Wonil Chung

Korean L2 English Learners’ Processing of Sluicing Interacting with Reflexive Resolution: A Self-paced Reading Study

In this paper we perform an online self-paced reading experiment with Korean L2 English learners to examine to what extent the L2 parser goes about...

Multiple Sluicing and SWIPING Meet RT-based Experimental Syntax

The main purpose of this paper to scrutinize to what extent advanced L2 learners would differ from L1 speakers in the anticipation, integration, and repair of syntactic information during sentence processing. For this purpose, we conducted two on-line self-paced reading experiments for processing multiple Sluicing (or TP ellipsis) with two PP remnants in English by both L1 speakers and L2 learners and found some interesting findings as follows. First, L1 speakers showed an early effect of processing both the first preposition pied-piped and the first SWIPING-ed (or inverted preposition) PP remnant conditions in the same way, pointing to the fact that they anticipated upcoming information (TP ellipsis), whereas the L2 learners did not. The latter result is in line with those in other works showing that L2 learners do not expect upcoming syntactic categories in the same fashion as L1 speakers do. Second, L2 speakers showed a late effect of processing both the first and the second SWIPING-ed PP conditions analogously, implying either an increase in working memory or the use of different repair tactics compared with L1 speakers.

On Korean English L2ers’ processing of wh-filler-gap dependencies: An ERP study

This paper investigated Korean L2 learners’ wh-dependency resolution in sentence processing. To this aim we used the filled-gap effect and the actual gap integration effect, combined with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Since the (syntactic) parser guided by the active filler strategy (Stowe, 1986) favors any analysis that allows gap filling over any analysis that does not, it is predicted that the parser will experience a surprising effect when encountering a filled-gap position. In our experiment the Korean L2 learners were found to display the subject filled-gap effect, but not the object one. Instead of the latter, they were found to take the verb-driven strategy in resolving wh-dependency (Dussias and Scaltz, 2008). This means that they readily attempted to integrate a wh-filler with a lexical (transitive) verb rather than the immediately following object position. However, as the verb-driven strategy came into effect only in non-island environments, but not in island ones, it is likely that Korean L2 learners were capable of distinguishing island from non-island structure in the course of online sentence processing.

ERP실험을 통한 EFL 화자의 통사적 민감성 연구-국면정보인지를 위한 통사적 재분석을 중심으로

This paper explores the syntactic sensitivity by EFL speakers through the ERP experiment, paying special attention to the syntactic reanalysis for the awareness on phases in the language processing within the phase-based structures (i.e., CP, vP), which include transitive verbs or intransitive verbs. Through ERP (event-related potentials), we investigate how EFL speakers respond to syntactic errors within a sentence and how sensitive they are to the syntactic information. Clahsen and Felser (2006a, b) claim that, based on the SSH (Shallow Structure Hypothesis), L2 learners who have learned their L2 after acquiring their native language process the L2 differently from native speakers. Zawiszewski, Gutierrez, Fernandez, and Laka (2011), however, report that L2 speakers show the language process as analogous to that of L1 speakers if the proficiency of L2 speakers is close to that of L1 speakers. On the basis of these studies, we examined whether Korean EFL speakers use the syntactic information and are sensitive to syntactic structures as in the language processing of L1 speakers and other English L2 speakers. To achieve the aim of this study, we try to explain the results by examining their ERP components and brain maps. Our results suggest that EFL speakers show LAN (left anterior negativity) in the comparison of transitive sentences as in Kim and Sikos (2011), unlike L1 and L2 speakers who record a P600 during the language process using structured syntactic information. Thus, this study verifies that EFL speakers also try to use syntactic information for processing the input phase information and are syntactically sensitive to the properties of verbs.