The Relationship between the Parsing of Prepositional Phrases and Non-syntactical Information: The Perspective of Japanese EFL Learners' Working Memory Capacity

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This research investigates whether and how Japanese EFL learners deploy non-syntactical information (i.e., lexical constraints and prior context) in parsing. It also examines whether the ability to make use of information while parsing depends on individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity. We used sentences with temporarily ambiguous prepositional phrases as experimental sentences to investigate the parsing process of learners. The results showed that Japanese EFL learners, regardless of their WM capacity, could interpret the experimental sentences using lexical constraint information and prior-context cues. In addition, even small WM capacity readers can integrate not only weak-biased discourse cues but also strong-biased discourse cues into sentence processing on-line. These results suggest that Japanese EFL learners compensate their non-automatic syntactic processing for other types of information, such as lexical and discourse cues.