notional number attraction in l2 sentence processing by kusanagi
DESCRIPTION
Kusanagi, K., Tamura, Y., & Fukuta, J. (2014, to appear). The notional number attraction for subject-verb agreement errors during L2 online sentence processing: A preliminary study. JSSS (Japan Society for Speech Sciences) Open Forum 2014. Kansei-Gakuin University, Japan ことばの科学会オープンフォーラム 2014TRANSCRIPT
The Notional Number Attraction for Subject-Verb Agreement Errors During L2
Online Sentence Processing:A Preliminary Study
CONCLUSION
1. The notional number attractionphenomenon was evident in L2processing
2. Representation vulnerability of L2learners’ grammatical and notionalnumber features was found
Kunihiro KUSANAGIGraduate School, Nagoya University
JSPS Research Fellow
Yu TAMURAGraduate School, Nagoya University
Junya FUKUTAGraduate School, Nagoya University
JSPS Research Fellow
Oral Presentation at the 9th JSSS Open Forum
12/10/2014, Kansei-Gakuin Univ., Osaka
Mail: [email protected]
OUTLINE
• Background
• Research Questions
• The Present Study
• Results
• DIscussion
BACKGROUND
• L2 learners’ online insensitivity to subject-verb number mismatches
• Jiang (2004, 2007), Jiang et al. (2011)
–Rudimentary implicit knowledge
–Unautomatized skill
BACKGROUND
• Sources of difficulty and attainability– Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis
• e.g., Prevost and White (2000)
– Representation Deficit Hypothesis• e.g., Hawkins (2005)
– Morphological Congruency Hypothesis• e.g., Jiang et al. (2011)
– Transfer Hypothesis• e.g., Nicol and Greth (2003), but see Hoshino et al. (2010)
– Interpretability Hypothesis• e.g., Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou (2007)
BACKGROUND
• More in general …–Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH)
–e.g., Clahsen and Felser (2006)
• L2 learners underutilize syntactic, morphological, and morphosyntactic information during their online processing
• Rather tend to rely much more on lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information– cf. Good Enough approach (GE, Lim and
Christianson, 2013), and other task-related factors
BACKGROUND
• Agreement Procedures– Controller
– Attractor
– Target
BACKGROUND
• Broken Agreement Phenomenon• Bock and Cutting (1992), Bock and Eberhard (1993), Jiang
(2004), Pearlmutter et al (1999),
“The key[C_sg] to the cabinet[A_sg] was/were[T_sg]”“The key[C_sg] to the cabinets[A_pl] was/were[T_sg]”
–Again, L2 learners are (supposed to be) insensitive to such a grammatical attraction (Jiang, 2004)
“The gang on the motorcycles”– (Humphrey and Bock, 2005)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/everyone-in-motorcycle-gang-jewish,32398/
BACKGROUND
• Notional Number Attraction • Bock and Cutting (1992), Bock and Eberhard (1993), Eberhard
(1999), Hoshino et al. (2010), Humphrey and Bock (2005)
– In English, number agreement process is simply driven by “grammatical” number features
–But, what about L2 learners?
BACKGROUND
• Jiang’s and others subsequent studies make us predict:– L2 learners’ grammatical number representation
is null, or at least inaccessible in online tasks
• SSH makes us predict:
– L2 learners’ are possibly sensitive to notional numbers, not grammatical ones
RESEARCH QUESTION
• RQ. Is notional number attraction phenomenon evident in L2 learners’ online sentence processing?
