{ClahsenGerthHeyeretal.2015, author = {Clahsen, Harald and Gerth, Sabrina and Heyer, Vera and Schott, Esther}, title = {Morphology constrains native and non-native word formation in different ways Evidence from plurals inside compounds}, series = {The mental lexicon}, volume = {10}, journal = {The mental lexicon}, number = {1}, publisher = {Benjamins}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {1871-1340}, doi = {10.1075/ml.10.1.03cla}, pages = {53 -- 87}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The role of morphological and syntactic information in non-native second language (L2) comprehension is controversial. Some have argued that late bilinguals rapidly integrate grammatical cues with other information sources during reading or listening in the same way as native speakers. Others claim that structural cues are underused in L2 processing. We examined different kinds of modifiers inside compounds (e.g. singulars vs. plurals, *rat eater vs. rats eater) with respect to this controversy which are subject to both structural and nonstructural constraints. Two offline and two online (eye-movement) experiments were performed examining the role of these constraints in spoken language comprehension of English and German, testing 77 advanced L2 learners. We also compared the L2 groups to corresponding groups of native speakers. Our results suggest that despite native-like sensitivity to the compounding constraints, late bilinguals rely more on non-structural constraints and are less able to revise their initial interpretations than L1 comprehenders.}, language = {en} }