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Abstract
A sentence interpretation experiment based on Bates and MacWhinney's Competition Model was administered to L2 learners of English and Chinese at three different stages of learning. The main purposes of the research were (a) to examine how transfer patterns at the sentence processing level change as a function of proficiency and (b) to investigate whether or how transfer patterns found in Chinese EFL learners (i.e., native speakers of a semantics-based language learning a syntax-centered target language) differ from those found in English CFL learners (i.e., native speakers of a syntax-based language acquiring a semantics-centered one). The results show that transfer patterns do vary as a function of proficiency, and that Chinese EFL learners and English CFL learners display somewhat different patterns of developmental change in sentence processing transfer.
... Mandarin sentences 20,21 . These grammatical properties make it challenging to create an "unambiguously ungrammatical" Mandarin sentence 22 , leading some to describe Mandarin as a "semantics-based" as opposed to a "syntax-based" language 23 . These features make Mandarin an ideal language for testing assumptions about meaning and structure in sentence processing models. ...
... First, we sought to improve characterization of cue weighting in Mandarin using an experiment with a balanced design and monolingual Mandarin-speaking participants. While prior descriptions of the pattern of Mandarin cue weighting have been impactful 23,32,61 , there has been a recent call to use updated methodological approaches to evaluate these findings' replicability 62 . To appreciate the iterative nature of argument structure assignment, we also compared ERPs at pre-verb sentence positions. ...
... Prior experiments have tested Mandarin role reversals, but there are conflicting reports of N400s 16 , semantic P600s 54,56 , or no ERP modulation 58 . These studies have not reported controlling for participants' bilingual language knowledge, despite findings showing sentence comprehension can be impacted by second language knowledge 23,61 . ...
Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world’s languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences, where word order alone is not a reliable cue. We collected participants’ responses to a forced agent-assignment task while measuring their electroencephalography data to capture real-time processing throughout each sentence. We found that sentence interpretation was not informed by word order in the absence of other cues, and while the coverbs BA and BEI were strong signals for agent selection, comprehension was a result of multiple cues. These results challenge previous reports of a linear ranking of cue strength. Event-related potentials showed that BA and BEI impacted participants’ processing even before the verb was read and that role reversal anomalies elicited an N400 effect without a subsequent semantic P600. This study demonstrates that Mandarin sentence comprehension requires online interaction among cues in a language-specific manner, consistent with models that predict crosslinguistic differences in core sentence processing mechanisms.
... Mandarin sentences 20,21 . These grammatical properties make it challenging to create an "unambiguously ungrammatical" Mandarin sentence 22 , leading some to describe Mandarin as a "semantics-based" as opposed to a "syntax-based" language 23 . These features make Mandarin an ideal language for testing assumptions about meaning and structure in sentence processing models. ...
... First, we sought to improve characterization of cue weighting in Mandarin using an experiment with a balanced design and monolingual Mandarin-speaking participants. While prior descriptions of the pattern of Mandarin cue weighting have been impactful 23,32,61 , there has been a recent call to use updated methodological approaches to evaluate these findings' replicability 62 . To appreciate the iterative nature of argument structure assignment, we also compared ERPs at pre-verb sentence positions. ...
... Prior experiments have tested Mandarin role reversals, but there are conflicting reports of N400s 16 , semantic P600s 54,56 , or no ERP modulation 58 . These studies have not reported controlling for participants' bilingual language knowledge, despite findings showing sentence comprehension can be impacted by second language knowledge 23,61 . ...
Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world’s languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences, where word order alone is not a reliable cue. We collected participants’ responses to a forced agent-assignment task while measuring their electroencephalography data to capture real-time processing throughout each sentence. We found that sentence interpretation was not informed by word order in the absence of other cues, and while the coverbs BA and BEI were strong signals for agent selection, comprehension was a result of multiple cues. These results challenge previous reports of a linear ranking of cue strength. Event-related potentials showed that BA and BEI impacted participants’ processing even before the verb was read and that role reversal anomalies elicited an N400 effect without a subsequent semantic P600. This study demonstrates that Mandarin sentence comprehension requires online interaction among cues in a language-specific manner, consistent with models that predict crosslinguistic differences in core sentence processing mechanisms.
... The framework of specialized syntactic competence formed in L1 is expected to transfer to L2 learning and production. Due to the difference in form-function mappings in Chinese and English, Su (2001) examined the transfer patterns of sentence processing strategies in Chinese-speaking learners of English and English-speaking learners of Chinese at three different stages of learning using a sentence interpretation task. All participants were tested in their L1 and L2. ...
... Therefore, it is important to investigate universals and languagespecific patterns involved in spoken narrative construction in L2 by examining how adults from different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds construe and construct a story based on an elicited but unguided prompt. Furthermore, previous research shows that transfer patterns and L2 production vary as a function of learners' proficiency (Rutherford, 1983;Su, 2001). As learners' proficiency in the target language is manifested through lexical use and the richness of expressions in language production, it is important to consider lexical density and diversity as well as the richness of sentential expressions in spoken narratives as well. ...
... English proficiency was a significant predictor of lexical diversity as indexed by the number of different words for the two groups. This was consistent with previous studies (Rutherfold, 1983;Su, 2001). However, L2 proficiency did not predict a significant variance in sentence length for the Chinese group, but it was a significant predictor of sentence length for the Korean counterpart. ...
To understand constructs underpinning L2 production, this study investigated how native speakers (mean age = 26.61) of Chinese (n = 29), Korean (n = 23), and English (n = 28) formulated spoken narratives in English and how functional factors were related to the linguistic richness of narratives under the framework of thinking for speaking. To identify operating mechanisms behind the manifestation of conceptualization and verbal output, analyzed were 80 spoken narratives elicited using a picture book, Frog, where are you? Results showed that the two nonnative groups’ attentional foci were similar to that of the native group. The modes of mental analyses showed a partial difference between Chinese and Korean speakers. The nonnative groups showed the different usage of syntactic elements than English speakers. This study suggested that L1 was a foundational schema for thinking for speaking, as indicated by the trans-linguistic transfer of syntactic features. It also suggested that cultural/attentional foci and assertiveness in narration could be restructured as a result of learning the linguistic and sociopragmatic properties of L2 English. The richness of L2 narratives with respect to lexical diversity, clausal variety, and sentential expressions unevenly varied according to L2 proficiency for both Chinese and Korean speakers. When English proficiency was taken into consideration, the mental analysis, syntactic features, and rhetorical devices were significant predictors of the richness of lexical, clausal, and sentential formulation. Further research should continue under the framework of thinking for speaking in both L1 and L2 with various language groups and different L2 proficiency levels.
... The existing L2 studies within the Competition Model framework (e.g., McDonald, 1987;Liu et al., 1992;Sasaki, 1994;Su, 2001;Tokowicz and MacWhinney, 2005;Morett and MacWhinney, 2013) have primarily attempted to validate the model's prediction on language transfer, i.e., L2 learners initially rely on cues that are dominant in their L1 in L2 sentence processing and would gradually acquire new cue-strength patterns in the L2 (MacWhinney, 1997(MacWhinney, , 2012. In other words, L2 learners would transfer their L1-based processing strategy to L2 processing, resulting in non-native processing of the L2 which may (or may not) be replaced by L2 cues as a function of L2 development. ...
... The degree of the adaptation to the target processing strategies differs across studies. This difference may be due to the particular language-specific differences in strategies by native speakers of the two languages, bilingual proficiency (Kilborn and Cooreman, 1987;McDonald and Heilenman, 1991;Rounds and Kanagy, 1998;Su, 2001;Jackson, 2008;Morett and MacWhinney, 2013;Pham and Ebert, 2016), amounts of L2 exposure (McDonald, 1987;Sasaki, 1991;Heilenman and McDonald, 1993), and starting age of acquiring the L2 or age of arrival in the L2 speaking environment (McDonald, 1987;Liu et al., 1992;Reyes and Hernandez, 2006;Pham and Kohnert, 2010). Early bilinguals with a young age of onset of learning the L2 tend to show an amalgamation of processing strategies from both the L1 and the L2, thus demonstrating an "in-between" profile (Hernández et al., 1994). ...
... Early bilinguals with a young age of onset of learning the L2 tend to show an amalgamation of processing strategies from both the L1 and the L2, thus demonstrating an "in-between" profile (Hernández et al., 1994). Late adult bilinguals' sentence interpretation strategies tend to show forward transfer (Su, 2001), especially at a lower L2 proficiency or with a limited amount of L2 exposure. They adopt L1-processing strategies in interpreting L2 sentences. ...
