Sentence Processing in a Second Language: Ambiguity Resolution in German Learners of English

The dissertation argues against fundamental differences between first and second language processing with regard to access to deep syntactic structures and phrase structure heuristics. This claim is supported by empirical data from off-line and on-line syntactic ambiguity resolution in non-immersed German learners of English. Although non-proficient learners’ processing deviates from native speakers because of L1 interference as well as less automatic processing and difficulties to recover from misanalyses resulting from processing capacity limitations, these effects were found to attenuate gradually with increasing second language proficiency. Moreover, it depends on the demands of the specific tasks and materials whether the learners’ limited processing resources actually lead to non-native like performance. In structures involving complex syntactic movement via an intermediate gap, the learners showed native-like intermediate gap and filler integration effects. Hence they have access to deep syntactic structures during on-line sentence processing. Moreover, participants did not show a general preference for ambiguous over disambiguated structures, which indicates that they have access to native-like syntactic processing principles. Taken together, the findings show that it is possible even for non-immersed learners to develop native-like syntactic processing in their second language