Integrating Syntactic And Semantic Information By Chinese Learners Of English As A Second Language In L1-L2 And L2-L1 Translation Tasks

As the basic form of language comprehension, sentence processing has received extensive attention. The studies about sentence processing have important significance to understand the psychology language mechanism. Since the 1960 s, the studies of sentence processing mainly focused on the processing of syntactic and semantic analysis. The previous evidence from L1 and L2 studies showed that language processing proceeds along two routes — a syntactically-driven route and a semantics-based heuristic route. L2 proficiency is also considered as an important factor to influence L2 sentence processing.However, the discussion of whether L2 learners are able to integrate syntactic and semantic information in nativelike manner has not converged to agreement. In L1 sentence processing study, good-enough processing theory was proposed to interpret the failure to faithfully process L1 input in sentence comprehension. The syntactic representation is so fragile that can be overridden by the semantic-based heuristics used during processing, leading to yield a merely ‘good enough’ rather than faithful linguistic representation. In L2 study, Shallow Structure Hypothesis proposes that adult L2 syntactic processing mechanisms differ fundamentally from L1 syntactic processing mechanisms. Thus, L2 learners underuse syntactic structure and build shallower and less detailed grammatical representations than adult native learners. Yet, Lim and Christianson(2013) found that based on translation paradigm L2 processing is a ‘good enough’ process in nature, which questioned Shallow Structure Hypothesis. Translation paradigm adopted by Lim and Christianson(2013) gives L2 sentence processing a new perspective. It can provide accurate evidence of where and how language processor fails to grasp the interpretation of the sentence.This study replicated the research of Lim and Christianson(2013) and further probed whether L2 sentences processing of Chinese learners of English is good enough. This study employed translation paradigm to examine the integration of semantic and syntactic information by Chinese learners of English as a second language. The present study is to explore the following research questions:1. How do Chinese learners of English integrate syntactic and semanticinformation into a single, coherent English sentence in L1-to-L2 and L2-to-L1translation tasks?2. How does L2 proficiency modulate the integration of syntactic and semanticinformation?The study made a comparative analysis on the processing of the biased, reversible sentences normed by Ferreira(2002). It includes two within factors: syntactic form(active/passive sentence) and semantic information(plausible/implausible sentence). Besides, language proficiency is also supposed to be a potential factor that modulates L2 learners’ comprehension processes. Participants at different grade were required to listen to aurally-presented sentences and complete translation tasks orally in two separate experiments. 120 undergraduate students in Sichuan International Studies University participated the experiments. All data collected were analyzed by SPSS 19.0.The main findings of the experiments can be summarized as follows: 1) a significant main effect was observed on semantic information in English-to-Chinese translation task, suggesting that implausible semantic information posed a challenge on the comprehension and translation of the sentences; 2) L2 learners had a tendency to ‘flip’ structures(either active to passive or passive to active) to accommodate an interpretation within participants’ world knowledge especially when encountering implausible sentences.The study provides evidence that L2 processing can be explained within the realm of good-enough processing theory.