Prediction, or the use of currently available information to create expectations about what will ... more Prediction, or the use of currently available information to create expectations about what will happen next, is an integral part of human cognition and behavior, including language processing (see Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2016, for review). There is ample evidence that native (L1) speakers make incremental use of linguistic information of all kinds – phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic – to create probabilistic expectations about how words, sentences and discourses will continue. More recently, the question has been raised as to the extent to which these findings generalize to non-native language (L2) processing. In other words, to what extent do L2 listeners (or readers) use information in the incoming signal to incrementally update their expectations about what they will hear (or read) next? Early studies on predictive processing with L2 learners, which adapted experimental designs previously used with L1 speakers, reported no or reduced effects in L2 compared to L1 groups (Kaan e...
This study presents a conceptual replication of Birulés et al.’s (2020, Experiment 2) investigati... more This study presents a conceptual replication of Birulés et al.’s (2020, Experiment 2) investigation of native and nonnative listeners’ selective attention to a talker’s mouth with the goal of better understanding the potentially modulating role of proficiency in listeners’ reliance on audiovisual speech cues. Listeners’ eye gaze was recorded while watching two short videos. Findings from one of the videos replicated results from the original study, showing greater attention to the talker’s mouth among L2 than L1 listeners. In both videos, L2 proficiency modulated attention, with more fixations on the mouth among lower proficiency listeners, an effect predicted but not observed in the original study. Collectively, these laboratory-based findings highlight the role of visual speech cues in L2 listening and present evidence that listeners with more limited proficiency may be especially reliant on such cues. These observations warrant future investigations of the benefits of visual spee...
Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing, 2019
Linguistic research has long viewed prosody as an important indicator of information structure in... more Linguistic research has long viewed prosody as an important indicator of information structure in intonationally rich languages like English. Correspondingly, numerous psycholinguistic studies have shown significant effects of prosody, particularly with respect to the immediate processing of a prosodically prominent phrase. Although co-reference resolution is known to be influenced by information structure, it has been less clear whether prosodic prominence can affect decisions about next mention in a discourse, and if so, how. We present results from an open-ended story continuation task, conducted as part of a series of experiments that examine how prosody influences the anticipation and resolution of co-reference. Overall results from the project suggest that prosodic prominence can increase or decrease reference to a saliently pitch-accented phrase, depending on additional circumstances of the referential decision. We argue that an adequate account of prosody’s role in co-refere...
Akmajian, A., & Jackendoff, R. (1970). CoreferenLality and stress. LinguisMc Inquiry. Balogh, J. ... more Akmajian, A., & Jackendoff, R. (1970). CoreferenLality and stress. LinguisMc Inquiry. Balogh, J. E. (2003). Pronouns, prosody, and the discourse anaphora weighLng approach. (Unpublished doctoral dissertaLon). UCSD. Chen, A., & Lai, V. T. (2011). Comb or coat: The role of intonaLon in online reference resoluLon in a second language. In Sound and Sounds. Studies presented to M.E.H. (Bert) Schouten on the occasion of his 65th birthday. UiL OTS. Grüter, T., Rohde, H., & Schafer, A. J. (in press). Coreference and discourse coherence in L2: The roles of grammaLcal aspect and referenLal form. LinguisMc Approaches to Bilingualism. Grüter, T., Rohde, H., & Schafer, A. J. (2014). The role of discourse-level expectaLons in non-naLve speakers’ referenLal choices. In Proceedings of BUCLD 38. Cascadilla Press. Huang, B. H. & Jun, S.-A. (2011). The effect of age on the acquisiLon of second language prosody. Language and Speech. Kehler, A., Kertz, L., Rohde, H., & Elman, J. L. (2008). Coherence and...
Coreference choices are influenced by multiple factors, including information structural categori... more Coreference choices are influenced by multiple factors, including information structural categories such as topic and focus. These information structural categories can be indicated by intonation, yet few studies have investigated how intonation affects subsequent choices for coreference. Using a story continuation experiment with aurally presented stimuli, we show that the location of contrastive focus in Mainstream American English significantly affects the preferred referent for the subject of the next sentence in a short discourse.
