Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Sentence processing research explores how humans interpret ambiguous grammatical structures.
• Understanding native (L1) and non-native (L2) language processing reveals insights into universal and language-specific parsing mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how native and non-native English speakers process temporarily ambiguous sentences using eye-movement monitoring.
• To compare the effects of syntactic and semantic disambiguation on sentence reanalysis in L1 and L2 speakers.

Main Methods:

• An eye-movement monitoring study was conducted with native and non-native English speakers.
• Participants read temporarily ambiguous sentences that required reanalysis at syntactic and semantic levels.
• Eye-tracking data captured reading times and fixation patterns to measure processing difficulty and ambiguity effects.

Main Results:

• Both groups exhibited garden-path effects at syntactic disambiguation, with native speakers showing stronger later ambiguity effects.
• Non-native speakers demonstrated weaker reanalysis at the syntactic level and were more prone to misinterpreting sentences.
• The incorrect direct-object analysis was often maintained beyond syntactic disambiguation for both groups.

Conclusions:

• Native and non-native language parsing share sensitivities to syntactic and semantic error signals.
• Differences emerge in the reanalysis processes, with native speakers showing more robust reanalysis.
• These findings highlight both similarities and divergences in L1 and L2 sentence comprehension mechanisms.