L1 and L2 Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution of Relative Clauses
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56498/31202147Keywords:
sentence processing, ambiguity resolution, relative clauses, attachment preferencesAbstract
Syntactic ambiguity resolution is a cognitive mechanism that interacts with a range of linguistic skills vital to comprehension. Research in this area has, for most of the time, involved European languages. Meanwhile, there is scant literature on a vast range of languages that possess distinct typological features that may hold an important role in unique and underexplored syntactic processes. Basing upon the Garden-Path Model, this study identifies attachment preference in two less explored languages, Tagalog and Kinaray-a, and in L2 English through relative clause parsing experiments. This also attempts to determine whether adjectival modification of noun phrases has a relationship with attachment preference scores. Chi-square tests of independence were conducted on experimental data and revealed a minimal relationship between select types of relative clauses according to adjectival modification and attachment preference. Data show contrasting patterns between Tagalog and Kinaray-a groups, where the former marginally lean towards low attachment (N2) and the latter towards high attachment (N1). Similar to Kinaray-a L2 English attachment preference takes the N1 path, a contradiction to past findings on L1 English.
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