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A reading-time study of the main verb versus reduced relative clause ambiguity resolution by English learners in Taiwan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2012

PI-LAN YANG  and
SU-CHIN SHIH
PI-LAN YANG*
Affiliation:
National Kaohsiung Marine University
SU-CHIN SHIH
Affiliation:
National Kaohsiung Normal University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Pi-Lan Yang, Foreign Languages Center, National Kaohsiung Marine University, Number 142, Hai-Chuan Road, Nan-Tzu District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. E-Mail: pilany@webmail.nkmu.edu.tw
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Abstract

Using a self-paced reading task, the study aimed to investigate (a) whether English learners in Taiwan immediately resolve main verb versus reduced relative clause ambiguities in a similar way as native English speakers and (b) whether the learners at various English proficiency levels show diverse profiles. With analyses and syntheses of reading times for critical segments, results showed that different proficiency groups of Taiwanese English learners resolved such ambiguities in a way similar to native speakers to varying extents. The findings suggest that the sentence-processing mechanism of human language is subject to sufficient facility with syntactic access and/or with a network of lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information of individual speakers.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 34 , Issue 6 , November 2013 , pp. 1109 - 1133
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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