Underutilization of Syntactic Processing by Chinese Learners of English in Comprehending English Sentences, Evidenced from Adapted Garden-Path Ambiguity Experiment

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Xu, Jiapeng
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866916546675212288
author Xu, Jiapeng
author_facet Xu, Jiapeng
contents Many studies have revealed that sentence comprehension relies more on semantic processing than on syntactic processing. However, previous studies have predominantly emphasized the preference for semantic processing, focusing on the semantic perspective. In contrast, this current study highlights the under-utilization of syntactic processing, from a syntactic perspective. Based on the traditional garden-path experiment, which involves locally ambiguous but globally unambiguous sentences, this study's empirical experiment innovatively crafted an adapted version featuring semantically ambiguous but syntactically unambiguous sentences to meet its specific research objective. This experiment, involving 140 subjects, demonstrates through descriptive and inferential statistical analyses using SPSS, Graph Pad Prism, and Cursor that Chinese learners of English tend to under-utilize syntactic processing when comprehending English sentences. The study identifies two types of parsing under-utilization: partial and complete. Further exploration reveals that trial and error in syntactic processing contributes to both. Consequently, this study lays a foundation for the development of a novel parsing method designed to fully integrate syntactic processing into sentence comprehension, thereby enhancing the level of English sentence comprehension for Chinese learners of English.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_00030
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Underutilization of Syntactic Processing by Chinese Learners of English in Comprehending English Sentences, Evidenced from Adapted Garden-Path Ambiguity Experiment
Xu, Jiapeng
Computation and Language
Many studies have revealed that sentence comprehension relies more on semantic processing than on syntactic processing. However, previous studies have predominantly emphasized the preference for semantic processing, focusing on the semantic perspective. In contrast, this current study highlights the under-utilization of syntactic processing, from a syntactic perspective. Based on the traditional garden-path experiment, which involves locally ambiguous but globally unambiguous sentences, this study's empirical experiment innovatively crafted an adapted version featuring semantically ambiguous but syntactically unambiguous sentences to meet its specific research objective. This experiment, involving 140 subjects, demonstrates through descriptive and inferential statistical analyses using SPSS, Graph Pad Prism, and Cursor that Chinese learners of English tend to under-utilize syntactic processing when comprehending English sentences. The study identifies two types of parsing under-utilization: partial and complete. Further exploration reveals that trial and error in syntactic processing contributes to both. Consequently, this study lays a foundation for the development of a novel parsing method designed to fully integrate syntactic processing into sentence comprehension, thereby enhancing the level of English sentence comprehension for Chinese learners of English.
title Underutilization of Syntactic Processing by Chinese Learners of English in Comprehending English Sentences, Evidenced from Adapted Garden-Path Ambiguity Experiment
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.00030