Language processing in a Second Language

This review of Second Language Processing: An Introduction is atypical, as it assesses an introductory publication from one linguistic field from the vantage point of another one. The volume by Nan Jiang, which aims to capture the entire field for the first time, is reviewed in the context of World Englishes (WEs) and related variationist disciplines, which necessitates a very different look than field-internal reviews would afford.

Experimental investigations into figurative language processing have received little attention for languages other than English and several major European languages. Research on the Malay language, in particular, has been very limited. This study thus aimed to investigate the figurative language processing of familiar Malay idioms by L1 native speakers. Familiarity or salience is hypothesised as having a dominating effect in the processing of idiom meaning. This means, regardless of context or other possible factors, salience is said to determine processing advantage. A total of 24 participants completed a timed lexical-decision task after listening to idiomatic stimuli. Eight highly familiar idioms embedded in neutral sentences were used as auditory stimuli, and were paired visually together with either their figurative or literal meaning as target words. Results revealed a similar processing speed for responses to both literal and idiomatic meanings. Hence, it was concluded that the salience levels of both meanings are balanced in line with the Graded Salience Hypothesis.

La ricerca sull’acquisizione della lettoscrittura negli adulti ha individuato cinque tipologie di apprendenti: “prealfabeti”, “analfabeti primari/totali”, “debolmente alfabetizzati”, “alfabetizzati con basso livello di scolarizzazione” e  “alfabetizzati con media o alta scolarizzazione” (Borri et al. 2014: 16-21, van de Craats et al. 2005: 8). “Debolmente alfabetizzati” ed “alfabetizzati” nella L1 hanno in comune con le altre categorie una scarsa o nulla consapevolezza metafonologica nella L2 (Minuz et al. 2016: 121). Tale consapevolezza consente all’apprendente di creare una rappresentazione mentale del valore astratto e convenzionale della parola (De Beni et al. 2001: 18-19), svolgendo pertanto un ruolo fondamentale nella costruzione del nuovo sistema linguistico (Borri et al. 2014: 69).
Dal punto di vista psicolinguistico, chi impara a leggere in L2 non ha ancora formato un Lessico ortografico di Input e di Output della L2, due magazzini che consentono la lettura globale delle parole (van de Craats & Peeters 2012: 112; Privitera 2017: 144-5). Ma non solo è in via di formazione la rappresentazione grafico-visuale del lessico. Anche l’abbinamento fonema-grafema e la rappresentazione fonologica delle parole non sono stati ancora automatizzati (van de Craats & Peeters 2012: 112). La lettura implica pertanto una serie di operazioni la cui complessità non deriva soltanto dalla “difficoltà” delle strutture della L2 ma anche dal modo in cui la mente processa il linguaggio.
Note sono poi le difficoltà, presso tutti gli apprendenti, nel percepire la prosodia della L2 (Costamagna 2014: 69), segmentare la catena fonica in elementi portatori di significato (Rast 2015: 111, Costamagna 2014: 65), sviluppare la nozione stessa di parola (Minuz et al. 2016: 121), individuarla nel flusso orale (gli analfabeti dichiarano di sentire un unico suono) (De Beni et al. 2001: 19), distinguere tra “lessico” e “strutture morfosintattiche” (registrate prima sotto forma di chunks), estrarre le proprietà astratte degli items (Rastelli 2014: 6-8 e 20-22) e adattare i movimenti oculari ai pattern della L2 (Minuz et. al. 2016: 108).
A mio avviso tali fenomeni potrebbero essere addebitati a dei processi cognitivi automatici, legati non alla L1 bensì alle modalità di processazione del linguaggio.
Nella letteratura scientifica, a seconda del paradigma teorico, si parla di processi cognitivi considerati dal punto di vista della processazione del linguaggio o da quello delle rappresentazioni linguistiche (Hulstijn 2007: 2), di euristiche – indipendenti dalle rappresentazioni grammaticali della L2 che comunque influenzano la processazione (Rastelli 2013:73) –, di conoscenze esplicita e implicita, di memoria dichiarativa e procedurale, di processi automatici e controllati.
Nella pratica didattica, quindi, le regole morfosintattiche andrebbero pensate come regole da processare, nella consapevolezza di dover considerare il linguaggio come quella abilità di “processare la lingua”. Si tratta, pertanto, di lavorare su abilità cognitive strumentali e sui processi che si innescano on line ogniqualvolta l’apprendente legge, comprende o produce la lingua. Vengono così dati esempi di esercizi per lavorare sui processi linguistici automatici che condizionano micro-abilità specifiche quali consapevolezza fonologica, velocità di articolazione dei fonemi, rapidità di lettura, scansione oculare del rigo, comprensione delle restrizioni fonotattiche della L2, grafemica, ampliamento del lessico, morfologia, pianificazione discorsiva e velocità di eloquio.


Bibliografia 

BORRI A., MINUZ F., ROCCA L., SOLA C. (2014), Italiano L2 in contesti migratori, Torino, Loescher Editore.

COSTAMAGNA, L. (2014), Fonetica e Ortografia. In: Borri A., Minuz F., Rocca L., Sola C., Italiano L2 in contesti migratori (pp. 65-69), Torino, Loescher Editore.

DE BENI R., CISOTTO L., CARRETTI B. (2001), Psicologia della lettura e della scrittura, Trento, Erickson.

HULSTIJN J. H. (2007), Psycholinguistics perspectives on language and its acquisition. In: J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), The international handbook on English language teaching (pp. 701-713), Norwell, Springer.