Native (L1) speakers take advantage of prenominal cues, such as gendermarked articles and classif... more Native (L1) speakers take advantage of prenominal cues, such as gendermarked articles and classifiers, to identify an upcoming noun during online processing (e.g., Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007; Huettig et al., 2010). The extent to which non-native (L2) speakers are able to do so remains a topic of on-going investigation. Findings from learners of gender-marking languages have not been entirely consistent, and point to the influence of a number of languageand learner-specific factors, as discussed in more detail below. No previous findings from L2 learners of classifier languages are available, as far as we know. The goal of the present study is to extend research on the facilitatory effect of prenominal cues in the online processing of an L2 by looking at classifiers in Chinese, which are both similar and different along potentially relevant dimensions from gendermarked articles in Indo-European languages. We report the findings from a visualworld eye-tracking experiment with L1 and...
In two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we explore the extent to which conflicting first-la... more In two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we explore the extent to which conflicting first-language (L1) based grammatical parses influence second-language (L2) learners’ on-line and off-line interpretation of sentences in the L2. We used cross-linguistic structural priming to potentially boost competition from the L1 grammar during the processing of wh-questions in English. For L1-German learners (Experiment 1), sentence-final interpretations showed effects of conflicting L1 parses in the greater number of misinterpretations of English subject as object wh-questions than vice versa. In a follow-up experiment with a comparison group of L1-Japanese learners (Experiment 2), we found the reverse pattern in sentence-final interpretations, with lower accuracy on English object than subject wh-questions. The asymmetry in comprehension accuracy between Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the effect observed among L1-German learners reflected grammar competition from the L1 rather tha...
Evidence for null subject transfer in early L2 acquisition has come almost exclusively from gramm... more Evidence for null subject transfer in early L2 acquisition has come almost exclusively from grammaticality judgment (GJ) tasks, in which early learners show about 30-40% acceptance of ungrammatical English sentences with null subjects. This contrasts curiously with early production data, in which the proportion of null subjects is generally low. The current study reexamines null-subject transfer in L2 English acquisition by adult speakers of Spanish. Three tasks are used: a production task, a GJ task, and a novel comprehension task designed to assess learners' interpretations of null-subject sentences. The same learners who accept null-subject sentences in the GJ task are nonetheless shown to be native-like in the comprehension task, even at the earliest stages of learning. This finding suggests that they do not have referential pro at their disposal to interpret sentences without overt subjects as declaratives, and raises the theoretical question of whether referential pro is s...
Interpreting sentences spoken in a second language can be demanding and plagued with uncertainty,... more Interpreting sentences spoken in a second language can be demanding and plagued with uncertainty, especially for lower proficiency listeners. While native language listeners use numerous information sources to anticipate upcoming words accurately, the pattern of anticipation may be different for second language users. We explore this issue in bilinguals with varying English proficiency by recording anticipatory eyemovements as participants listened to sentences (e.g., “The pirate chases the ship”) for which the object and three distractors (agent-related, action-related, unrelated) appeared in the concurrently presented images. Higher proficiency participants were faster than lower proficiency participants. Fixations to action-related distractors after onset of the action also varied by proficiency, with lower proficiency participants showing greater tendency to fixate this locally coherent actionrelated distractor. This final effect is supported by a trial level analysis, but appea...
Abstract This study explores the boundary conditions of crosslanguage permeability in syntactic p... more Abstract This study explores the boundary conditions of crosslanguage permeability in syntactic processing among late bilinguals, testing crosslinguistic influence (CLI) both from the first language (L1) to the second language (L2) and from the L2 to the L1. Findings from a visual world experiment with four groups of German-English and English-German bilinguals showed robust evidence for order of acquisition, but not for usage and immersion in L2, constraining CLI in the processing of structurally ambiguous wh-questions in German. Whereas CLI from the L1 persistently affected L2 sentence processing even among near-native and immersed L2 users, L1 processing appeared resilient against influence from the L2, even after long-term L2 immersion. These findings suggest that the timing of linguistic input in development plays a more critical role than current language use with regard to CLI in sentence processing among late bilinguals. The study highlights how systematic and bidirectional investigations of CLI contribute towards more nuanced models of the bilingual mind.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2020