THE PRESENT STUDY
• Participants– Twenty-eight highly proficient Japanese learners
of English (undergraduate/graduate students)
M SD Skewness Kurtosis
TOEIC 768.70 127.37 -0.17 -0.52
Age 24.14 3.88 1.47 3.18
Self-Report
Reading 3.14 1.04 -0.30 -0.86
Writing 3.23 0.92 -0.10 -1.14
Listening 3.05 1.05 0.18 -0.40
Speaking 2.91 0.92 -0.61 -0.15
Vocabulary 2.73 1.03 0.04 0.02
Grammar 3.05 1.17 -0.29 -0.47
THE PRESENT STUDY
• Task– Self-paced reading tasks
• Moving window
• Word by word
• 5 interest regions
• 6 conditions– 4 items for each (k = 24) + 24 fillers → K = 48
– Counter-balanced
– 8-10 words
THE PRESENT STUDY
• Conditions of Stimuli– Control (of which attractors are both
grammatically and notionally singular)• Everyone in the room [was/were] …
– Notional Attraction (grammatically singular, notionally plural, corrective nouns)• Everyone in the family [was/were] …
– Grammatical Attraction (both grammatically and notionally plural)• Everyone in the halls [was/were] …
THE PRESENT STUDY
• Attraction Words– Control (normal nouns, singular)
• office, restaurant, school, house, bar, park, theater…
– Notional Attraction (corrective nouns)
• team, company, audience, crew, family, class, band…
– Grammatical Attraction (normal nouns, plural)
• stands, cars, films, halls, pictures, pages…
THE PRESENT STUDY
• Summary of the Stimuli
Controller Attractor
Target Examples
Grammatical Notional Grammatical Notional
Controll_G [sg] [pl] [sg] [sg] [sg] Everyone in the room was
Controll_U [sg] [Pl] [sg] [sg] [pl] Everyone in the room were
Notional_G [sg] [pl] [sg] [pl] [sg] Everyone in the family was
Notional_U [sg] [pl] [sg] [pl] [pl] Everyone in the family were
Grammatical_G [sg] [Pl] [pl] [pl] [sg] Everyone in the halls was
Grammatical_U [sg] [pl] [Pl] [pl] [pl] Everyone in the halls were
THE PRESENT STUDY
• Regions
– Everyone | in | the[-1] | room[Attractor] | was/were[Target] | writing[+1] | the[+2] | …
THE PRESENT STUDY
• Analysis– Outlier
• Removed over +2SD reactions
– Log transformation• Base = 10
– MANOVA for overall reading time data• 5 by 2 by 3
– ANOVA for the main target region• 2 by 3
– Pair comparisons for attraction effects• Interval estimation of effect sizes
Results
• Overall Reading Times (row data)
0
200
400
600
800
-2 Attractor Target 1 2
Mean
Read
ing
Tim
e (
ms)
Region
Control_G Control_U
Notional_G Notional_U
Grammatical_G Grammatical_U
Results
• Overall Reading Times (row data)
0
200
400
600
800
-2 Attractor Target 1 2
Mean
Read
ing
Tim
e (
ms)
Region
Control_G Control_U
Notional_G Notional_U
Grammatical_G Grammatical_U
Results
• The main interest region (Target)
2.60
2.65
2.70
2.75
2.80
Control Notional Attraction
Grammatical Attraction
Log
Tran
sfo
med
Mea
n R
ead
ing
Tim
es
Condition
Grammatical (Singular)
Ungrammatical (Plural)
Results
• ANOVA (Target)
MS F p ηp2
Grammaticality 0.04 3.20 .09 .11
Attraction 0.03 3.03 .07 .10
Interaction 0.02 2.68 .08 .09
Grammaticality on Control 0.05 10.62 <.01 .28
Grammaticality on Notional Attraction < 0.01 0.14 .71 .01
Grammaticality on Grammatical Attraction 0.02 2.27 .14 .08
Attraction on Grammatical 0.04 5.89 <.01 .18
Attraction on Ungrammatical 0.04 0.42 .55 .02
2.60
2.65
2.70
2.75
2.80
Control Notional Attraction
Grammatical Attraction
Mea
n R
ead
ing
Tim
e (m
s)
Condition
Grammatical (Singular)
Ungrammatical (Plural)
2.60
2.65
2.70
2.75
2.80
Control Notional Attraction
Grammatical Attraction
Mea
n R
ead
ing
Tim
e (m
s)
Condition
Grammatical (Singular)
Ungrammatical (Plural)
Results
• Pair Comparisons
d = 0.48 [0.16, 0.79]g = 0.46 [0.16, 0.77]r = .53
d = 0.07 [-0.32, 0.47]g = 0.07 [-0.32, 0.46]r = .07
d = 0.25 [-0.09 , 0.60]g = 0.24 [-0.09, 0.59]r = .28
Results
• Scatter Plots
400 600 800 1000 1200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Controll
Grammatical
Ungra
mm
atic
al
400 600 800 1000 1200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Notional Attraction
Grammatical
Ungra
mm
atic
al
400 600 800 1000 1200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Grammatical Attraction
Grammatical
Ungra
mm
atic
al
DISCUSSION
• Summary– In the control condition, the participants
exhibited sensitivity to subject-verb number mismatch (against Jiang’s studies)
– Both the notional and grammatical number attraction phenomena were evident, showing the participants’ insensitivity to number mismatches
DISCUSSION
• Representation Vulnerability – L2 learners are potentially able to assign
grammatical and notional number features
– But, L2 learners fail to utilize grammatical number features robustly
– Representations of grammatical and notional numbers tend to be interchangeable, and mistakenly utilized in some linguistic environments
DISCUSSION
• Future Studies
–More various linguistic environments
–Other tasks
–Other levels of learners
–Replications
–Considering the effects of notional number features
REFERNCES
• Bock, K.,& Cutting, J. C. (1992). Regulating mental energy: Performance units in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 99–127.
