The Processing Of Referential Expressions In Discourse By Chinese, English, And Japanese Native Speakers And By Chinese And Japanese Learners Of English
| dc.contributor.author | Miyao, Mari | |
| dc.contributor.department | Second Language Studies | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-05-28T20:39:10Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-05-28T20:39:10Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2017-08 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10125/62780 | |
| dc.subject | Chinese | |
| dc.subject | discourse processing | |
| dc.subject | English | |
| dc.subject | Japanese | |
| dc.subject | referential expressions | |
| dc.subject | second language acquisition | |
| dc.title | The Processing Of Referential Expressions In Discourse By Chinese, English, And Japanese Native Speakers And By Chinese And Japanese Learners Of English | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dcterms.abstract | Referential expressions (REs), such as proper names and pronouns, pose challenges to second language learners (L2ers). Generally, adult native speakers prefer a more explicit RE form (e.g., a proper name) when referring to a less salient/accessible entity in the discourse and a reduced RE form (e.g., a pronoun) for a salient/accessible entity (e.g., Ariel, 1990). To use REs successfully, L2ers need to calculate the accessibility of discourse entities and associate them with particular RE forms. The present study asks how adult L2ers whose first language (L1) is Chinese or Japanese (null-subject languages) comprehend and produce REs in discourses in English (a non-null-subject language). Experiment 1 looks at the comprehension of REs in subject position (subject-REs), using closely-translated versions of a sentence-by-sentence self-paced reading task adapted from Gordon, Grosz, and Gilliom (1993), by native speakers of English, Chinese, and Japanese. Experiment 2 examines the same participants’ production of subject-REs via a three-panel picture-narration task adapted from Arnold and Griffin (2007). Experiments 3 and 4 employ the English version of the two tasks to explore the comprehension and production of subject-REs by intermediate-to-advanced L1-Chinese and L1-Japanese L2ers of English. In the reading task, native English and native Japanese speakers preferred the most reduced subject-REs in their native language––respectively, overt-pronoun subjects and null-pronoun subjects––for accessible entities; native Japanese speakers strongly dispreferred overt-pronoun subjects. Different reading-time (i.e., raw vs. residual) analyses indicated different subject-RE preferences for native Chinese speakers, but they never dispreferred overt-pronoun subjects. In the production task, all three language groups preferred pronominal subject-REs for accessible entities, but when accessibility was reduced by the presence of another entity in the discourse, by gender congruence, or by a shifted discourse focus, they produced (more explicit) repeated-name subject-REs more frequently. Neither L2 group showed subject-RE preferences in reading, but in production, where pictures helped build firm discourse representations, they clearly preferred pronominal subjects for accessible entities and repeated-name subjects for less accessible entities. Overall, the present study suggests that when sufficient contextual support is provided, L2ers can calculate discourse accessibility and choose subject-RE forms according to the accessibility level (contra Sorace, 2011). | |
| dcterms.description | Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017. | |
| dcterms.language | eng | |
| dcterms.publisher | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | |
| dcterms.rights | All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner. | |
| dcterms.type | Text |
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