Based on the Competition Model, the current study investigated how cue availability and cue reliability as two important input factors influenced second language (L2) learners' cue learning of the English article construction. Written corpus data of university-level Chinese-L1 learners of English were sampled for a comparison of English majors and non-English majors who demonstrated two levels of L2 competence in English article usage. The path model analysis in structural equation modeling was utilized to investigate the relationship between the input factors and L2 usage (frequency and accuracy of article cue production). The findings contribute novel and scarce empirical evidence that confirms a central claim of the Competition Model, i.e., the changing importance of cue availability and cue reliability in the frequency and accuracy of production. Cue availability was found to determine L2 production frequency regardless of level of L2 competence. Cue reliability was the input factor that differentiated competence levels. When learners stayed at a relatively lower L2 proficiency, cue reliability played an important role in influencing L2 frequency of usage rather than accuracy of usage. When learners developed increased exposure to and stronger competence in the target language, cue reliability played a significant role in determining learners' success of cue learning. The study is methodologically innovative and expands the empirical applicability of the Competition Model to the domain of second language production and construction learning.
... Bilingual speakers thus develop their competence to the extent required by their needs in various contexts of language use. Under the multi-competence perspective, investigations would look at how bilinguals' behaviour may exhibit features of a modified linguistic system that facilitate the use of the two languages, rather than induce errors against monolingual norms (Baus, Costa, & Carreiras, 2013;Bergmann, Nota, Sprenger, & Schmid, 2016;Su, 2001). Su (2001) examined sentence interpretation strategies by English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese and Chinese-speaking learners of L2 English at three levels of L2 proficiency. ...
... Under the multi-competence perspective, investigations would look at how bilinguals' behaviour may exhibit features of a modified linguistic system that facilitate the use of the two languages, rather than induce errors against monolingual norms (Baus, Costa, & Carreiras, 2013;Bergmann, Nota, Sprenger, & Schmid, 2016;Su, 2001). Su (2001) examined sentence interpretation strategies by English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese and Chinese-speaking learners of L2 English at three levels of L2 proficiency. She found that both groups of L2 learners showed an increasing preference for L2-based strategies in processing L1 sentences as their L2 proficiency increased. ...
... L2 syntactic influence has been reported with empirical evidence that learning a second language might cause the bilingual to change their L1 grammatical sensitivity. Su's (2001) study reported such influence on Chinese-speaking learners of L2 English in an L1 environment. She found the bilinguals' sentence interpreting strategy in their L1 shows increasing reliance on L2-based cues. ...
Cross-linguistic influence studies usually investigate how the bilingual’s first language (L1) influences the acquisition and use of their second language (L2) within the L2 context. This study, by contrast, investigates how the bilingual’s L2 may influence their L1 within the L1 environment, specifically whether the L2 affects L1 performance in an L1 environment in Chinese (L1)-English (L2) late bilinguals, in the domain of subject realisation. Typologically, Chinese allows pronominal subjects to be optionally null under certain discourse-pragmatic conditions whereas English requires obligatory pronominal subjects under most circumstances. To examine possible L2 effects, 15 Chinese-English bilinguals (Experimental) and 15 Chinese monolinguals (Control) participated in Chinese narrative tasks. Results show that bilingual participants produce significantly lower percentages of null subjects than the control group, indicating that bilinguals prefer overt subjects over null subjects in their L1 Chinese utterances under the influence of L2 English syntactic patterns.
... Psycholinguistic experiments demonstrate that native English speakers tend to regard animate nouns in lieu of inanimate nouns as agents of actions as well as subjects of sentences; the cue strength of animacy is thereby perceived to be relatively high in English (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982;MacWhinney, 1977). The cue strength of animacy in Cantonese has not been previously examined, although extensive studies reveal that in Mandarin animacy is a stronger cue than word order because of the latter's flexibility (Li et al., 1993;Miao, 1981;Su, 2001). Given the similarity of syntactic structures between Cantonese and Mandarin, it is likely that such findings are applicable to Cantonese. ...
... A semantics-based processing strategy can more easily replace a syntax-based processing strategy in sentence processing than vice versa. Liu, Bates, and Li (1992), Su (2001), and Lin (2003) all used the competition model to probe into the sentence processing of Chinese learners of English; their results validated the findings of Gass (1987). As animacy is its strongest cue, Chinese employs a semantics-based processing strategy. ...
... Li, Bates, and Li (1992) and Lin (2003) found a striking difference in sentence processing strategies adopted by intermediate Chinese learners of English and those utilized by native English speakers; this suggested that those intermediate learners had not successfully acquired cue strengths or the syntax-based processing strategy of English. Su (2001) compared sentence processing strategies amongst Chinese learners of English at three different levels of language proficiency and discovered that the proportion of learners applying word order as the strongest cue in processing of English sentences increased with proficiency level. In other words, notwithstanding difficulty in switching from a semantics-based processing strategy to a syntax-based one, there was conclusive evidence that more proficient Chinese learners of English gradually managed to acquire the sentence processing strategy of English. ...
The competition model, first developed by Bates and MacWhinney (1982), suggests that language users interpret sentences by reference to distinct cues which vary across languages. Second language learners who adopt the target language's sentence interpretation strategies are more likely to be successful. The present study investigates the acquisition of English cue strengths (i.e. the strengths of cues naturally occurring within the language) by Cantonese learners of English at distinct levels of English proficiency. A test requiring participants to select agents of actions in 27 monotransitive sentences were distributed to 30 elementary learners, 20 intermediate learners, 21 advanced learners of English in Hong Kong (all native speakers of Cantonese), and 15 native speakers. The results suggest that the extent to which Cantonese learners of English acquire English cue strengths increases with their level of English proficiency. Although advanced learners fail to fully acquire the cue strengths of native-speakers, they achieve a native-like level. The findings are consistent with those of earlier studies associating the competition model with second language acquisition which find that second language learners tend to transfer sentence interpretation strategies from their native language when at the beginners level, exhibit a combination of native and target language interpretation strategies at an intermediate level and become more native-like in their use of sentence interpretation strategies when they reach an advanced level.
... How massive argument ellipsis affects English and Japanese native speakers' comprehension of these transitive sentences is still unclear because English is a language whose arguments need to be realized obligatorily whereas Japanese sides with Mandarin Chinese and also allows massive argument ellipsis. Second, this study attempts to shift the focus of earlier studies in Mandarin L2 studies, which often draw attention to how animacy affects sentence comprehension, probably because Mandarin is considered an animacy-dominated language (Liu et al., 1992;Su, 2001a;2001b), to an investigation of how Mandarin L2ers process structural information, i.e., when the animacy information is neutralized and pseudo verbs are used in sentence comprehension. If it is syntactic representation that is being investigated in comprehension, it had better make the processing more syntactic. ...
... Researchers have long employed ideas that are derived from the Competition Model to investigate how Mandarin native speakers employ various cues to comprehend different types of Mandarin transitive constructions (Li et al., 1993;Liu et al., 1992;Miao, 1981;Miao, Chen, & Ying, 1986;Su, 2001a;2001b;. In a relatively large-scale study, Li et al. (1993) employed intrasentential cues such as the passive marker bei, animacy, word order, the object marker ba, and the indefinite marker yi, "one," to examine how Mandarin speakers comprehend the transitive constructions, i.e., the rates for these participants to identify the first NP as the agent in constructions like the SVO construction, the ba-construction, the bei-construction/passive construction, and the topicalization/OSV construction in Mandarin. ...
... These results are in sharp contrast with the findings for native speakers' comprehension of the ba-construction (Li et al., 1993) and of the SVO and OSV construction (Li et al., 1993;Liu et al., 1992;Su, 2001a) when the animacy cue for the NPs was also neutralized. Such sharp contrast between the results for previous studies and the current one may be explained by the fact that the comprehension of native speakers of Mandarin is significantly influenced by their experience with the verb employed in the experiment, which is well-known as a key factor that affects sentence comprehension (Boland, Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Carlson, 1995;Gahl & Garnsey, 2004;Garnsey, Pearlmutter, Myers, & Lotocky, 1997;Hare, McRae, & Elman, 2003;Traxler, Williams, Blozis, & Morris, 2005). ...
Second language learners’ (hereafter L2ers) first language backgrounds, exposure to L2 input, and cross-linguistically common patterns often play a vital role in their construction of grammatical representations in L2 acquisition. The current study investigates how these factors exert an impact on native speakers from typologically different Mandarin Chinese, English, and Japanese in their comprehension of four types of Mandarin transitive constructions: the SVO, the ba-, the subjectless ba-, and topicalization constructions with pseudo verbs, every one of which has its respective frequencies when the animacy cue is neutralized. The results indicate that all of these language users use a good-enough representation that treats the first noun as the agent in grammatical processing, the NVN strategy. Employment of this representation leads to a similar performance for all but the topicalization construction, regardless of the construction frequencies. L1 backgrounds and L2 input exert impact on topicalization, which is non-canonical in Mandarin, apart from the NVN strategy.
