RESEARCH IN SECOND LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND PARSING

• Published in: Studies in second language acquisition Vol. 34; no. 3; pp. 511 - 513
• Main Author: Miller, Kate
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: New York CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 01.09.2012; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Ambiguity; English Learners; French as a second language; Grammar; Language Processing; Phonology; Reading; Reading Research; Research Methodology; Romance Languages; Second Languages; Studies; Syntax; Translation; Indiana; United States > US; Indianapolis Indiana
• ISSN: 0272-2631; 1470-1545
• DOI: 10.1017/S0272263112000198

Additionally, the different contributions present studies that have investigated a handful of different L2s--namely, English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese--through a variety of research methodologies: eye tracking, self-paced reading, and event-related brain potentials (ERPs), among others (however, self-paced reading seems to be the tool of choice, as it is used in 6 of the 13 studies). [...]with respect to the question of whether nativelike processing is attainable, the results of Dinçtopal-Deniz's reading-time study, which investigated relative clause attachment preferences among L1 Turkish learners of L2 English, are argued to be consistent with the claim that nonnative speakers are unable to process L2 input in nativelike ways. The articles are organized thematically in five sections that examine (a) the processing of wh-movement and ambiguous relative clauses in L2 English (with contributions by Dinçtopal-Deniz; Aldwayan and colleagues; and Cunnings, Batterham, Felser, & Clahsen), (b) sensitivity to gender and number agreement in L2 Romance languages (with chapters on Spanish and French by Keating and Renaud, respectively), (c) subject and object ambiguities related to word-order phenomena (with chapters on L2 Japanese by Mitsugi & MacWhinney and Hara; on L2 German by Jackson; and on L2 Spanish by Malovrh & Lee), (d) phonological and lexical processing (with a chapter on liaison in L2 French by Shoemaker and a review article on translation ambiguity by Tokowicz & Degani), and (e) nonnative processing at the interface between syntax and prosody (with a study on English-Spanish bilinguals by Fernández) and syntax and discourse context (with an ERP study on L1 English learners of L2 French by Reichle).