Target language proficiency assessment has become an integral part of Second Language Acquisition... more Target language proficiency assessment has become an integral part of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research design, with cloze tests frequently serving this purpose for reasons of practicality. Assumptions underlying the interpretation of such cloze test scores, however, are often not examined. With the goal of providing researchers with better means for drawing inferences from cloze test scores, we present an analysis of a combined dataset comprised of scores from 1,724 test takers on a frequently used English cloze test (Brown 1980). We examine variation in score distributions and reliability estimates among L2 groups, between L2 and native-speaker (NS) examinees, and for different scoring methods, and investigate the degree to which different sets of items were effective for classifying low- vs high-proficiency L2 examinees and L2 vs NS test takers. Standardized scores are provided for each scoring method so that future researchers can reference their scores to this larger set.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2016
Previous research found that native-Chinese listeners perceive tones more categorically than list... more Previous research found that native-Chinese listeners perceive tones more categorically than listeners with no knowledge of a tonal language (naive listeners; Halle et al., 2004). This study examined tone perception by 26 native-English adult learners of Mandarin (L2ers) in comparison to 30 naive and 30 native-Chinese listeners. Identification and AXB discrimination tasks tested monosyllables (/pi/, /pa/) with 9-step F0 continua between all possible Mandarin tone pairs. Native listeners showed more categorical identification (steeper slopes) than naive listeners. The L2 group showed significantly shallower identification slopes than native listeners (p<0.01) and steeper slopes than naive listeners (p<0.01). L2 proficiency (listening test plus self-report) positively correlated with identification performance (r = 0.36, z=-2.56, p<0.01), suggesting higher proficiency may lead to more native-like tone identification. However, although L2ers’ discrimination accuracy (0.90) was significantly higher than nativ...
Discourse-level factors, such as event structure and the form of referential expressions, play an... more Discourse-level factors, such as event structure and the form of referential expressions, play an important role in native speakers’ referential processing. This paper presents an experiment with Japanese- and Korean-speaking learners of English, investigating the extent to which discourse-level biases that have gradient effects in L1 speakers are also implicated in L2 speakers’ coreference choices. Results from a story continuation task indicate that biases involving referential form were remarkably similar for L1 and L2 speakers. In contrast, event structure, indicated by perfective versus imperfective aspect, had a more limited effect on L2 speakers’ referential choices. The L2 results are discussed in light of existing accounts of L1 reference processing, which assume that referential choices are shaped by speakers’ continually updated expectations about what is likely to be mentioned next, and argued to reflect L2 speakers’ reduced reliance on expectations.
Prediction, or the use of currently available information to create expectations about what will ... more Prediction, or the use of currently available information to create expectations about what will happen next, is an integral part of human cognition and behavior, including language processing (see Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2016, for review). There is ample evidence that native (L1) speakers make incremental use of linguistic information of all kinds – phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic – to create probabilistic expectations about how words, sentences and discourses will continue. More recently, the question has been raised as to the extent to which these findings generalize to non-native language (L2) processing. In other words, to what extent do L2 listeners (or readers) use information in the incoming signal to incrementally update their expectations about what they will hear (or read) next? Early studies on predictive processing with L2 learners, which adapted experimental designs previously used with L1 speakers, reported no or reduced effects in L2 compared to L1 groups (Kaan e...
This study presents a conceptual replication of Birulés et al.’s (2020, Experiment 2) investigati... more This study presents a conceptual replication of Birulés et al.’s (2020, Experiment 2) investigation of native and nonnative listeners’ selective attention to a talker’s mouth with the goal of better understanding the potentially modulating role of proficiency in listeners’ reliance on audiovisual speech cues. Listeners’ eye gaze was recorded while watching two short videos. Findings from one of the videos replicated results from the original study, showing greater attention to the talker’s mouth among L2 than L1 listeners. In both videos, L2 proficiency modulated attention, with more fixations on the mouth among lower proficiency listeners, an effect predicted but not observed in the original study. Collectively, these laboratory-based findings highlight the role of visual speech cues in L2 listening and present evidence that listeners with more limited proficiency may be especially reliant on such cues. These observations warrant future investigations of the benefits of visual spee...
Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing, 2019
Linguistic research has long viewed prosody as an important indicator of information structure in... more Linguistic research has long viewed prosody as an important indicator of information structure in intonationally rich languages like English. Correspondingly, numerous psycholinguistic studies have shown significant effects of prosody, particularly with respect to the immediate processing of a prosodically prominent phrase. Although co-reference resolution is known to be influenced by information structure, it has been less clear whether prosodic prominence can affect decisions about next mention in a discourse, and if so, how. We present results from an open-ended story continuation task, conducted as part of a series of experiments that examine how prosody influences the anticipation and resolution of co-reference. Overall results from the project suggest that prosodic prominence can increase or decrease reference to a saliently pitch-accented phrase, depending on additional circumstances of the referential decision. We argue that an adequate account of prosody’s role in co-refere...
