Prosodic Resolution of a Syntactic Ambiguity in Korean Learners of English

Abstract

This study investigates how native Korean-speaking second language learners of English (L2ers) use prosody for syntactic disambiguation. Korean L2ers with different English-proficiency levels and na.tive English speakers participated in morpho-syntax and prosody experiments. The morpho-syntax ex.periment assessed interference of Korean morpho-syntactic features in the prosody experiment and verified the subjects’ proficiency levels. In the prosody experiment, participants heard the syntactically ambiguous beginning portion of a sentence and then chose the most likely of two visually presented continuations. The results show that (1) Korean L2ers at all levels used the relative strength of prosodic boundaries to correctly disambiguate syntactically ambiguous utterances; (2) correct continuation se.lection increased significantly as proficiency increased; and (3) late closure bias was not completely suppressed in L2.