Abstract:
This study aims at investigating whether Persian native speakers highly advanced in English as a second language (L2ers) can switch to optimal processing strategies in the languages they know and whether working memory capacity (WMC) plays a role in this respect. To this end, using a self-paced reading task, we examined the processing strategies 62 Persian speaking proficient L2ers used to read sentences containing ambiguous relative clauses in their L1 and L2. The results showed that L2ers adopt the same strategy as that used by English native speakers in both of their languages, indicating a target-language like parsing pattern in their L2 and an attrition of L1 parsing routine. Additionally, their attachment preferences were not modulated by WMC in L2. This result highlights the “skill-through-experience” position adopted by researchers who question the role of WMC in L2 syntactic parsing. However, high-capacity L2ers' preferences in L1 had attrited (becoming English-like), and low-capacity ones had no preference. This modulation, too, can bear out the above position owing to the observation that L2ers failed to differentiate between their L1 and L2, and particularly that their differing WMCs did not contribute to native-like performance in their L1.
Machine summary:
Hamideh Marefat*, Bahareh Farzizadeh, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Abstract This study aims at investigating whether Persian native speakers highly advanced in English as a second language (L2ers) can switch to optimal processing strategies in the languages they know and whether working memory capacity (WMC) plays a role in this respect.
Attrition; Bilingual parser; Processing transfer; Relative clause ambiguity; Working memory capacity Keywords: Article Information: Received: 7 September 2017 Revised: 2 December 2017 Accepted: 2 January 2018 Corresponding author: Department of English Language and Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Email address: marefat@ut.
Performing like target-language native speakers when resolving ambiguity can imply that acquiring a high level of linguistic proficiency in an L2 can entail the acquisition of its respective processing routines, as well.
The model underscores the notion that it is the differences in Working Memory Capacity (WMC) ‒ which is in charge of a temporary retainment of information in mind to carry out cognitive tasks (Juffs & Harrington, 2011) ‒ that bring about constraints while processing input.
In this regard, non-linguistic accounts, such as those based on memory or language experience (Cuetos, Mitchell, & Corley, 1996; Frazier, 1987) might be a good reference-point capable of explicating countless preference patterns.
The results of this study provide strong support for the Experience- Based and Tuning accounts of sentence processing (Cuetos, Mitchell, & Corley, 1996), in that those individuals with their latest preoccupation with the learning and the teaching of English had their RC attachment preferences in line with the English natives’ ambiguity resolution strategy.