Akmajian, A., & Jackendoff, R. (1970). CoreferenLality and stress. LinguisMc Inquiry. Balogh, J. ... more Akmajian, A., & Jackendoff, R. (1970). CoreferenLality and stress. LinguisMc Inquiry. Balogh, J. E. (2003). Pronouns, prosody, and the discourse anaphora weighLng approach. (Unpublished doctoral dissertaLon). UCSD. Chen, A., & Lai, V. T. (2011). Comb or coat: The role of intonaLon in online reference resoluLon in a second language. In Sound and Sounds. Studies presented to M.E.H. (Bert) Schouten on the occasion of his 65th birthday. UiL OTS. Grüter, T., Rohde, H., & Schafer, A. J. (in press). Coreference and discourse coherence in L2: The roles of grammaLcal aspect and referenLal form. LinguisMc Approaches to Bilingualism. Grüter, T., Rohde, H., & Schafer, A. J. (2014). The role of discourse-level expectaLons in non-naLve speakers’ referenLal choices. In Proceedings of BUCLD 38. Cascadilla Press. Huang, B. H. & Jun, S.-A. (2011). The effect of age on the acquisiLon of second language prosody. Language and Speech. Kehler, A., Kertz, L., Rohde, H., & Elman, J. L. (2008). Coherence and...
Coreference choices are influenced by multiple factors, including information structural categori... more Coreference choices are influenced by multiple factors, including information structural categories such as topic and focus. These information structural categories can be indicated by intonation, yet few studies have investigated how intonation affects subsequent choices for coreference. Using a story continuation experiment with aurally presented stimuli, we show that the location of contrastive focus in Mainstream American English significantly affects the preferred referent for the subject of the next sentence in a short discourse.
Native (L1) speakers take advantage of prenominal cues, such as gendermarked articles and classif... more Native (L1) speakers take advantage of prenominal cues, such as gendermarked articles and classifiers, to identify an upcoming noun during online processing (e.g., Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007; Huettig et al., 2010). The extent to which non-native (L2) speakers are able to do so remains a topic of on-going investigation. Findings from learners of gender-marking languages have not been entirely consistent, and point to the influence of a number of languageand learner-specific factors, as discussed in more detail below. No previous findings from L2 learners of classifier languages are available, as far as we know. The goal of the present study is to extend research on the facilitatory effect of prenominal cues in the online processing of an L2 by looking at classifiers in Chinese, which are both similar and different along potentially relevant dimensions from gendermarked articles in Indo-European languages. We report the findings from a visualworld eye-tracking experiment with L1 and...
In two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we explore the extent to which conflicting first-la... more In two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we explore the extent to which conflicting first-language (L1) based grammatical parses influence second-language (L2) learners’ on-line and off-line interpretation of sentences in the L2. We used cross-linguistic structural priming to potentially boost competition from the L1 grammar during the processing of wh-questions in English. For L1-German learners (Experiment 1), sentence-final interpretations showed effects of conflicting L1 parses in the greater number of misinterpretations of English subject as object wh-questions than vice versa. In a follow-up experiment with a comparison group of L1-Japanese learners (Experiment 2), we found the reverse pattern in sentence-final interpretations, with lower accuracy on English object than subject wh-questions. The asymmetry in comprehension accuracy between Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the effect observed among L1-German learners reflected grammar competition from the L1 rather tha...
Evidence for null subject transfer in early L2 acquisition has come almost exclusively from gramm... more Evidence for null subject transfer in early L2 acquisition has come almost exclusively from grammaticality judgment (GJ) tasks, in which early learners show about 30-40% acceptance of ungrammatical English sentences with null subjects. This contrasts curiously with early production data, in which the proportion of null subjects is generally low. The current study reexamines null-subject transfer in L2 English acquisition by adult speakers of Spanish. Three tasks are used: a production task, a GJ task, and a novel comprehension task designed to assess learners' interpretations of null-subject sentences. The same learners who accept null-subject sentences in the GJ task are nonetheless shown to be native-like in the comprehension task, even at the earliest stages of learning. This finding suggests that they do not have referential pro at their disposal to interpret sentences without overt subjects as declaratives, and raises the theoretical question of whether referential pro is s...