... Bijna alle studies naar taaltransfer onderzochten de invloed van de L1 op de L2, maar ook backward language transfer (van de L2 naar de L1) komt voor (Kecskes & Papp, 2000;Cook, 2003). Su (2001) toonde aan dat de mate van backward language transfer samenhangt met het beheersingsniveau van de L2: hoe hoger het niveau, hoe vaker grammaticale kennis van de L2 wordt overgedragen naar de L1. De vraag is daarbij wel of die overdracht bewust of onbewust plaatsvindt. ...
... Hierbij moeten we opmerken dat de gerapporteerde kennis in veel gevallen nog aan de oppervlakkige kant was. In tegenstelling tot ander onderzoek (Cook, 2003;Su, 2001) werd overdracht naar de moedertaal slechts sporadisch waargenomen. Ook de dominante invloed van de L2 op de L3 werd niet waargenomen (Bardel & Falk 2007;Falk et al., 2015). ...
Het talenonderwijs op middelbare scholen in Nederland is weinig gericht op inzicht in taal en taalgebruik (bewuste taalvaardigheid). Leer- en toetsactiviteiten focussen zich voornamelijk op 'het goede antwoord' en niet op de redenering die daaraan vooraf gaat. In deze studie exploreerden we in hoeverre negen vwo 4-leerlingen (15-16 jaar) in hun redeneren impliciete dan wel expliciete kennis benutten. Hierbij werden grammaticaliteitsbeoordelingen en ontleedopgaven bij het Nederlands, het Engels en het Duits ingezet. Leerlingen kregen een 30 minuten durende schriftelijke taak, waarna ze mondeling per opgave uitlegden hoe ze tot hun antwoord waren gekomen (stimulated recall). Uit de verbatim uitgewerkte sessies werden tekstfragmenten geselecteerd waarmee het type en de herkomst van de gebruikte kennis met behulp van een codeerschema vastgesteld kon worden. Uit die analyse bleek dat de leerlingen bij de grammaticaliteitsbeoordelingen voornamelijk impliciete kennis gebruikten (o.a. taalgevoel), terwijl ze bij de ontleedopgaven, ongeacht de doeltaal, voornamelijk expliciete kennis inzetten (d.w.z. aangeleerde kennis en/ of ezelsbruggetjes). Bij de Engelse en Duitse opgaven werd kennis vanuit het Nederlands benut, terwijl dat andersom niet het geval was. In vervolg op deze studie zullen grammaticaliteitsbeoordelingen ingezet worden ter evaluatie van taaloverstijgende lessenseries bij de vakken Nederlands, Engels en Duits. Kernwoorden: Bewuste taalvaardigheid, grammaticaliteitsbeoordelingen (GJT's), ont-leedopgaven, stimulated recall, impliciete en expliciete (grammaticale) kennis
... It can be claimed that in the Competition Model, the competition happens between: form and function, forms (cues) to a function, functions to a form and finally between L1 and L2. As an example in the case of competition between forms to be mapped onto a function and also the difference between two languages, it can be claimed that when subject-verb agreement is a weak cue in English (since the contrast in verb morphology to mark subject role does not always exist (I eat, you eat, they eat) (Su, 2001a;Su, 2001b), in Persian subject-verb agreement is a strong cue to the agent-patient relations in a sentence (man mixoram, to mixori, oumixorad) on the other hand subject-verb agreement is a highly valid and low-cost cue. In learning a language the most valid and the least costly cues of a language compete with less valid and the most costly ones, which finally dominate since there is more probability that they lead to better understanding (Thal& Flores, 2001). ...
... What is crucial to bear in mind is the fact that the functions introduced in the CM resembles to that of Halliday's Systemic-Functional linguistics and deals with the form-meaning relations within the text and not in the real world. The argument is that through putting structures (mostly in the form of lexical units) into actual use and comparisons between L1 and L2 in conveying given functions, such problems as disagreement between languages inform-function mappings and the L1 interference through the transfer of its processing strategies (Su, 2001b) would be resolved. The studies in CM has been limited to (cross-linguistic) investigations in regard to the role of intrasentential cues such as word order, verb agreement, and case marking, noun animacy and so forth in determining the agent-patient relationship in simple declarative sentences (Su, 2004). ...
The Competition Model (CM) embraces lexicalist and functionalist approach to language structure and function. What is highly emphasized in this model is a lexicalist functionalism through which syntactic patterns are directed and controlled by lexical items. CM tenets resemble to that of Haliday's systemic-Functional linguistics in that it only deals with form-meaning relations within a text and not in the real world. A new Competition Model needs to be introduced which is more pragmatic-oriented through taking formulaic sequences as forms to be mapped onto real world pragmatic functions. CM must free itself from the mere focus on sentence processing studies and involve itself with more pragmatic manifestations of form-function relations. It is claimed that within the models in which there is an architecture that utilizes lexical categories to build "valence bridges", L1-L2 translation equivalents facilitate crossing valence bridges which helps in discovering forthcoming elements and filling syntactic slots.
... (2) (nonreversible) (implausible) , 1989 (Miao 1981;Liu et al. 1992;Li & Bates 1993;Su 2001a, 2001b) Miao (1981 (Liu et al. 1992;Li & Bates 1993;Su 2001aSu , 2001b Liu et al. (1992) ...
... (2) (nonreversible) (implausible) , 1989 (Miao 1981;Liu et al. 1992;Li & Bates 1993;Su 2001a, 2001b) Miao (1981 (Liu et al. 1992;Li & Bates 1993;Su 2001aSu , 2001b Liu et al. (1992) ...
抽象
本文檢視漢語母語者、西班牙語母語者漢語初級及中高級學習者在理解具有不同生命性對比的名詞組之下的漢語主動賓句以及主題句時所採用的模式。結果發現在主動賓句方面，三組均將第一個名詞組當成施事、第二個名詞組當成受事（即 NVN 捷思法），而名詞生命性的對比影響不大。至於主題句的理解，漢語母語人士及中高級的學習者隨機猜測其中一個名詞組作為施事，而初級的學習者則多運用 NVN 捷思法處理之。這三組漢語使用者的理解模式，符應了語法優先假說：運用語法結構進行語句理解，雖然名詞組生命性的對比影響了主題句的理解，但其影響力未大過語法結構。
... The results of these studies revealed that transfer in its traditional sense is the effects of first language (L1) or previously learned language on the acquisition of the second language (L2). However, as Su (2001) puts it 'in recent years, attention has started to be drawn to the possible impact of learner's L2 knowledge on their use of L1' (e.g. Kecskes and Papp, 2000;Pavlenko, 2000;Su, 2001;Cook, 2003). ...
... However, as Su (2001) puts it 'in recent years, attention has started to be drawn to the possible impact of learner's L2 knowledge on their use of L1' (e.g. Kecskes and Papp, 2000;Pavlenko, 2000;Su, 2001;Cook, 2003). ...
The relationship between language learners’ L1 and L2 writing productions has attracted the attention of researchers since Kaplan (1966). Along this research line, the present study aimed to explore the reverse transfer of rhetorical patterns from English (L2) to Persian (L1) in the argumentative essays of EFL students in Iran. Sixty MA university students (30 English-majors and 30 non-English-majors) participated in the study. Adopting the scheme developed by Kubota (1998a, 1998b), the study focused on the organization of the essays. The main findings of the study are (a) the non-significant difference between L1 and L2 essays of the same student in both English and non-English majors (b) the positive and significant correlation between the qualities of L1 and L2 essays in both English and non-English majors, (c) and the probable transfer of English-specific organization patterns from L2 to L1 especially among English majors.
... Chinese EFL learners and English CFL learners exhibit some different patterns in the developmental changes of sentence processing transfer. The title of this article is "Transfer of sentence processing strategies: A comparison of L2 learners of Chinese and English [8]," and the author is I-Ru Su. A total of 122 participants were involved in the test, divided into two groups: native Chinese speakers and native English speakers. ...
