Binding out of relative clauses in native and non-native sentence comprehension
- Pronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings, but evidence from processing studies is scarce. We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring experiment and an offline questionnaire investigating whether native and non-native speakers of German can link personal pronouns to non c-commanding QPs inside relative clauses. Our results show that both participant groups were able to obtain telescoping readings offline, but only the native speakers showed evidence of forming telescoping dependencies during incremental parsing. During processing the non-native speakers focused on a discourse-prominent, non-quantified alternative antecedent instead. The observed group differences indicate that non-native comprehenders havePronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings, but evidence from processing studies is scarce. We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring experiment and an offline questionnaire investigating whether native and non-native speakers of German can link personal pronouns to non c-commanding QPs inside relative clauses. Our results show that both participant groups were able to obtain telescoping readings offline, but only the native speakers showed evidence of forming telescoping dependencies during incremental parsing. During processing the non-native speakers focused on a discourse-prominent, non-quantified alternative antecedent instead. The observed group differences indicate that non-native comprehenders have more difficulty than native comprehenders computing scope-shifted representations in real time.…
Author details: | Claudia FelserORCiDGND, Janna-Deborah DrummerORCiD |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-022-09845-z |
ISSN: | 0090-6905 |
ISSN: | 1573-6555 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35192127 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of psycholinguistic research |
Publisher: | Springer |
Place of publishing: | New York |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2022/02/22 |
Publication year: | 2022 |
Release date: | 2022/10/14 |
Tag: | Eye-movement monitoring; German; Non-native language; Pronoun binding; c-command; processing |
Volume: | 51 |
Issue: | 4 |
Number of pages: | 26 |
First page: | 763 |
Last Page: | 788 |
Funding institution: | German Science Foundation (DFG) [FE 1138/1-1] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |