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Pronoun interpretation in the second language

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<p class="lead">Professor Roumyana Slabakova University of Southampton & University of Iowa</p> and <p class="lead">Professor Lydia White McGill University</p><strong>28th April 2014</strong><strong>Abstract</strong> A much-studied phenomenon in first language (L1) acquisition concerns the fact that children have greater difficulty in interpreting sentences with pronouns than with reflexives, the so-called Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE). In addition, Chien and Wexler (1990) reported that children are more accurate when pronouns refer to quantified antecedents (e.g. Every bear is touching her) than to referential antecedents (e.g. Mama Bear is touching her). A recent study by Hartman, Sudo & Wexler (2012) established that English-speaking L1 acquirers were significantly more adult-like when they heard a reduced English pronoun as opposed to a full pronoun (e.g. John saw'm versus John saw him). If the DPBE reflects difficulties due to an elevated processing load (Reinhart 2006), then a similar difficulty of interpretation might be expected for (non-advanced) L2 learners, with differences in accuracy on reduced versus full pronouns, as well as better performance on quantified antecedents compared to referential ones. To investigate this issue, we look at the performance of adult learners of English (L1s French and Spanish) on sentences with reduced and full pronouns bound by referential and quantified antecedents. The task is a Truth Value Judgment Task, administered online; test sentences manipulate pronoun type and antecedent type and are presented aurally. These sentences are judged in the context of stories (presented aurally and visually). L2 learners of intermediate proficiency show a discrepancy in accuracy on quantificational versus referential antecedents, as well as on reduced versus full pronouns, in accord with the claim that full pronoun interpretation strains processing resources. Advanced learners were as accurate as native speakers. We will speculate on pedagogical implications of our findings. <strong>Roumyana Slabakova</strong> is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Southampton. Her PhD degree was awarded by McGill University where she studied under the supervision of Lydia White, her co-presenter for this seminar. Her research is grounded in generative linguistic theory and explores the second language (L2) acquisition process. Her theoretical focus is the acquisition of grammatical structure and its interaction with meaning. She uses online and offline psycholinguistic methodologies to investigate theoretical issues.<strong>Lydia White</strong> is James McGill Professor of Linguistics and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is currently Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures and Equity) at McGill. She is co-editor of the book series Language Acquisition and Language Disorders (published by John Benjamins) and she is on the Editorial Boards of the journals: Language Acquisition, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism and Second Language Research.<strong>Pronoun interpretation in the second language</strong><a href="http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/pronoun-interpretation-second-language">Access the audio and video podcasts</a> Download the powerpoint presentation as a <a href="http://www.oxes.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Slabakova-and-White-presentation.pdf">pdf file</a> This seminar was convened by Dr Victoria Murphy, Applied Linguistics Research Group

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