This literature review examines the phenomenon of reverse transfer (RT) among Chinese adolescents, focusing on its implications for the preservation of their mother tongue and cultural identity. Reverse transfer, a subtype of cross-linguistic influence (CLI), occurs when a later-acquired language affects an earlier one, challenging the traditional view of language learning as unidirectional. The study of RT is particularly pertinent for Chinese adolescents, who are often exposed to multiple languages due to globalization and educational policies, potentially impacting their linguistic and cultural heritage. This article employs the method of a formal literature review. The review synthesizes recent research on RT among Chinese adolescents, with a focus on how additional languages, particularly English, influence their Mandarin proficiency. Findings suggest English has had a significant impact on the mother tongue of Chinese adolescents. Moreover, RT’s impact extends to cultural identity, with some adolescents navigating multicultural spaces effectively, while others experience cultural dissonance, suggesting RT’s role in shaping cultural self-perception and connections to Chinese heritage. The paper underscores the complexity of RT’s effects on language and cultural identity, highlighting the need for educational practices that support multilingual development without compromising the mother tongue. It concludes with a call for longitudinal studies to explore the long-term effects of RT on language and cultural identity among Chinese adolescents, aiming to inform language education and cultural preservation policies.
... Taken together, the results disconfirmed the claims proposed in the literature that L1 plays no role in the L2 process of acquisition (e.g., Ellis, 1994;Felser et al., 2003;Papadopoulou & Clahsen, 2003). Findings also fit well with the research reports in L2 processing that low proficient learners seem not to be able to acquire the structures properly (e.g., De La Colina & Garcia Mayo, 2007;Di Camilla & Anton, 2012;Elston-Güttler et al., 2005;Frenck-Mestre, 2002;Storch & Wigglesworth, 2003;Su, 2001;Swain & Lapkin, 2000;Tian & Jiang, 2021). Nevertheless, further tracking of the participants' language development could provide more insightful understanding of their L1 transfer effect. ...
Within the last two decades, researchers have begun to investigate how L2 learners process syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and lexical information during the comprehension of L2 sentences. The present study aimed to add to research by investigating how L1 influences L2 processing of sentences indicating plurality in constructions involving numerals. More specifically, the research investigated whether Persian speaking low-proficient L2 learners of English showed L1 transfer effects performing a self-paced online reading task. To address this issue, employing the IBEX software, reaction times on critical regions and accuracy rates of learners’ performance were measured on four types of structures (i.e., Numeral + Count Noun, Numeral + Classifier + Mass Noun, Numeral + Classifier + Count Noun, and Numeral + Non-referential Noun + Noun) and two sentence types (ill-formed vs. well-formed). Statistical analysis indicated the effect of both structure and sentence type on reaction times on the critical regions studied. Results also indicated traces of L1 effect in processing Numeral + Classifier + Mass Noun and Numeral + Classifier + Count Noun structures. Concerning the Numeral + Count Noun and Numeral + Classifier + Non-referential Noun + Noun, no clear evidence for L1 transfer effect was observed. Further studies employing a larger sample size, investigating the issue at higher proficiency levels, and having native English speakers as control group are suggested.
... One possibility is that Chinese EFL learners are affected by their awareness of first language in the option of processing strategies in cataphora resolution. The transfer of L1 processing strategies in L2 sentence processing has been confirmed by a number of studies (e.g., Gass, 1987;Harrington, 1987;Kilborn and Cooreman, 1987;Kilborn, 1989;Hernandez et al., 1994;Su, 2001). As Chinese is a semantics-driven language (Xu, 1999), Chinese native speakers are more concerned with semantic congruity than syntactic congruity when processing sentences. ...
Previous studies on English natives have shown that encountering an English cataphoric pronoun triggers an active search for its antecedent and this searching process is modulated by syntactic constraints. It remains unknown whether the conclusion is universal to EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, particularly those with distinct L1 like Chinese in linguistic typology. Therefore, this study used two eye-tracking experiments to investigate how Chinese EFL learners resolve English cataphora. The experiments adopted the gender-mismatch paradigm. Experiment 1 investigated whether Chinese EFL learners with different proficiency would adopt the similar processing pattern to English natives and found that gender congruency elicited longer reading times than gender incongruency between the first potential antecedent and the cataphoric pronoun, the effect early observed in high-proficiency relative to low-proficiency learners. Experiment 2 explored whether the cataphora resolution process was modulated by Binding Principle B and revealed that longer first fixation durations and first pass reading times were observed in gender-mismatch than in gender-match conditions no matter the antecedents are binding-accessible or not while longer regression path durations occurred in gender-mismatch than in gender-match conditions only as the antecedents are binding-accessible. Taken together, these results indicate that Chinese EFL learners also adopt an active search mechanism to resolve cataphoric pronouns, yet along a processing path distinct from English natives’. Specifically, Chinese EFL learners predictively link a cataphoric pronoun to the first potential antecedent in the sentence but only a gender-matching antecedent can prompt them to engage in deep processing of the antecedent. Moreover, the processing time varies with the learners’ English proficiency. Furthermore, unlike native English speakers’ early application of syntactic constraints in their cataphora resolution, Chinese EFL learners try to establish co-reference relations between cataphoric pronouns and antecedents regardless of following or flouting Binding Principle B in early processing stages whereas they exclusively link the cataphoric pronouns to the binding-accessible antecedents in late processing stages. This study adds evidence to the Shallow Structure Hypothesis whereby L2 learners resort to lexical prior to syntactic cues to process sentences in general, which is just opposite to the fashion adopted by the natives.
... semantic and syntactic levels 21,22,24 . Due to the logographic nature of Chinese orthography, Chinese sentence processing has been considered more semantics-based whereas English more syntax-based 53 . Indeed, during Chinese reading, semantic information processing from parafoveal vision was shown to precede phonological processing, suggesting that Chinese characters are optimized for semantic processing 54,55 . ...
Here we tested the hypothesis that in Chinese-English bilinguals, music reading experience may modulate eye movement planning in reading English but not Chinese sentences due to the similarity in perceptual demands on processing sequential symbol strings separated by spaces between music notation and English sentence reading. Chinese–English bilingual musicians and non-musicians read legal, semantically incorrect, and syntactically (and semantically) incorrect sentences in both English and Chinese. In English reading, musicians showed more dispersed eye movement patterns in reading syntactically incorrect sentences than legal sentences, whereas non-musicians did not. This effect was not observed in Chinese reading. Musicians also had shorter saccade lengths when viewing syntactically incorrect than correct musical notations and sentences in an unfamiliar alphabetic language (Tibetan), whereas non-musicians did not. Thus, musicians’ eye movement planning was disturbed by syntactic violations in both music and English reading but not in Chinese reading, and this effect was generalized to an unfamiliar alphabetic language. These results suggested that music reading experience may modulate perceptual processes in reading differentially in bilinguals’ two languages, depending on their processing similarities.
... Lehenengoaren adibide (a), Lee (2000) (Zobl, 1992), norabide-biko eta atzeko norabidean ikertu duten lanak azaldu ditugu (Cook eta beste, 2003;Su, 2001). Elkarreragin sintaktiko ohikoenen artean adberbioen lokalizazio okerra edota gehiegizko zein gutxiegizko hainbat unitate linguistikoen ekoizpena azaldu ditugu (Jarvis, 2000;Jarvis & Odlin, 2002, adibidez). ...
... More precisely, learning a second/foreign language can result in a person's becoming quite tolerant of ungrammatical constructions in their native tongue. Moreover, linguistic constraints of L2 can influence learner's intuitions about how well formed or how appropriate a structure is in their native tongue (see Jarvis, 2003;Su, 2001). This implies that crosslinguistic transfer can affect language learners' judgements in both L1 and L2. ...
The COVID-19 crisis significantly disturbed the teaching process in Serbia. The subject of this research is the reaction and response of Serbian educational system during this crisis. The aim of this paper is the analysis of modifications of the teaching process and distance learning activities in primary and secondary schools, and teaching using the national public television service. The use of the method of content analysis, legal acts in the field of education adopted during the state of emergency in Serbia, decisions and instructions for the implementation of teaching, the manner of implementation of teaching, as well as the results of research on distance learning were investigated. Measures and activities for improving the digital alternative for future educational practice are proposed.
... More precisely, learning a second/foreign language can result in a person's becoming quite tolerant of ungrammatical constructions in their native tongue. Moreover, linguistic constraints of L2 can influence learner's intuitions about how well formed or how appropriate a structure is in their native tongue (see Jarvis, 2003;Su, 2001). This implies that crosslinguistic transfer can affect language learners' judgements in both L1 and L2. ...
