Doctoral Dissertation Research: Wh-scope marking in English interlanguage grammars - transfer and processing effects on the second language acquisition of English complex questions

“这个项目发现了为什么ESL学习者会犯奇怪的错误？”虽然这种类型的复杂疑问句(称为wh范围标记问句)在英语中显然是不合语法的，但在将英语作为第二语言(ESL)的学习者的语言中很容易观察到。本研究比较了德语和日语两组ESL学习者，目的是调查这种句法错误在多大程度上反映了实际的语言能力(即学习者的语法与目标语言英语语法的差异)，或者这种错误是否是由于处理困难而产生的暂时性表现现象。WH范围的标记问题在德语中是完全可以接受的，而在日语中则不是。鉴于第二语言学习者将母语(L1)中的知识转移到第二语言语法中是众所周知的，我们预计德语第二语言学习者也会发生这种迁移；在他们的情况下，这种类型的错误将是能力诱导的错误。然而，对于日语学习者来说，迁移不是wh范围标记问题出现的原因，因为wh范围标记既不是他们遇到的英语输入的一部分，也不是他们母语知识的一部分；在L1-L2星座中，错误可能是一种表现现象。为了探讨迁移和/或加工是否是这两组ESL学习者wh范围标记的根源，将使用三种测量：(A)离线(纸和笔)可接受性判断任务，在第二语言研究中经常用来评估学习者的语法能力；(B)在线，自定节奏的阅读任务，这是心理语言学研究中用来检测加工模式的标准测量之一；这一研究项目的结果将揭示第二语言习得中涉及的两个基本因素：迁移和加工。通过收集本族语和非本族语者的wh范围标记数据，该研究项目将加深我们对这两组人在加工模式上的异同的理解。关于wh范围标记结构如何处理的研究结果有可能区分两种理论方法来分析它的句法。这项研究的结果可以为二语教学提供参考，并通过确定特定学习者在中介语发展的特定阶段不能处理哪些语言结构来改进二语教学和二语教学方法的研究。将产生一个通过各种技术产生的中介语数据的电子语料库。最后，该项目将汇集来自美国、德国和日本三所大学的研究人员，从而加强语言研究人员的国际网络，并促进相关大学项目之间的伙伴关系。

"What does this project find why ESL learners make strange errors?" Although complex questions of this type (called wh-scope marking questions) are clearly ungrammatical in English, they can readily be observed in the language of learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). This research project compares two groups of ESL populations, German and Japanese learners, with the goal of investigating the extent to which this syntactic error reflects actual linguistic competence (i.e., a difference in the learner's grammar from the grammar of the target language, English) or whether this error is a temporary performance phenomenon resulting from processing difficulties. Wh-scope marking questions are completely acceptable in German, whereas they are not in Japanese. Given that second language (L2) learners are known to transfer knowledge from their native language (L1) into their L2 grammar, we expect that such transfer will occur for the German L2 learners; in their case, this type of error would be a competence-induced error. For the Japanese L2 learners, however, transfer cannot be the reason for the occurrence of the wh-scope marking question, since wh-scope marking forms neither part of the English input that they encounter nor part of their native language knowledge; in this L1-L2 constellation, the error might be a performance phenomenon. In order to investigate whether transfer and/or processing is at the root of wh-scope marking for the two groups of ESL learners, three kinds of measurement will be used: (a) an off-line (paper and pencil) acceptability judgment task, frequently used in L2 research to assess a learner's grammatical competence; (b) an on-line, self-paced reading task, which is one of the standard measurements used in psycholinguistic research to detect processing patterns; and (c) an elicited production task, intended to test whether wh-scope marking is restricted to language comprehension or if it also occurs in language production.The results of this research project will shed light on two basic factors involved in the acquisition of a second language: transfer and processing. By gathering data on wh-scope marking from native and non-native speakers, the research project will increase our understanding about similarities and differences in processing patterns between these two groups. Findings about how the wh-scope marking construction is processed have the potential to distinguish between two theoretical approaches to its syntactic analysis. The results of this study may inform L2 pedagogy and may improve L2 instruction as well as research on L2 teaching methods by determining which linguistic constructions are not processable by a particular learner at a given stage of his/her interlanguage development. An electronic corpus of interlanguage data elicited through quite diverse techniques will be produced. Finally, the project will bring together researchers from three universities in the US, Germany and Japan, thus strengthening the international network of linguistic researchers and promoting a partnership across the involved university programs.