The role of vocabulary and executive function in anticipatory sentence processing

Abstract

Abstract

The role of vocabulary and executive function in anticipatory sentence processing

Yu-Ree NOH Dept. of English Language & Literature The Graduate School Hanyang University

Language is processed incrementally and people immediately respond to the linguistic input. In the light of anticipatory process in sentence comprehension, listeners can constantly use a strategy of generating expectancies about coming referents. Much of evidence for predictive sentence processing demonstrated that human parsers continuously update their mental representation of ongoing events in the sentence. Simultaneously, they can make use of multiple resources of information in native and nonnative language processing. Previous studies (e.g., Borovsky et al., 2012) have found that vocabulary size is highly associated with the efficiency in language processing. It is well established that information integration and the prediction skill are both a marker and a predictor of language processing. Furthermore, executive function known as general cognitive resources in our brain has also been considered to affect language comprehension and production in both monolinguals and bilinguals. This thesis aims to figure out the correlation of vocabulary knowledge and executive function on anticipatory language processing of L2. The current research conducted an eye-tracking experiment in order to explore whether and how nonnative speakers of English (i.e., Korean adults) make predictions about what follows next in a L2 sentence. In this regard, the ability to integrate available cues is an important factor. Two offline tasks measuring vocabulary knowledge of English (i.e., PPVT-4) and executive function (i.e., The Flanker Task) were also carried out. The results from three tasks showed that nonnative speakers of English, like native speakers, can anticipate upcoming words by combining thematic information of the noun and the verb. More precisely, those who know a lot of vocabulary of English do more active predictive processing, evidenced by more anticipatory looks to the target object that begins as the verb is spoken. Additionally, the ability to control the interference in the flanker task was strongly associated with an increase in looks to the target in the eye-tracking experiment. These findings suggest that L2 learners are capable of generating expectations to subsequent linguistic elements of L2 with the aid of the linguistic and/or cognitive skills, thus supporting constraint-based models of processing as prediction-based accounts.