In second language acquisition (SLA) transfer is predominantly explored as either positive or negative influence of learners’ first language (L1) on their second/foreign language (L2) performance. Studies in this field serve not only to describe the learner’s interlanguage, but also to inform, improve and refine foreign language teaching. However, the scope of SLA studies is such that it leaves the other transfer direction under-researched (L2 to L1), assuming that once the learner’s L1 system has fully developed, their L1 competence will not be subject to change. More recent studies of adult bilinguals have shown a bidirectional interaction between the two linguistic systems: not only does L1 influence L2, but L2 influences L1 as well. In this study, conducted among adult students of English (B2 to C1 level language users, according to CEFR), we examine the influence of English as a foreign language upon Serbian as a native tongue in terms of tense transfer. More precisely, the study explores how the subjects interpret and translate the secondary meanings of the English past tense. The basic meaning of the past tense is to locate an event (or state) in the past. However, in its secondary meanings (backshift past in reported clauses, counterfactual present in adverbial clauses of condition and ‘past subjunctive’ when expressing wishes and regrets) it does not refer to the past time. The error analysis of students’ English to Serbian translations provides evidence of L2 influence: learners tend to use the Serbian past rather than the present tense in their translations. Pedagogical implications of this study of misuse of L1 tense include focusing on explicit corrective feedback and polishing instructional materials.
... One finding pointing to such influence in morphosyntax is that bilingual speakers seem to become more tolerant to ungrammatical L1 constructions or to reject L1 grammatical constructions more than monolingual speakers (Altenberg, 1991;Balcom, 2003;Jarvis, 2003;Kasparian & Steinhauer, 2017). Another L2→L1 effect reported in the literature is that bilingual speakers can exhibit reduced reliance on L1 cues and processing strategies or increased reliance on L2 cues or processing strategies compared to monolinguals (Dussias, 2003(Dussias, , 2004Dussias & Sagarra, 2007;Hernandez, Bates, & Avila, 1994;Liu, Bates, & Li, 1992;Morett & MacWhinney, 2013;Su, 2001). ...
The current study investigates cross-linguistic influence of second language (L2) learning on native language (L1) processing of morphosyntactic variation in proficient L2 learners immersed in their L1. Despite Spanish pre-and postverbal clitic pronoun positions being grammatical in complex verb phrases, preferences of use have been well attested in natu-ralistic language production. To examine whether those preferences obtain for comprehension in monolinguals, as well as how those preferences might be modulated by learning an L2 with fixed pronoun positions, we administered a self-paced reading experiment to 20 Spanish monolinguals as well as 22 proficient learners English (L1 Spanish). The results of a Bayesian mixed effects regression analysis suggest that preferences in production are echoed in comprehension-but only for the monolingual group. We find support for facilitation in the bilingual group precisely where both languages overlap, as well as evidence that bilinguals may not use clitic position as a reliable cue at all. We interpret the results as evidence that learning an L2 that lacks variation for a particular feature may lead to reduced sensitivity to that feature as a cue in an analogous L1 structure. We situate these results in an experience-based, shared-syntax account of language processing.
... Brown & Gullberg (2008, 227) offer an overview of research that has revealed errors in the L1 traceable to L2 knowledge: in the lexicon and semantics (Balcom, 2003;Jarvis, 2003;Laufer, 2003;Pavlenko, 2003), morphosyntax ( Jarvis, 2003;Pavlenko, 2003), and discourse ( Jyun-gwang Chen, 2006; Pavlenko, 2003). Jyungwang Chen (2006, 174), mentions that some studies (Carson and Kuehn 1994) have shown that proficient L1 writers gradually decline in their L1 writing 7 skills or change in their L1 processing strategy (Su 2001) in an L2 environment. ...
The aim of this paper is to examine the instances of reverse transfer in Serbian EFL learners’ argumentative writing in their L1. Through manual and software data extraction and analysis, relying on the simplified DEE transfer model, we set out to determine whether the effects of the reverse transfer in the syntactic-semantic area can be considered negative, positive, or neutral. Some overlapping of the two language systems might be expected as well.
The syntactic-semantic areas most commonly affected by the reverse transfer are reflected in the use of nominalisations and predicate decomposition, metadiscourse and rhetorical patterns, possessive and other determiners, infinitives, passives, complex noun phrases, and pseudo-cleft sentences. The effects of the reverse transfer can generally be considered neutral, since they reflect the intricacies of learners’ multi-competence which reveal that their command of their L1 is somewhat different from that of their monolingual peers, which can neither be commended or disapproved of. Certain evolutionary changes in their L1, detectable in the use of nominalisations, passives, infinitives, etc. are recognized as well. Few examples extracted from the corpus can be considered ungrammatical, even though that does not necessarily render them unintelligible.
The negative effects of the reverse transfer are revealed in the use of possessive determiners, some complex noun phrases, and rhetorical patterns.
Further research of the larger sample of the corpus should be carried out to reveal whether the findings of this study are generalisable.
Students’ reluctance to write in their L1 may raise some sociolinguistic and sociocultural concerns, and it requires additional research, for their L1 writing skills may have declined in the L2 academic environment
... Mandarin and English use different cues to express argument structure ⮩English favors word order, Mandarin favors plausibility (Liu, Bates, & Li, 1992;Su, 2001) ⮩Mandarin permits SOV and OSV word order (e.g., The apple the child ate and The child the apple ate) ⮩Mandarin also has coverbs BA and BEI that assign argument structure explicitly How do Mandarin native speakers assign argument structure with conflicting cues? ⮩How do coverbs BA and BEI interact with plausibility? ...
... Kamel (1990) studied the factors affecting writing performance in English as a foreign language; the results of this study showed that transfer from Arabic to English remains a problem for Arab learners and affects their writing skills. Labidi (1992), Rui (2011),and Ibnian (2011) all studied the learning strategies used by English as Foreign Language (EFL) students who were learning either vocabulary or grammar. These studies indicated that learners at various stages use forms of their native language and apply them to the target language. ...
The English language has certainly become the most prominent international language in the world. Various initiatives in non-English speaking countries have sprung out to promote the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language and the Arab world is certainly no exception to the rule. The study will focus on Saudi Arabia where new plans, are to be initiated to improve students' language proficiency in view of the tremendous importance of English as an international language and its critical role in the commercial, industrial, technological, and audio-economic development of the Kingdom. This brings up to surface the issue of language transfer errors and its crucial role on speaking proficiency. This paper aims to discuss grammatical errors resulting from language transfer amongst Saudi students. The study will discuss the extent to which the language transfer theory is accepted or rejected. Accordingly, thirty Saudi students were interviewed in the process in Saudi Arabia The study will be accordingly divided into three main sections: firstly, it will look into the acceptance and the rejection of the language transfer theory. Secondly, an analysis of students`students`grammatical speaking errors will be presented according to the source of errors. Thirdly, this study will provide education practitioners to place greater focus on improving spoken English skills in order to raise speaking proficiency in Saudi Arabia. Finally, the paper will conclude with some suggestions to tackle the issue of speaking errors among Saudi students.
... Instead, they are merely intended to keep track of how the object from the original SVO sentence was positioned in a derived verb-final sentence. Different from Li et al. (1992) or Su (2001) in which test sentences were constructed randomly from pools of candidate nouns and verbs, the derivative approach used in the present study ensured that the verb-final sentences are all potentially acceptable, because it is assured that they could be rearranged as grammatical and natural SVO sentences. ...
Prior theoretical and experimental work has demonstrated that the subject-object-verb (SOV) word order is more restricted and more difficult to process than the object-subject-verb (OSV) word order in Chinese. However, few studies have investigated the actual acceptability of non-canonical, verb-final word orders among native speakers. In this study, we conducted a paper-based survey with a group of younger adults and a group of older adults. Non-canonical sentences with and without animacy contrasts were tested with three tasks: acceptability judgement, grammaticality judgement, and subject selection. Our results have two main implications. First, contrary to previous studies, the results suggested that animate-animate-verb (AAV) sentences generally have very poor acceptability, and they may be mostly regarded as uninterpretable. Second, and importantly, we found that while a preference for OSV over SOV was observed in younger adults, it was not evident in older adults. This suggests that the preference for the OSV word order might be modulated by the factor of age.
... Most errors in writing and reading are attributed to a lack of awareness of how to construct a proper English sentence pattern (Hostmeyer, 2016;Su, 2001). In this paper, I will conduct a formative assessment with 64 Arab EFL students to investigate their ability to identify English sentence patterns in literary texts. ...
The article investigated if a significant relationship existed between Arab EFL learners’ and the English sentence pattern identified. The participants were 64 third-year college students studying in the Department of Linguistics at Princess Nourah University, Saudi Arabia. They were assigned 28 literary texts and asked to derive examples for each of the nine sentence patterns listed in Stageberg (1981). An ANOVA test at alpha level P 0.05 and a post hoc test were used to analyze data. The findings of the study showed a highly significant result at p between participants’ performance and the pattern identified. Seven levels of difficulty were identified, where Pattern 1 was the easiest and Pattern 8 was the most difficult. The main components of each English sentence pattern were also investigated to find possible sources of difficulty, such as the use of the copula; transitive, intransitive, and ditransitive verbs; dative case; and double object structure. The denoting of referents, dative case, and double object structures were found to be the main sources of difficulty.
