dc.contributor.advisor | Gabriele, Alison | |
dc.contributor.advisor | Fiorentino, Robert | |
dc.contributor.author | Canales, Alonso Jose | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2012-10-28T16:06:57Z | |
dc.date.available | 2012-10-28T16:06:57Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2012-08-31 | |
dc.date.submitted | 2012 | |
dc.identifier.other | http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:12313 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1808/10281 | |
dc.description.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. | |
dc.format.extent | 95 pages | |
dc.language.iso | en | |
dc.publisher | University of Kansas | |
dc.rights | This item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author. | |
dc.subject | Linguistics | |
dc.subject | Island constraints | |
dc.subject | Online sentence processing | |
dc.subject | Shallow structures hypothesis | |
dc.subject | SLA | |
dc.subject | Spanish | |
dc.subject | Wh-movement | |
dc.title | Online Processing of Wh-Dependencies in English by Native Speakers of Spanish | |
dc.type | Dissertation | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Gabriele, Alison | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Fiorentino, Robert | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Sereno, Joan | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Torrence, Harold | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Li, Yan | |
dc.thesis.degreeDiscipline | Linguistics | |
dc.thesis.degreeLevel | Ph.D. | |
kusw.oastatus | na | |
kusw.oapolicy | This item does not meet KU Open Access policy criteria. | |
kusw.bibid | 8085823 | |
dc.rights.accessrights | openAccess | |