MINUZ F., BORRI A., ROCCA L. (2016): Progettare percorsi di L2 per adulti stranieri – Dall’alfabetizzazione all’A1, Torino, Loescher Editore.

PRIVITERA, A. C. (2017), Processi di lettura e formazione del Lessico Mentale in apprendenti sinofoni e non sinofoni di italiano L2. In: Bagna C., Chiapedi C., Salvati L., Scibetta A., Visigalli M. (a cura di), La lingua italiana per studenti internazionali: aspetti linguistici e didattici (pp. 139-145), Perugia, OL3.

RAST R. (2015), Primi passi in un nuovo sistema linguistico. In: M. E. Favilla & E. Nuzzo (a cura di), Grammatica applicata: apprendimento, patologie, insegnamento, Milano, studi AItLA 2.

RASTELLI S. (2014): Discontinuity in Second Language Acquisition, Bristol, Multilingual Matters.

RASTELLI S. (2013): Il processing nella seconda lingua – teorie, dati sperimentali, didattica, Roma, Carocci.

VAN DE CRAATS I., KURVERS J., YOUNG-SCHOLTEN M. (2005), Research on Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition. In: Low-Educated Adult Second Language and Literacy Acquisition. Proceedings of the Inaugural Symposium, Utrecht, LOT.

VAN DE CRAATS I., PEETERS M. (2012), The importance of speed in adult L2 reading. In: Tammelin-Laine T., Nieminen L., Marin M. (Eds.), Low-educated Adult Second Language and Literacy Acquisition, Proceedings of the 8th Symposium (LESLLA VIII) (pp. 109-126), Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities.

ORCs are generally found to be more difficult than SRCs in L1 English processing literature. This eye-tracking study tests this asymmetry in L2 English in terms of reading patterns and accuracy, and reports longer overall reading times, regressions and lower comprehension accuracy for ORCs. This indicates processing ORCs is more difficult for L2 English speakers with L1 Turkish. The incremental processing of the RCs by L2 speakers reflects delayed effects of difficulty, contrasting with previous findings in L1 literature. The findings provide further evidence for the processing disadvantage posed by ORCs, and highlight the differences between L1 and L2 processing dynamics.

This  study  investigated  the  processing  of  English  articles  by  second  language  (L2)  speakers  whose first language (L1) is Korean. Previous studies in L2 English article use had some issues unresolved  such  as  using  offline  tasks,  conflating  definiteness  with  real-world  knowledge,  and  operationalizing definiteness and relevant constructs in ways that participants can be primed or get metalinguistic cues. To revisit such issues, the construct ‘definiteness’ was operationalized as unique identifiability, a self-paced reading task was used to collect data, and regression models were employed to analyse logarithm residuals of raw reading time data, which can detect subtle differences that are otherwise buried. The results show that L1 speakers show sensitivity to the use of definite and indefinite articles in response to given contexts and that both advanced and intermediate  L2  speakers  first  resort  to  their  non-target-like  Interlanguage  grammar,  but  the  advanced group later revises their initial interpretation and eventually shows the effect of target grammar. The L2 behavior is discussed in terms of its theoretical implications.

Experimental investigations into figurative language processing have received little attention for languages other than English and several major European languages. Research on the Malay language, in particular, has been very limited. This study thus aimed to investigate the figurative language processing of familiar Malay idioms by L1 native speakers. Familiarity or salience is hypothesised as having a dominating effect in the processing of idiom meaning. This means, regardless of context or other possible factors, salience is said to determine processing advantage. A total of 24 participants completed a timed lexical-decision task after listening to idiomatic stimuli. Eight highly familiar idioms embedded in neutral sentences were used as auditory stimuli, and were paired visually together with either their figurative or literal meaning as target words. Results revealed a similar processing speed for responses to both literal and idiomatic meanings. Hence, it was concluded that t...

This study investigated sentence-processing strategies adopted by advanced nonnative speakers (NNSs) and native speakers (NSs) of English in the context of an English structure with which NNSs reportedly have an acquisition difficulty (e.g., Swan & Smith, 2001); namely, modal perfect (MP). Participants read MP sentences such as 'He could have worked at the shoe factory' and closely related analogous sentences (e.g., He could have work at the shoe factory), and reading times and errors were measured in an online grammaticality judgment task. It was hypothesized that NSs would have a processing preference for MP sentences compared to the analogues, reflecting the primacy of syntactic information in NS processing and a preference for late closure, whereas NNSs would show no such preference because they rely less on syntactic information when processing sentences. The results revealed, however, that both NSs and NNSs read MP sentences more quickly and with fewer errors than the closely related analogues, consistent with a processing preference for MP sentences. Both groups were also influenced by word-category frequency information, which moderated, but did not fundamentally alter, their syntactic preference for MP. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of models of second language sentence processing and NNSs’ reported MP acquisition difficulty.

Structural priming is the facilitation in the processing of a linguistic form due to repetition (Bock 1986). This study investigates structural priming in second language (L2) acquisition of Turkish in relation to the representation of L2 grammar. The linguistic structures investigated are possessive noun phrases (NPs) and noun clauses with nominalized verbs, which share the same external genitive-possessive morpho-syntax in Turkish. Adult L2 learners first read prime sentences, and then completed target fragments. Overall, they produced more possessive NPs than noun clauses. Crucially, they produced more possessive NPs after reading NP primes, and more noun clauses following noun clause primes. This suggests that L2 learners have two distinct mental representations for these structures, rather than a single, unspecified one.