... Mandarin-speaking Chinese students were selected as they represent the largest subgroup of international students in the UK. Furthermore, as typologically distant languages, Mandarin and English differ in important ways at all levels of linguistic analysis, including phonology (Archibald, 1997), word formation (Zhang, McBride-Chang, Wong, Tardif, Shu & Zhang, 2014), grammatical properties expressed in the verbal and nominal domains (Jiang, 2004;Luk & Shirai, 2009;Trenkic, 2008), sentence and information structure (Li & Thompson, 1976;Su, 2001), a near complete lack of cognates, as well as employing different writing systems to represent the language. If difficulties with English influence academic attainment of international students, then we expected this effect to be salient in our chosen population. ...
Although international students experience lower attainment at university than home students (Morrison et al., 2005), reasons are poorly understood. Some question the role of language proficiency as international students come with required language qualifications. This study investigated language and literacy of international students who successfully met language entry requirements and those of home students, matched on non-verbal cognition, studying in their native language. In a sample of 63 Chinese and 64 British students at a UK university, large and significant group differences were found at entry and eight months later. Furthermore, language and literacy indicators explained 51% of variance in the Chinese group’s grades, without predicting the home students’ achievement. Thus language proficiency appears predictive of academic outcomes only before a certain threshold is reached, and this threshold does not correspond to the minimum language entry requirements. This highlights a systematic disadvantage with which many international students pursue their education.
... In particular, we argue for forward positive transfer from L1 Cantonese to L3 Mandarin and reverse negative transfer from L2 English to L1 Cantonese taking place within a single grammatical domain in this group of trilinguals. L2-to-L1 transfer has been documented in a number of studies involving a variety of language pairs, although to date, a majority of the studies feature adult second language acquisition in a largely European language context (e.g., Cook, 2003;Dussias and Sagarra, 2007;Morett and MacWhinney, 2013; but see also Liu et al., 1992;Su, 2001 involving Mandarin and English in adult second language acquisition). Third, this study features the acquisition of Chinese under strong English influence, a phenomenon that is increasingly common among not only children in Hong Kong who are being educated in an international school curriculum, but also relevant to a significant number of Chinese immigrant or adopted children around the world who are typically exposed to a Chinese language at home and grow up in an English-speaking country where they acquire the English language of the speech community simultaneously or successively. ...
Chinese relative clauses (RCs) have word order properties that are distinctly rare across languages of the world; such properties provide a good testing ground to tease apart predictions regarding the relative complexity of subject and object RCs in acquisition and processing. This study considers these special word order properties in a multilingual acquisition context, examining how Cantonese(L1)-English(L2)-Mandarin(L3) trilingual children process RCs in two Chinese languages differing in exposure conditions. Studying in an English immersion international school, these trilinguals are also under intensive exposure to English. Comparisons of the trilinguals with their monolingual counterparts are made with a focus on the directionality of cross-linguistic influence. The study considers how various factors such as language exposure, structural overlaps in the target languages, typological distance, and language dominance can account for the linguistic abilities and vulnerabilities exhibited by a group of children in a trilingual acquisition context. Twenty-one trilingual 5- to 6-year-olds completed tests of subject- and object- RC comprehension in all three languages. Twenty-four age-matched Cantonese monolinguals and 24 age-matched Mandarin monolinguals served as comparison groups. Despite limited exposure to Mandarin, the trilinguals performed comparable to the monolinguals. Their Cantonese performance uniquely predicts their Mandarin performance, suggesting positive transfer from L1 Cantonese to L3 Mandarin. In Cantonese, however, despite extensive exposure from birth, the trilinguals comprehended object RCs significantly worse than the monolinguals. Error analyses suggested an English-based head-initial analysis, implying negative transfer from L2 English to L1 Cantonese. Overall, we identified a specific case of bi-directional influence between the first and second/third languages. The trilinguals experience facilitation in processing Mandarin RCs, because parallels and overlaps in both form and function provide a transparent basis for positive transfer from L1 Cantonese to L3 Mandarin. On the other hand, they experience more difficulty in processing object RCs in Cantonese compared to their monolingual peers, because structural overlaps with competing structures from English plus intensive exposure to English lead to negative transfer from L2 English to L1 Cantonese. The findings provide further evidence that head noun assignment in object RCs is especially vulnerable in multilingual Cantonese children when they are under intensive exposure to English.
... Other studies have found that it is easier for a learner of a word order-dominated language to learn to use animacy appropriately in an animacy-dominated L2 than it is for a learner of an animacy-dominated language to learn to use word order in a word order-dominated L2 (Gass, 1987;Sasaki, 1991). However, several studies have found that L2 learners do not necessarily start out with animacy as a default cue early on in acquisition (McDonald, 1987b;Su, 2001), and others have shown that advanced adult L2 learners are able to successfully move to using morphological cues more strongly than animacy cues in languages where that is appropriate (McDonald, 1987b;McDonald & Heilenman, 1991). Indeed, we saw this tendency to use the morphological cue of case marking more strongly than animacy in both VIE groups in Experiment 1. ...
Visual input enhancement (VIE) increases the salience of grammatical forms, potentially facilitating acquisition through attention mechanisms. Native English speakers were exposed to an artificial language containing four linguistic cues (verb agreement, case marking, animacy, word order), with morphological cues either unmarked, marked in the same color, or marked in different colors. Cue validity (how often a cue was present and correct) and dominance were also manipulated. In Experiment 1, where the morphological cues were low in validity but highly dominant, VIE helped participants to acquire and strengthen one morphological cue (case marking) but not the other (verb agreement). In Experiment 2, where animacy was highly dominant, there was no benefit of VIE; indeed, the same color VIE condition impeded the acquisition of the marked cues. Thus, VIE may only be beneficial in certain circumstances and this may depend on the type of cue as well as its validity and dominance.
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... The structures used in the grammaticality judgment were all ambiguous English sentences but are different in degree of ambiguity. Given that language experience might contribute to L2 learners' differences in comprehending these ambiguous sentences (Pickering, & Branigan, 1999;Hernandez, Bates, & Avila, 1996), the amount of language experience with explicit rules of English grammar seemed to make little differences in the comprehension performance in terms of rule-based manner (Su, 2001;Lee, 2009). That is, the well-experienced non-native learners (group 1) who had relatively much more experience or instruction on English performed almost the same in grammaticality judgment as the semi-experienced learners who had less experience or instruction. ...
The connectionist approach to language processing is popular in second language (L2) study in recent years. The paper is to investigate the connectionist approach of Chinese learners’ individual differences in the comprehension of certain ambiguous English sentences. Comprehension accuracy and grammaticality judgment are carried out with three groups with different background of language experience, namely, well-experienced English natives (group 1), well-experienced non-native English learners (group 2) and semi-experienced non-native English learners (group 3) on four types of ambiguous English sentences such as The polite actor thanked the old man who carried the black umbrella. Results of the study are discussed and a number of conclusions based on the results are summarized with regard to L2 learners’ differences in the performance to comprehend ambiguous syntactic structures.
... For inflectional morphology and its associated agreement properties, L2 learners initially transfer properties of the L1. For instance, using sentence-interpretation tasks, studies conducted within the Competition Model framework (MacWhinney, 1997) demonstrate that the comprehension of simple NVN orders in an L2 is affected by the cue salience of e.g., word order, animacy, subject-verb agreement and case-marking in the L1 of the learners, at least at lower proficiency levels (Su, 2001). Similar effects of L1 influence and proficiency have been reported for the L2 processing of more complex word order measured in behavioural on-line reading tasks (e.g. ...
This study investigates under which conditions the L1 syntax is activated in L2 on-line sentence comprehension. We study whether cross-linguistic syntactic activation of the L1 word order is affected by lexical activation of the first language (L1) by virtue of cognate words. In two eye-tracking experiments, German-English bilinguals and English natives read English sentences containing reduced relative clauses whose surface word order partially overlaps with German embedded clauses. The verbs used were either German-English cognates or matched control verbs. The results show lexical cognate facilitation and syntactic co-activation of L1 word order, with the latter being moderated by proficiency and cognate status. Critically, syntactic co-activation is found only with English control words. We argue that fleeting co-activation of the L1 syntax becomes measurable under higher demands of lexical processing, while cognate facilitation frees resources for inhibition of the L1 syntax and target-like syntactic processing.
... According to the Competition Model (e.g., Bates and MacWhinney 1982), speakers of different languages rely on different cues to correctly interpret a sentence. While English speakers rely on word order, Mandarin speakers depend on animacy (e.g., Su 2001). Mandarin, a topic-comment language, also allows the omission of a subject, which is understood from the context, and accepts more flexible word order. ...