• Bock, K., & Eberhard, K. M. (1993). Meaning, sound and syntax in English number agreement. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 57–99.
• Bock, K., & Miller, C. A. (1991). Broken agreement. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 45–93.
• Clahsen, H. & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.
• Eberhard, K. M. (1999). The accessibility of conceptual number to the processes of subject–verb agreement in English. Journal of Memory & Language, 41, 560–578.
• Hawkins, R. (2005). Explaining full and partial success in the acquisition of second language grammatical properties. Second Language, 4, 7–25.
• Hoshino, N., Dussias, P. E., & Kroll, J. F. (2010). Processing subject–verb agreement in a second language depends on proficiency. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 87–98.
• Humphrey, K. R., & Bock, K. (2005). Notional number agreement in English. PsychonomicBulletin & Review, 12, 689–695.
• Jiang, N. (2004). Morphological insensitivity in second language processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 603–634.
REFERNCES
• Jiang, N. (2007). Selective integration of linguistic knowledge in adult second language learning. Language Learning, 57, 1–33.
• Jiang, N., Novokshanova, E., Masuda, K., & Wang, X. (2011). Morphological congruency and the acquisition of L2 morphemes. Language Learning, 61, 940–967.
• Lim, J. H., & Christianson, K. (2013). Integrating meaning and structure in L1–L2 and L2–L1 translations. Second Language Research, 29, 233–256.
• Nicol , J., & Greth, D. (2003). Production of subject-verb agreement in Spanish as a second language. Experimental Psychology, 50, 196–203.
• Pearlmutter, N. J., Garnsey, S. M., & Bock, K. (1999). Agreement processes in sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 427–456.
• Prevost, P., & White, L. (2000). Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research, 16, 103–133.
• Tsimpli, I. M., & Dimitrakopoulou, M. (2007). The Interpretability Hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 23, 215–242.
The Notional Number Attraction for Subject-Verb Agreement Errors During
L2 Online Sentence Processing:A Preliminary Study
Kunihiro KUSANAGIGraduate School, Nagoya UniversityJSPS Research Fellow
Yu TAMURAGraduate School, Nagoya University
Junya FUKUTAGraduate School, Nagoya UniversityJSPS Research Fellow
Oral Presentation at the 9th JSSS Open Forum12/10/2014, Kansei-Gakuin Univ., Osaka
Mail: [email protected]
0
200
400
600
800
-2 Attractor Target 1 2
Mean
Read
ing
Tim
e (
ms)
Region
Control_G Control_U
Notional_G Notional_U
Grammatical_G Grammatical_U
2.60
2.65
2.70
2.75
2.80
Control Notional Attraction
Grammatical Attraction
Mea
n R
ead
ing
Tim
e (m
s)
Condition
Grammatical (Singular)
Ungrammatical (Plural)
1. The notional number attraction phenomenon was evident inL2 processing
2. Representation vulnerability of L2 learners’ grammatical andnotional number features was found