The Influence Of Verbal Type Differences On Advanced Chinese EFL Learners’ Interpretation Of English Garden Path Sentences

Garden path sentence comprehension has long been studied by linguists and psycholinguists due to its special local ambiguity of the sentence. Foreign scholars in this realm have switched their focus from theoretical researches during the last century to empirical researches in the new century while studies in this respect in China are still in its infancy. Traditional theories believe that garden path sentence comprehension is an all-or nothing process, which is challenged by recent findings that "Good Enough" representation (i.e. part of the representation is correct while the initial illicit representation lingers) do exist. However, all those researches were done with native English speakers as participants. What will the picture be like for English learners? Meaningful results had been achieved from some studies in China, which explored into the comprehension of intermediate-level learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL learners) on garden path sentences. But in studies to date, none has been done attempting to investigate advanced Chinese EFL learners’ interpretation of this kind of demanding sentences, which is what we probe into in this study, particularly the influence of verbal type differences on subjects’full interpretation of English garden path sentences. The research questions are:1) Will verbal type differences exert an influence on advanced Chinese EFL learners’final interpretation of direct object/subject (DO/S) garden path sentences?2) If verbal type differences do exert an influence on participants’ final interpretation, what will their influences be like respectively?3) On the whole, what will the ultimate interpretation be like on DO/S garden path sentences for advanced Chinese EFL learners? In light of the findings of previous studies, the following hypotheses are put forward:1) Verbal type differences do have an influence on advanced Chinese EFL learners’ final interpretation of DO/S garden path sentences.2) Garden path sentences with optionally transitive verbs will be processed worst.3) Garden path sentences with Reflexive Absolute Transitive (RAT) verbs will block garden path effect, therefore be parsed successfully.4) Garden path sentences with reciprocal verbs preceded by conjoined noun phrases will block garden path effect, therefore be parsed successfully.5) On the whole, advanced Chinese EFL learners are supposed to form a full interpretation of DO/S garden path sentences.Through the analysis of data got from the comprehension test we conducted, the findings are:verbal type differences do exert an influence on advanced Chinese EFL learners’final interpretation of DO/S garden path sentences. To elaborate on that, sentences with reciprocal verbs are among the easiest to be interpreted; sentences with optionally transitive verbs come in the second while sentences with RAT verbs are the hardest to be understood. On the whole, the subjects fail to form a full interpretation of DO/S garden path sentences...