... Sentence interpretation studies have shown that L1 Chinese with low or intermediate English proficiency rely heavily on animacy information when struggling to interpret sequences such The monkey the apple bumps, The apple bumps the monkey, and Bumps the monkey the apple. With increased proficiency in English, they shift to the native English strategy of assigning the subject to the noun immediately preceding the verb (Liu, Bates, & Li, 1992;Su, 2001aSu, , 2001b. ...
Second language (L2) learners often have persistent difficulty with agreement between the number of the subject and the number of the verb. This study tested whether deviant L2 verb number agreement reflects maturational constraints on acquiring new grammatical features or resource limitations that impede access to the representations of L2 grammatical features. L1-Chinese undergraduate students at three age of arrival (AoA) levels were tested for online verb agreement accuracy by completing preambles in three animacy combinations: animate-inanimate [AI; e.g., The officer(s) from the station(s)], inanimate-animate [IA; e.g., The letters from the lawyer(s)], and inanimate-inanimate [II; e.g., The poster(s) from the museum(s)]. AI should be less costly to process than IA or II sequences, because animacy supports the subject in AI but competes with the subject for control of agreement in IA sequences, and is neutralized in II. Agreement accuracy was greater overall for AI than for IA or II, and although an AoA-related increase in erroneous agreement after plural subjects occurred for IA and II, there were no AoA effects for AI. Higher scores on memory tasks were associated with greater agreement accuracy, and the memory tasks significantly predicted variance in erroneous agreement when AoA was partialed out. The fact that even late learners can do verb agreement in the case of AI demonstrates that they can acquire new grammatical features. The greater difficulty with agreement in the case of IA or II than of AI, in conjunction with the results for the memory tasks, supports the resource limitation hypothesis.
Chinese reading comprehension is vital for both native speakers and Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) learners, including ethnic minority (EM) students from China’s Autonomous Regions. These students, such as Uighur, Kazakh, Mongolian, and Tibetan, often learn Chinese after acquiring their own language and may attend prestigious universities in major cities. Good reading comprehension is essential for their academic success. Executive function (EF), comprising inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory, plays a significant role in reading comprehension. Inhibitory control positively impacts primary school students’ second language reading performance. However, its effects on senior secondary school native Chinese and CSL students remain unclear. In the current study involving 107 CSL students and 142 native Chinese students, participants were assessed using Chinese literacy, inhibitory control, and non-verbal intelligence instruments. Surprisingly, no correlation was found between reading and inhibitory control in native students, while a negative relation was observed in CSL students. These findings may offer new insights into inhibitory control’s role in reading comprehension for both Chinese and CSL adolescent learners.
Despite the growth of research in learning and teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL), no scoping review of research published in international, anglophone journals has been published so far. A total of 289 journal articles published in 95 journals were identified and used to provide a bibliometric mapping of research in CFL over three decades. Data from the sampled articles reveals a great diversity of focus in CFL research that has been conducted in more than 24 countries. The included articles also reflect an upsurge in research intensity across several key areas of focus, some of which are related to the distinctive linguistic features of the Chinese language. We also report on the research methods employed by the studies in our sample and the characteristics of their participants. Our mapping of the field identifies gaps in the existing literature which may subsequently inform any focused or comprehensive reviews. We conclude by setting out some implications for future CFL research, both in terms of substantive areas of focus and methodological approaches.
Here we tested the hypothesis that in Chinese-English bilinguals, music reading experience may modulate eye movement planning in reading English but not Chinese sentences due to the similarity in perceptual demands on processing sequential symbol strings separated by spaces between music notation and English sentence reading. Chinese-English bilingual musicians and non-musicians read legal, semantically incorrect, and syntactically (and semantically) incorrect sentences in both English and Chinese. In English reading, musicians showed more dispersed eye movement patterns in reading syntactically incorrect sentences than legal sentences, whereas non-musicians did not. This effect was not observed in Chinese reading. Musicians also had shorter saccade lengths when viewing syntactically incorrect than correct musical notations and sentences in an unfamiliar alphabetic language (Tibetan), whereas non-musicians did not. Thus, musicians’ eye movement planning was disturbed by syntactic violations in both music and English reading but not in Chinese reading, and this effect was generalized to an unfamiliar alphabetic language. These results suggested that music reading experience may modulate perceptual processes in reading differentially in bilinguals’ two languages, depending on their processing similarities.
The Competition Model has served as a functional explanation of cross-linguistic influence and transfer for more than 30 years. A large number of studies have used the Competition Model to frame investigations of sentence processing strategies in different types of bilingual and multilingual speakers. Among the different bilingual speakers investigated, Mandarin Chinese and English bilinguals represent a clear testing ground for the claims of the Competition Model. This is because of purportedly stark contrasts in sentence processing strategies between the two languages. Previous studies investigating sentence processing strategies of English L2 and Mandarin L2 bilinguals suggests forward transfer of L1 cues to the L2, moderated by L2 proficiency. In this paper, we argue for replication of two of these studies, namely Liu, Bates, and Li (1992) and Su (2001). These studies continue to be cited today as evidence of differences between English and Mandarin sentence processing strategies which is in turn taken as support for the predictions of the Competition Model. However, both studies presented methodological limitations in terms of measures of proficiency, participant and stimuli selection, and the statistical analysis. We suggest approximate replication of both of these studies and provide suggestions for how such replications might be conducted.
Differential Object marking (DOM), a linguistic phenomenon in which a direct object is morphologically marked for semantic and pragmatic reasons, has attracted the attention of several subfields of linguistics in the past few years. DOM has evolved diachronically in many languages, whereas it has disappeared from others; it is easily acquired by monolingual children, but presents high instability and variability in bilingual acquisition and language contact situations. This edited collection contributes to further our understanding of the nature and development of DOM in the languages of the world, in acquisition, and in language contact, variation, and change. The thirteen chapters in this volume present new empirical data from Estonian, Spanish, Turkish, Korean, Hindi, Romanian and Basque in different acquisition contexts and learner populations. They also bring together multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives to account for the complexity and dynamicity of this widespread linguistic phenomenon.
Following an overview of the study, its purpose, the participants, and methodology, the study results will be discussed within the framework of the role of UG in second language acquisition. That is it explores whether and how L2 learners also have access to the innate capacity for language. The differences between the L1 and L2 developmental stages, particularly the L2 initial state, will then be explained in detail. This will lay a sound theoretical foundation to infer learners’ language competence through their actual performance in the target language where the L1 transfer is involved (see Yip & Matthews, 2006). Other important issues such as cross-linguistic transfer at the syntax-semantics interface, abstract linguistic representation, L1 dialect distance, will also be discussed full-fledged.
Based on the HSK Dynamic Composition Corpus, this study investigated the use of Chinese null arguments by advanced adult L1-English and L1-Japanese learners with Chinese native speakers as a baseline. Several asymmetries were found. First, the learners produced many more null subjects than null objects. Second, null subjects were mainly animate, while null objects were mainly inanimate. Third, more null subjects were used in non-matrix clauses than in matrix clauses. In addition, L1 did not seem to play a significant role in the learners’ use of Chinese null arguments, and the learners’ use Chinese null arguments was generally not native-like. Finally, it appears that null objects are not transferable or developmental and that infrequent use of null objects is universal in L2. It was argued that positive evidence in the target input as well as the nature of the subject and the object led to the asymmetric use of null subjects and null objects in L2 Chinese.
How are two or more languages learned and contained in the same mind or the same community? This handbook presents an up-to-date view of the concept of multi-competence, exploring the research questions it has generated and the methods that have been used to investigate it. The book brings together psychologists, sociolinguists, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers, and language teachers from across the world to look at how multi-competence relates to their own areas of study. This comprehensive, state-of-the-art exploration of multi-competence research and ideas offers a powerful critique of the values and methods of classical SLA research, and an exciting preview of the future implications of multi-competence for research and thinking about language. It is an essential reference for all those concerned with language learning, language use and language teaching.
Research has indicated that during sentence processing, French native speakers predominantly rely upon lexico-semantic cues (i.e., animacy) while native speakers of English rely upon syntactic cues (i.e., word order). The present study examined sentence production in L1 French/L2 English and L1 English/L2 French sequential bilinguals. Participants used animate and inanimate entities as sentence subjects while describing motion events represented by static pictures. To test a gradual change in animacy cue weighting in second-language sequential bilinguals with different proficiency levels were included. Sentence production of sequential bilinguals was compared against that of simultaneous bilinguals. The results indicated an overall preference for the use of animate subjects for both languages at all proficiency levels. The effect of animacy was stronger for English L2 than French L2 while it did not differ between languages in simultaneous bilinguals. Evidence for potential change in the animacy-cue weighting was only observed for English L2.
