Processing of wh-movement by second language learners

Abstract

This study examined whether, similar to native speakers of English, native Korean learners of English are able to process sentences with wh-dependencies incrementally, using grammatical constraints on wh-islands. Participants completed two self-paced reading experiments using a moving window self-paced reading paradigm (Just, Carpenter & Wooley, 1982). Experiment 1 examined whether the parser processes sentences incrementally and Experiment 2 examined whether the parser accurately avoids positing gaps at illicit positions within relative clause islands despite the presence of a gap licensing verb. The results showed that Korean learners of English show evidence of incremental parsing in the form of filled gap effects, similar to the patterns shown by native speakers (Stowe 1986, Canales 2012). Also similar to native speakers, Korean learners of English avoid positing gaps in positions prohibited by syntactic islands. Thus, our findings suggest that L2 learners are able to use the same syntactic information in their on-line processing as is used by native speakers, contra the claims of the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006 a,b). Furthermore, our study provides evidence that L2 learners have access to such abstract syntactic information even when their native language does not instantiate wh-movement or island constraints as in English.