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PROCESSING OF THE REDUCED RELATIVE CLAUSE VERSUS MAIN VERB AMBIGUITY IN L2 LEARNERS AT DIFFERENT PROFICIENCY LEVELS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2010

Anne Rah  and
Dany Adone
Anne Rah*
Affiliation:
University of Cologne
Dany Adone
Affiliation:
University of Cologne
*
*Address correspondence to: Anne Rah, University of Cologne, Englisches Seminar, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Köln, Germany; e-mail: arah@uni-koeln.de.
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Abstract

This article presents new evidence from offline and online processing of garden-path sentences that are ambiguous between reduced relative clause resolution and main verb resolution. The participants of this study are intermediate and advanced German learners of English who have learned the language in a nonimmersed context. The results show that for second language (L2) learners, there is a dissociation between parsing mechanisms and grammatical knowledge: The learners successfully process the structures in question offline, but the online self-paced reading task shows different patterns for the L2 learners and the native-speaker control group. The results are discussed with regard to shallow processing in L2 learners (Clahsen & Felser, 2006). Because the structures in question differ in English and German, first language (L1) influence is also discussed as an explanation for the findings. The comparison of the three participant groups’ results points to a gradual rather than a fundamental difference between L1 and L2 processing.

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Type
Research Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 79 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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