The study attempts to investigate whether there is a relationship between individual differences in cognitive abilities, learners' perceptions about typology relations, and negative transfer in written production. To this aim, data were analyzed from Spanish/Catalan bilingual learners of L3 English (n= 47) aged 10-15, with German as L2. The cognitive abilities measured were working memory, attention control, and attention switching. Furthermore, proficiency in the L3 was also controlled, based on the results of the participants' performance in the Oxford Placement Test. It was found that learners with lower attentional abilities had a harder time in identifying areas of structural contrast between the L2 and the L3, which, in turn, resulted in a higher rate of transfer from this language.
This paper conducts an empirical investigation among English foreign language (EFL) learners at a university in China, mainly on their understanding of the passive voice in their native language to verify the existence of backward transfer in their first language (L1) environment and how backward transfer may relate to the learners’ proficiency of second language (L2) English and L1 Chinese in the sentence translation task (STT) and discourse task (DT) of Chinese paragraph writing. The study shows that backward transfer does exist at STT or sentence level in L1 environment. Additionally, the Chinese participants at intermediate English proficiency level are likely to experience backward transfer from L2 English to L1 Chinese. Moreover, for EFL learners at the lower and top English proficiency level no obvious signs of backward transfer shown at the sentence level. And all of the EFL participants have not been influenced by L2 English in the Chinese discourse task. The results of this study convey the complexity of backward transfer and its interactions with L1 and L2 proficiency and different tasks.
This study is twofold: (i) whether there is a significant difference between Chinese learners’ first language (L1) proficiency and second language (L2) performance in comprehension of certain multiply self-embedded complex English sentences such as (1) Tom knows that the fact that taking good care of himself is necessary surprises the boy; (ii) whether there is a relationship between Chinese learners’ L1 proficiency and L2 processing strategies in the use of syntactic and/or semantic information in the comprehension performance. Two groups of advanced Chinese learners of English differing in Chinese proficiency (i.e. fifteen high Chinese proficiency (HCP) and fifteen low Chinese proficiency (LCP) learners of English) and one control group participated in the off-line experiment to answer questions to English sentences based on comprehension accuracy. The results show that there are no significant accuracy differences between HCP learners and LCP learners in the complex English sentence comprehension, suggesting that L1 proficiency play no significant role in Chinese learners’ complex English sentence comprehension. When doing a complex-rating task where participants rated complexity of the self-embedded complex English sentences based on a five-point scale, the results show that the LCP Chinese learners of English, like the control native English speakers, were able to use both syntactic and semantic information. However, the HCP Chinese learners of English relied more on semantic information than syntactic cues, indicating that L1 proficiency may influence Chinese learners’ processing strategy in comprehension of the complex English sentences.
A sentence interpretation experiment based on the functionalist Competition Model of speech processing (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982) was administered to three groups of university-age English L1, Japanese ESL, and Japanese L1 subjects ( n = 12 per group) in an attempt to elicit evidence for (1) processing strategies characteristic of the Japanese and English L1 groups and, (2) transfer/influence of Japanese L1 strategies on the English sentence interpretations of the Japanese ESL group. Subjects selected the subject/actor of simple sentences incorporating word order, animacy, and stress cues in random converging and competing orders. The English L1 and ESL groups were tested on English sentences and the Japanese L1 group tested on Japanese sentences. The Japanese L1 interpretations were most heavily influenced by animacy cues, while the English L1 group showed a higher overall sensitivity to word order manipulations. The ESL group resembled the Japanese L1 group in reliance on animacy cues, with the exception of allowing inanimate nouns to act as subjects. While the ESL group showed greater sensitivity to word order effects than the Japanese L1 group, no “second-noun” strategy (i.e., systematically interpreting the NNV and VNN orders as left- and right-dislocated SOV and VOS orders) was evident.
Although the findings were generally consistent with previous research, the presence of contrasting response patterns in the English L1 group suggests caution in attempting to typify languages on the basis of processing strategies drawn from probablistic tendencies evident in grouped data, and leaves open the role of such processing strategy typologies as a potential source of variation in inter-language.
This chapter is concerned with how people process words in their nonnative language. Major hypotheses about lexical representation in bilingual speakers are briefly reviewed. Two set of studies are described and discussed. The first set includes experiments that have been carried out within a hybrid theoretical position using translation tasks. The second set of experiments used the Stroop task to explore patterns of color-naming interference in bilinguals. Several factors are identified to be important determinants in each individual set of experiments. Both sets of studies jointly indicate that the level of proficiency in a nonnative language plays a crucial role in determining lexical processing in that language.
This study is concerned with the probabilistic nature of processing strategies in bilingual speakers of Dutch and English. We used a sentence interpretation task designed to set up various and among a restricted set of grammatical entities (i.e., word order, animacy, agreement). Performance in English paralleled that in Dutch in large measure, but where it diverged it approached performance on similar tasks by English monolinguals (Bates et al., 1982). These findings are interpreted on the basis of the a probabilistic theory of grammatical processing which provides a formalism for explaining what it means for a second language user to be languages.
After an introductory discussion of the concepts of vocabulary knowledge continua and foreign-language learners' mental lexicons, the paper presents the results of a longitudinal pilot study whose aim was to make preliminary insights into vocabulary development as it takes place in an ordinary foreign-language classroom setting involving elementary-level Swedish-speaking learners of English. The results are discussed in terms of vocabulary growth in general, the learners' accessibility to words under time pressure, the relationship between “old,” well-known words and newly learned words, and finally, the stability of the learners' immediate access to words.
The amount of influence that a learner's native language has on the acquisition of a second language is an issue which has received considerable attention in research on second language acquisition. The thesis of this paper is that, within the context of the Interlanguage Hypothesis (Selinker 1972) and the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman 1977), some important properties of a learner's interlanguage (IL) can be predicted.
More specifically, it is shown that speakers of Cantonese and Japanese internalize different IL rules in attempting to deal with English word-final voice contrasts. Whereas speakers of Cantonese devoice word-final obstruents in the target language, Japanese speakers insert a word-final schwa after the voiced obstruent. However, each of these rules can be correlated with facts about the phonology of the native language, supporting the conclusion that some important aspects of ILs can be predicted on the basis of a comparison of the native and target languages.
In an experiment based on the competition model, 12 native Japanese speakers (J1 group) and 12 native English speakers studying Japanese (JFL group) were requested to report sentence subjects after listening to Japanese word strings which consisted of one verb and two nouns each. Similarly, 12 native English speakers (E1 group) and 12 native Japanese speakers studying English (EFL group) reported the sentence subjects of English word strings. In each word string, syntactic (word order) cues and lexical-semantic (animacy/inanimacy) cues converged or diverged as to the assignment of the sentence subjects. The results show that JFL-Ss (experimental subjects) closely approximated the response patterns of J1-Ss, while EFL-Ss showed evidence of transfer from their first language, Japanese. The results are consistent with the developmental precedence of a meaning-based comprehension strategy over a grammar-based one.
This study investigates the determinants of adult usage of various syntactic and semantic cues in sentence interpretation. Native French speakers and advanced English/French bilinguals were tested for the strength of usage of word order, clitic pronoun agreement, verb agreement, and noun animacy cues in the assignment of the actor role in French sentences. Native speakers showed strong use of clitic pronoun agreement, followed by much weaker use of verb agreement, an even weaker use of noun animacy, and negligible use of word order. This ranking reflects the importance of these cues in naturally occurring French sentences involving conflicts among cues in conjunction with a learning-on-error model. The English/French bilinguals did not manifest English-like strategies of word order preference on the French sentences; rather, they showed a cue ranking very similar to that of native speakers, although detectability may have played a role in their use of verb agreement. The failure of English word order strategies to correctly interpret many naturally occurring French sentences may be responsible for the adaptation of strategies appropriate to the second language.
This paper reports on a cross-linguistic investigation of the development of adult comprehension strategies in native speakers of English and Dutch. Subjects ranging in grade level from kindergarten to adult interpreted simple noun-verbnoun sentences containing different syntactic and semantic comprehension cues. The order in which cues were initially used for comprehension corresponded to the validity (frequency and accuracy) of the cues over all sentences in a language. Importance in adult processing, however, corresponded to cue validity on that subset of sentences which contain conflicting cues. Adult level performance was achieved much earlier by native English speakers (by kindergarten and the first grade) than by native Dutch speakers (around the 10th through 12th grades). This disparity mirrored the difference between the overall and conflict sentence validities of cues in these two languages. A model of cue strength acquisition is proposed to account for these findings.