Cross-linguistic Influence In L2and L3Sentence Processing Among L1Chinese Students

It is demonstrated that English and German have different attachmentpreferences in processing the complex structure--NP1-of-NP2-RCμ. As ageneralization, English is a low attachment language and German is a high attachmentlanguage. Such a difference offers us a chance to detect the processing strategiesemployed by Chinese students while learning these two languages and check thecross-linguistic influence in a multilingual context. Language proficiency andpreposition are two independent variables in the experiment, with high attachmentpercentage as the dependent variable.Four groups of students from a key university in Shanghai are selected to takepart in the experiment. G1and G2are students majoring in engineering and G2have ahigher English proficiency than G1. G3and G4are German majors, and G4have ahigher German proficiency than G3.We design a questionnaire to collect participants· language learning experience.Based on the test material of Felser (2003), we write down15English sentencescontaining NP1-of-NP2-RCμ,15English sentences containing NP1-with-NP2-RCμand15German sentences containing NP1-von-NP2-RCμ, as well as several filleritems. Each sentence is put on a slide, with two choices below it, one high attachmentand one low attachment.When dealing with English sentence, it is found that Chinese English learnersprefer high attachment in English NP1-of-NP2-RCμ structure. NP1is firstlyencountered and leaves the deepest impression on their mind. Since it is alsosemantically viable, and is granted as the referred. Shallow Structure Hypothesis istestified here, that post-puberty L2learners· processing is lexically driven andinvolves linear parsing heuristics rather than being a structurally-determined processas they assume for L1processing (Roberts,2012:118).German majors deal with the German structure NP1-von-NP2-RCμ in the sameway as German native speakers as claimed in the literature (Hemforth, Konieczny,Scheepers&Strube,1998).Language proficiency does not exert significant influence on Chinese students·sentence processing strategy. As to cross-linguistic influence, English as a secondlanguage imposes certain influence on German learning and German learning alsoexerts influence on English sentence processing.As an explorative study, this paper tentatively argues that the way differentlanguage speakers employ the sentence processing strategy is quite arbitrary.Cross-linguistic influence from mother tongue and other languages being learned shallnot be ignored.