Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m42fx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T09:19:17.820Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Grammaticality Judgments

Why Does Anyone Object to Subject Extraction?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Jacquelyn Schachter  and
Virginia Yip
Jacquelyn Schachter
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Virginia Yip
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Grammaticality judgments reflect a compound product of both grammatical and processing factors. But because they interact in a symbiotic way, very often grammatical and processing constraints are difficult to separate. According to generally accepted grammatical theory, (a) Who do you think John told Mary he fell in love with? and (b) Who do you think John told Mary fell in love with Sue? are equally grammatical. We have observed, however, that native speakers strongly accept sentences like (a) as grammatical but react quite variably to sentences like (b). A possible explanation is that native English speakers exhibit a processing preference, in searching for the extraction site for the wh- word, for object position over subject position. Proficient nonnative judgmental data offer additional support for a processing account. Nonnatives whose L1 grammars do not bias them toward objects also show preferences similar to those of natives. We provide a processing account based on Frazier's Minimal Attachment principle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 379 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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

Berwick, R., & Weinberg, A. (1984). The grammatical basis of linguistic performance: Language use and acquisition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bley-Vroman, R., Felix, S., & loup, G. (1988). The accessibility of Universal Grammar in adult language learning. Second Language Research, 4, 1–32.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Coppieters, R. (1987). Competence differences between native and nonnative speakers. Language, 63, 544–573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felix, S. (1988). UG generated knowledge in L2 acquisition. In Flynn, S. & O'Neil, W. (Eds.), Linguistic theory in second language acquisition (pp. 277–294). Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, L. (1978). On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs.Google Scholar
Frazier, L. (1987). Syntactic processing: Evidence from Dutch. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 5, 519–559.Google Scholar
Frazier, L, & Fodor, J. (1978). The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model. Cognition, 6, 291–325.Google Scholar
Jordens, P. (1989). Linguistic knowledge in second language acquisition. Paper delivered at the 9th Second Language Research Forum, UCLA, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Kerlinger, F., & Pedhazur, E. J. (1973). Multiple regression in behavioral research. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Marcus, M. (1980). A theory of syntactic recognition for natural language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Miller, G., & Chomsky, N. (1963). Finitary models of language users. In Luce, R. D., Bush, R. R., & Galanter, E. (Eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology (pp. 419–492). New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Pritchett, B. (1988). Garden path phenomena and the grammatical basis of language processing. Language 64, 539–576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, W. C. (1978). The right roof constraint in adult-acquired language. In Ritchie, W. C. (Ed.), Second language acquisition research: Issues and implications (pp. 33–64). New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Schachter, J. (1989a). A new look at an old classic. Second Language Research, 5, 30–42.Google Scholar
Schachter, J. (1989b). Testing a proposed universal. In Gass, S. & Schachter, J. (Eds.), Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition (pp. 73–88). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Riemsdijk, H., & Williams, E. (1986). Introduction to the theory of grammar. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
White, L. (1985). The acquisition of parameterized grammars: Subjacency in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 1, 1–17.Google Scholar
White, L. (1989). The principle of adjacency in second language acquisition. In Gass, S. & Schachter, J. (Eds.), Linguistic perspectives on second language acquisition (pp. 134–158). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar