SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND PREDICTIVE PROCESSING OF THE MANDARIN DATIVE ALTERNATION
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2024
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This dissertation investigates the second language (L2) learning and predictive processing of the dative alternation in Mandarin. It has been proposed that predictive processing can support language learning through the computation of prediction error (Chang et al., 2006; Goldberg, 2019). Young adult native speakers are found to engage in prediction in many processing situations (Pickering & Gambi, 2018), whereas L2 learners tend to show slower and weaker prediction effects in more limited circumstances (Schlenter, 2023). As a result, L2 learners may have less opportunity to learn from prediction error (Hopp, 2021). Studies on the relation between (reduced or different) L2 prediction and learning are thus crucial for a better understanding of L2 acquisition, yet have been initiated only very recently and chiefly restricted to L2 English (e.g., Coumel et al., 2023; Grüter et al., 2021; Kaan & Chun, 2018). To contribute to the research on the connection between L2 prediction and learning and to extend this inquiry beyond European languages, this project investigates the predictive processing and learning of the Mandarin dative alternation among adult classroom learners, framed within error-driven learning accounts, using structural priming to supply language input which participants might learn from.
This dissertation consists of three experiments. Experiment 1 employs written structural priming and acceptability judgment tasks to examine whether structural priming can facilitate the L2 learning of the dative alternation in Mandarin. Results show that structural priming can increase not only classroom learners’ production of acceptable verb-dative pairings but also their acceptability ratings for these pairings. The observation of such longer-term priming effects beyond the priming phase, together with an inverse frequency effect of priming observed among classroom learners, aligns well with error-driven learning accounts. However, we find no evidence for statistical preemption, in that participants do not decrease ratings for unacceptable pairings as a result of exposure to their competing alternatives.
Experiment 2 utilizes a visual world eye tracking task to probe predictive use of dative verb constraints in Mandarin among native speakers and classroom learners. Results indicate that native speakers and classroom learners make anticipatory looks to the upcoming argument following categorical restrictions of non-alternating verbs and gradient bias of alternating verbs before the acoustic onset of the disambiguating noun. Crucially, no delay or reduction in the prediction effects is observed among classroom learners in comparison with native speakers.
Experiment 3 investigates whether structural priming can lead native speakers and classroom learners to adapt their productions and real-time predictions of dative constructions. Participants completed a visual world eye tracking + structural priming (VWSP) task as well as written sentence completion tasks before and after the VWSP task. Results reveal no immediate priming effects or longer-term adaptation in real-time prediction. Nevertheless, the priming treatment leads to longer-term adaptation in production in a one-day delayed posttest.
This dissertation examines the L2 acquisition of the dative alternation in Mandarin, a phenomenon rarely studied despite numerous previous studies on the dative alternation in L2 English. It thus contributes to the field of second language acquisition (SLA) by extending the empirical basis to lesser studied yet widely learned and taught languages like Mandarin. This dissertation is the first study to test structural priming effects in real-time prediction, production and acceptability judgments of the Mandarin dative alternation among classroom learners from an error-driven learning perspective, and the first study to probe the predictive processing of the dative alternation in Mandarin during real-time listening among classroom learners. Therefore, the dissertation also contributes to the emerging research strand in the wider field of cognitive science that seeks to understand the critical connections between (second) language processing, prediction and learning.
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Linguistics, dative alternation, error-driven learning, Mandarin, predictive processing, second language, structural priming
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230 pages
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