A Subject–Indirect Object Asymmetry in L2 Processing of English RCs

• 발행기관: 한국영어어문교육학회
• 저자명: Chae Eun Kim
• 간행물 정보: 『영어어문교육』영어어문교육 제22권 제1호, 45~64쪽, 전체 20쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 교육학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2016.03.30

영문 초록

This study investigates whether second language (L2) learners of English indicate any difference in the processing difficulty of subject and indirect object relative clauses (RCs). Previous work on sentence processing has shown that native English speakers read subject RCs faster than direct object RCs; however, the comparison is problematic due to the uncontrolled animacy of the heads. This study therefore examines the effects of gap types in English subject relative clauses and indirect object relative clauses on comprehension accuracy and total reading times. The study further investigates whether any such effects are correlated with L2 English proficiency. A total of 31 Korean college EFL learners participated in an on-line reading task. Their English proficiency was measured by a C-test. The analysis found no difference in the comprehension scores of either intermediate-proficiency or high-proficiency groups between the two types of relative clause. However, the reading time data demonstrate that all the L2 learners, regardless of English proficiency, had more difficulty processing indirect object RCs than subject RCs. These results support the distance effect of the filler-gap dependency; the longer dependencies in the indirect object clauses result in greater syntactic complexity and thus make processing more difficult.

목차

I. INTRODUCTION

II. RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING

III. METHOD

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

V. CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

키워드

relative clause (RC) L2 sentence processing filler-gap dependency animacy