Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T06:16:32.122Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The effect of implicit causality and consequentiality on nonnative pronoun resolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2016

WEI CHENG  and
AMIT ALMOR
WEI CHENG*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
AMIT ALMOR
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Wei Cheng, Linguistics Program, 909 Welsh Humanities Building, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208. E-mail: chengw22@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We report two sentence-completion experiments investigating how nonnative speakers use universal semantic and discourse information, which are implicit causality and consequentiality biases associated with psychological verbs, to resolve pronouns. The results indicate that intermediate-advanced and advanced Chinese-speaking English learners show weaker implicit causality and consequentiality biases than native English speakers in pronoun resolution. Instead, nonnative speakers exhibit a general subject or first-mention bias. These findings suggest that nonnative speakers do not use semantic and discourse information in comprehension as effectively as native speakers.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 1 - 26
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ariel, M. (1990). Accessing NP antecedents. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Au, T. K. F. (1986). A verb is worth a thousand words: The causes and consequences of interpersonal events implicit in language. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 104–122.Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255–278.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4 (R package version 1.1-7) [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4 Google Scholar
Brown, R., & Fish, D. (1983). The psychological causality implicit in language. Cognition, 14, 237–273.Google Scholar
Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon's Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3–5.Google Scholar
Chen, D. (1996). L2 acquisition of English psych predicates by native speakers of Chinese and French. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, McGill University.Google Scholar
Cheng, W., & Almor, A. (2015). The effect of lexical and periphrastic causatives on pronoun resolution: Evidence from Chinese. Poster session presented at the 28th CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Los Angeles, March.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.Google Scholar
Crawley, R. A., Stevenson, R. J., & Kleinman, D. (1990). The use of heuristic strategies in the interpretation of pronouns. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 19, 245–264.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crinean, M., & Garnham, A. (2006). Implicit causality, implicit consequentiality and semantic roles. Language and Cognitive Processes, 21, 636–648.Google Scholar
Demerci, M. (2000). The role of pragmatics in reflexive interpretation by Turkish learners of English. Second Language Research, 14, 325–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., & Cunnings, I. (2012). Processing reflexives in a second language: The timing of structural and discourse-level constraints. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 571–603.Google Scholar
Felser, C., Sato, M., & Bertenshaw, N. (2009). The on-line application of binding Principle A in English as a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 485–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferstl, E. C., Garnham, A., & Manouilidou, C. (2011). Implicit causality bias in English: A corpus of 300 verbs. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 124–135.Google Scholar
Garvey, C., & Caramazza, A. (1974). Implicit causality in verbs. Linguistic Inquiry, 5, 459–464.Google Scholar
Garvey, C., Caramazza, A., & Yates, J. (1976). Factors influencing assignment of pronoun antecedents. Cognition, 3, 227–243.Google Scholar
Gernsbacher, M. A., Hargreaves, D. J., & Beeman, M. (1989). Building and accessing clausal representations—The advantage of 1st mention versus the advantage of clause recency. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 735–755.Google Scholar
Gordon, P. C., Grosz, B. J., & Gilliom, L. A. (1993). Pronouns, names, and the centering of attention in discourse. Cognitive Science, 17, 311–347.Google Scholar
Gosling, S. D., Vazire, S., Srivastava, S., & John, O. P. (2004). Should we trust web-based studies? A comparative analysis of six preconceptions about Internet questionnaires. American Psychologist, 59, 93–104.Google Scholar
Grüter, T., Rohde, H., & Schafer, A. (2014). The role of discourse-level expectations in non-native speakers’ referential choices. In Orman, W. & Valleau, M. J. (Eds.), BUCLD 38: Proceedings of the 38th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 179–191). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Hartshorne, J. K. (2014). What is implicit causality? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 19, 804–824.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartshorne, J. K., & Snedeker, J. (2013). Verb argument structure predicts implicit causality: The advantages of finer-grained semantics. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28, 1474–1508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartshorne, J. K., Sudo, Y., & Uruwashi, M. (2013). Are implicit causality pronoun resolution biases consistent across languages and cultures? Experimental Psychology, 60, 179–196.Google Scholar
Hirakawa, M. (1990). A study of the L2 acquisition of English reflexives. Second Language Research, 6, 60–85.Google Scholar
Hobbs, J. R. (1979). Coherence and coreference. Cognitive Science, 3, 67–90.Google Scholar
Hopp, H. (2010). Ultimate attainment in L2 inflection: Performance similarities between non-native and native speakers. Lingua, 120, 901–931.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434–446.Google Scholar
Järvikivi, J., van Gompel, R. P. G., Hyönä, J., & Bertram, R. (2005). Ambiguous pronoun resolution: Contrasting the first-mention and subject-preference accounts. Psychological Science, 16, 260–264.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jiao, J., & Zhang, B. (2005). The effect of the implicit causality of Chinese verbs on pronoun resolution. Psychological Science, 28, 1082–1085.Google Scholar
Juffs, A. (1996). Semantics-syntax correspondences in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 12, 177–121.Google Scholar
Kaan, E. (2014). Predictive sentence processing in L2 and L1: What is different? Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4, 257–282.Google Scholar
Kaan, E., Dallas, A., & Wijnen, F. (2010). Syntactic-prediction in second language processing. In Zwart, J. W. & de Vries, M. (Eds.), Structure preserved: Studies in syntax for Jan Koster (pp. 207–213). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kehler, A. (2002). Coherence, reference, and the theory of grammar. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kehler, A., Kertz, L., Rohde, H., & Elman, J. L. (2008). Coherence and coreference revisited. Journal of Semantics, 25, 1–44.Google Scholar
Kehler, A., & Rohde, H. (2013). A probabilistic reconciliation of coherence-driven and centering-driven theories of pronoun interpretation. Theoretical Linguistics, 39, 1–37.Google Scholar
Kim, E., Montrul, S., & Yoon, J. (2015). The on-line processing of binding principles in second language acquisition: Evidence from eye tracking. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36, 1317–1374.Google Scholar
Lee, D., & Schachter, J. (1997). Sensitive period effects in binding theory. Language Acquisition, 6, 333–362.Google Scholar
Lee, K.-Y. (2008). The role of pragmatics in reflexive interpretation by Korean learners of English. In Bowles, M., Foote, R., Perpiñán, S., & Bhatt, R. (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 2007 Second Language Research Forum (pp. 97–112). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Levy, R. (2008). Expectation-based syntactic comprehension. Cognition, 106, 1126–1177.Google Scholar
Liu, R., & Nicol, J. (2010). Online processing of anaphora by advanced English learners. In Prior, M. T., Watanabe, Y., & Lee, S. K. (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 2008 Second Language Research Forum (pp. 150–165). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Mann, W. C., & Thompson, S. A. (1988). Rhetorical structure theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization. Text, 3, 243–281.Google Scholar
Miao, X. (1996). A study of semantic and grammatical factors influencing pronoun processing. Acta Psychological Sinica, 28, 352–358.Google Scholar
Pan, H.-Y., & Felser, C. (2011). Referential context effects in L2 ambiguity resolution: Evidence from self-paced reading. Lingua, 121, 221–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, H.-Y., Schimke, S., & Felser, C. (2015). Referential context effects in non-native relative clause ambiguity resolution. International Journal of Bilingualism, 19, 298–313.Google Scholar
Patterson, C., Trompelt, H., & Felser, C. (2014). The online application of binding condition B in native and non-native pronoun resolution. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 147. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00147 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, L., & Felser, C. (2011). Plausibility and recovery from garden-paths in second-language sentence processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 299–331.Google Scholar
Roberts, L., Gullberg, M., & Indefrey, P. (2008). Online pronoun resolution in L2 discourse: L1 influence and general learner effects. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 333–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohde, H., Kehler, A., & Elman, J. (2006). Event structure and discourse coherence biases in pronoun interpretation. In Sun, R. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 26–29). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2011a). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1, 1–33.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2011b). Cognitive advantages in bilingualism: Is there a “bilingual paradox”? In Valore, P. (Ed.), Multilingualism: Language, power, and knowledge (pp. 335–358). Pisa: Edistudio.Google Scholar
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22, 339–368.Google Scholar
Sprouse, J. (2011). A validation of Amazon Mechanical Turk for the collection of acceptability judgments in linguistic theory. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 155–167.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevenson, R. J., Crawley, R. A., & Kleinman, D. (1994). Thematic roles, focus and the representation of events. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9, 519–548.Google Scholar
Stewart, A. J., & Pickering, M. J., & Sanford, A. J. (1998). Implicit consequentiality. In Gernsbacher, M. A. & Derry, S. J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1031–1036). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Sun, Y., Shu, H., Zhou, X., & Zheng, X. (2001). The effect of implicit verb causality on pronoun processing. Psychological Science, 24, 39–41.Google Scholar
Thomas, M. (1991). Universal grammar and the interpretation of reflexives in a second language. Language, 67, 211–239.Google Scholar
Trenkic, D., Mirkovic, J., & Altmann, G. (2014). Real-time grammar processing by native and non-native speakers: Constructions unique to the second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17, 237–257.Google Scholar
White, L. (1998). Second language acquisition of Binding Principle B: Child/adult differences. Second Language Research, 14, 425–439.Google Scholar
Yang, C. L., Gordon, P. C., Hendrick, R., & Wu, J. T. (1999). Comprehension of referring expressions in Chinese. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14, 715–743.Google Scholar
Zhang, J. (2002). The acquisition of English psych predicates by Chinese-speaking learners. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.Google Scholar
Zufferey, S., Mak, W., Degand, L., & Sanders, T. (2015). Advanced learners’ comprehension of discourse connectives: The role of L1 transfer across on-line and off-line tasks. Second Language Research, 31, 389–411.Google Scholar