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    Online Processing of Wh-Dependencies in English by Native Speakers of Spanish

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    Canales_ku_0099D_12313_DATA_1.pdf (616.4Kb)
    Issue Date
    2012-08-31
    Author
    Canales, Alonso Jose
    Publisher
    University of Kansas
    Format
    95 pages
    Type
    Dissertation
    Degree Level
    Ph.D.
    Discipline
    Linguistics
    Rights
    This item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.
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    Abstract
    This study investigated if, Spanish-speaking learners of English are capable of processing wh-dependencies incrementally and observing the grammatical constraints that regulate wh-extraction in English, similar to native speakers. The study included two self-paced reading experiments run in a word-by-word non-cumulative moving window paradigm (Just et al., 1982). Experiment 1 tested if second language (L2) learners process wh-dependencies incrementally by looking at wh-extraction from positions licensed by the grammar. Experiment 2 focused on testing if learners respect syntactic constraints that forbid wh-extraction from positions not licensed by the grammar, to be specific, extraction out of relative clause islands. The data collected in both experiments were subject to a residual reading times analysis. The results of the two experiments suggest that Spanish-speaking learners of English process wh-dependencies incrementally and that they abide by grammatical constraints in the course of online processing which prevent them from extracting a wh-element outside of a relative clause island. At the theoretical level, our findings suggest that the claim of the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006 a,b) that adult second language learners are `shallow processors' who do not have access to abstract syntax during parsing is too strong.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1808/10281
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    Contact KU ScholarWorks
    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    Image Credits
     

     

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