Doctoral Dissertation Research: Testing the Limits of Adult SLA: A Psycholinguistic Study of Near-Native Sentence Processing

博士论文研究：测试成人 SLA 的极限：近母语句子处理的心理语言学研究

• 批准号: 0844035
• 负责人: Bill VanPatten
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Texas Tech University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-04-01 至 2011-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0844035&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Testing; Limits

The question of whether adult learners can acquire native-like knowledge and ability with a second language has long been of fundamental importance in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Much previous investigation of this issue has employed traditional pen-and-paper measures, following the formal linguistics tradition, and has yielded conflicting findings. Few studies have used modern psycholinguistic techniques to explore how near-native knowledge of grammar can be applied in online sentence processing. The rapidly growing new area of second language sentence (L2) processing, on the other hand, has mostly followed existing first language research and is just now beginning to answer questions unique to SLA. With support from the National Science Foundation and under the direction of Dr. Bill VanPatten, Ms. Jill Jegerski will conduct a dissertation study that addresses the following research question: Can adult second language learners acquire native-like syntactic processing behavior? The proposed project will draw on previous research from both SLA and psycholinguistics, examining the upper limits of language learning from a sentence processing perspective. Specifically, the performance of near-native speakers of Spanish, screened for native-like proficiency and long-term immersion in Mexico and independently tested for offline grammatical competence, will be compared to that of native speakers in four self-paced reading experiments. Each will test a different prediction of the shallow structure hypothesis. The different types of sentence processing will be measured in a single, within-subjects design and reading times will be reported and analyzed statistically for individual near-native participants as well as for the group--these are methodological innovations as neither has been employed in previous study of sentence processing. Thus, the design and outcome of this investigation will both advance current knowledge and facilitate future empirical research on language acquisition, language processing, and the human language capacity in general.

成人学习者能否通过第二语言习得与母语人士相似的知识和能力一直是第二语言习得领域的一个重要问题。以前对这一问题的许多调查都采用了传统的纸笔测量方法，遵循了正式语言学的传统，并产生了相互矛盾的发现。很少有研究使用现代心理语言学技术来探索如何将近乎母语的语法知识应用于在线句子处理。另一方面，第二语言句子处理这一快速发展的新领域主要是跟随现有的第一语言研究，现在才刚刚开始回答SLA特有的问题。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，在Bill VanPatten博士的指导下，Jill Jegerski女士将进行一项论文研究，解决以下研究问题：成年第二语言学习者能否获得与母语学习者相似的句法处理行为？本项目将借鉴二语习得和心理语言学的研究成果，从句子加工的角度考察语言学习的上限。具体来说，在四项自定节奏阅读实验中，将对接近西班牙语母语者的表现进行比较，对他们的西班牙语熟练程度和长期沉浸在墨西哥的情况进行筛选，并对他们的离线语法能力进行独立测试。每个都将测试浅层结构假说的不同预测。不同类型的句子处理将在一个单一的、在受试者内的设计中进行测量，阅读时间将被报告，并对个人和小组的近母语参与者进行统计分析——这些都是方法上的创新，因为在以前的句子处理研究中都没有采用过。因此，本研究的设计和结果将促进现有知识的发展，并促进未来对语言习得、语言加工和人类语言能力的实证研究。