Interpreting sentences spoken in a second language can be demanding and plagued with uncertainty,... more Interpreting sentences spoken in a second language can be demanding and plagued with uncertainty, especially for lower proficiency listeners. While native language listeners use numerous information sources to anticipate upcoming words accurately, the pattern of anticipation may be different for second language users. We explore this issue in bilinguals with varying English proficiency by recording anticipatory eyemovements as participants listened to sentences (e.g., “The pirate chases the ship”) for which the object and three distractors (agent-related, action-related, unrelated) appeared in the concurrently presented images. Higher proficiency participants were faster than lower proficiency participants. Fixations to action-related distractors after onset of the action also varied by proficiency, with lower proficiency participants showing greater tendency to fixate this locally coherent actionrelated distractor. This final effect is supported by a trial level analysis, but appea...
Abstract This study explores the boundary conditions of crosslanguage permeability in syntactic p... more Abstract This study explores the boundary conditions of crosslanguage permeability in syntactic processing among late bilinguals, testing crosslinguistic influence (CLI) both from the first language (L1) to the second language (L2) and from the L2 to the L1. Findings from a visual world experiment with four groups of German-English and English-German bilinguals showed robust evidence for order of acquisition, but not for usage and immersion in L2, constraining CLI in the processing of structurally ambiguous wh-questions in German. Whereas CLI from the L1 persistently affected L2 sentence processing even among near-native and immersed L2 users, L1 processing appeared resilient against influence from the L2, even after long-term L2 immersion. These findings suggest that the timing of linguistic input in development plays a more critical role than current language use with regard to CLI in sentence processing among late bilinguals. The study highlights how systematic and bidirectional investigations of CLI contribute towards more nuanced models of the bilingual mind.
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2020
Target language proficiency assessment has become an integral part of Second Language Acquisition... more Target language proficiency assessment has become an integral part of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research design, with cloze tests frequently serving this purpose for reasons of practicality. Assumptions underlying the interpretation of such cloze test scores, however, are often not examined. With the goal of providing researchers with better means for drawing inferences from cloze test scores, we present an analysis of a combined dataset comprised of scores from 1,724 test takers on a frequently used English cloze test (Brown 1980). We examine variation in score distributions and reliability estimates among L2 groups, between L2 and native-speaker (NS) examinees, and for different scoring methods, and investigate the degree to which different sets of items were effective for classifying low- vs high-proficiency L2 examinees and L2 vs NS test takers. Standardized scores are provided for each scoring method so that future researchers can reference their scores to this larger set.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2016
Previous research found that native-Chinese listeners perceive tones more categorically than list... more Previous research found that native-Chinese listeners perceive tones more categorically than listeners with no knowledge of a tonal language (naive listeners; Halle et al., 2004). This study examined tone perception by 26 native-English adult learners of Mandarin (L2ers) in comparison to 30 naive and 30 native-Chinese listeners. Identification and AXB discrimination tasks tested monosyllables (/pi/, /pa/) with 9-step F0 continua between all possible Mandarin tone pairs. Native listeners showed more categorical identification (steeper slopes) than naive listeners. The L2 group showed significantly shallower identification slopes than native listeners (p<0.01) and steeper slopes than naive listeners (p<0.01). L2 proficiency (listening test plus self-report) positively correlated with identification performance (r = 0.36, z=-2.56, p<0.01), suggesting higher proficiency may lead to more native-like tone identification. However, although L2ers’ discrimination accuracy (0.90) was significantly higher than nativ...
Discourse-level factors, such as event structure and the form of referential expressions, play an... more Discourse-level factors, such as event structure and the form of referential expressions, play an important role in native speakers’ referential processing. This paper presents an experiment with Japanese- and Korean-speaking learners of English, investigating the extent to which discourse-level biases that have gradient effects in L1 speakers are also implicated in L2 speakers’ coreference choices. Results from a story continuation task indicate that biases involving referential form were remarkably similar for L1 and L2 speakers. In contrast, event structure, indicated by perfective versus imperfective aspect, had a more limited effect on L2 speakers’ referential choices. The L2 results are discussed in light of existing accounts of L1 reference processing, which assume that referential choices are shaped by speakers’ continually updated expectations about what is likely to be mentioned next, and argued to reflect L2 speakers’ reduced reliance on expectations.
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Papers by Theres Grüter