The Comprehension of English Garden-path Sentences by Mandarin and Korean Learners of English as a Second Language

How the properties of a first language (Mandarin, Korean) influence the comprehension of sentences in a second language (English) was investigated in a series of self-paced reading time studies. Native Mandarin- and Korean-speaking learners of English were compared with native English speakers on how they resolved a temporary ambiguity about the relationship between a verb and the noun following it in a sentence (e.g., The club members understood [that] the bylaws would be applied to everyone.). Frequency biases of verbs' subcategorization structure (direct-object-bias vs. sentential-complement-bias) was manipulated in Experiment 1. Results showed that L1-Mandarin learners of L2-English were able to use both the verb bias and the complementizer cue, and their usage of these cues was not modulated by proficiency. L1-Mandarin learners' use of the verb bias cue contrasts with previously reported findings with L1-Korean learners of L2-English, who showed sensitivity to verb bias only in higher proficiency learners (Lee, Lu, & Garnsey, 2013). The difference between L1-Mandarin and L1-Korean learners suggests that L1 word order (Mandarin & English, SVO; Korean SOV) influences how quickly L2 learners learn word-order-dependent cues about structures in the L2. Experiment 2 added plausibility manipulation (e.g., The club members understood the bylaws/the pool…). Neither the native speakers or the L2 groups (L1-Mandarin L2-English & L1-Korean L2-English) used plausibility to disambiguate sentences, challenging the claims that L2 learners rely more heavily on plausibility than syntactic cues during sentence processing.