The Second Language Processing And Production Of Chinese Relative Clauses

Because of the structural complexity(Gibson,1998;Hawkins,1994,2004)and typological universality(Keenan & Comrie,1977),relative clauses(RCs)have always been of great interest in sentence processing research as well as in language acquisition studies.Chinese RCs,owing to their typological uniqueness of having the rare combination of head-final feature and SVO word order(Dryer,1992),have aroused much recent interest.The results reported in the studies of Chinese RCs,however,remain quite controversial,with some of them supporting subject RCs(SRCs)processing and production advantage(Lin & Bever,2006;Hsu et al.,2009;Li et al.,2016)and some others in favor of object RCs(ORCs)advantage(Hsiao & Gibson,2003;Chen et al.,2008;Gibson & Wu,2013).What deserves to be noted is that few of the existing studies of Chinese RCs are concerned with L2 Chinese learners.Importantly,the possible relationship between L2 processing and L2 production of Chinese RCs has been to some extent neglected in previous studies.Therefore,the present study designed a self-paced reading task and a sentence-combining task to investigate the L2 processing and L2 production of Chinese SRCs and ORCs,and to explore the possible relationship between L2 processing preference and L2 production advantage of Chinese RCs.Specially,the present study aims to answer the following research questions: 1)Are Chinese SRCs easier to process and comprehend than ORCs for L2 learners? 2)Are Chinese SRCs easier to produce than ORCs for L2 learners? 3)Is the L2 processing preference consistent with the L2 production advantage? Why?32 native speakers and 30 Chinese L2 learners of intermediate proficiency participated in the two experiments.Attention has been paid to the design of experiment materials,making sure that verbs in RCs are all two-argument verbs and both the head and embedded nouns used in RCs are animate.The words chosen in the materials,without exception,were from the word lists of HSK1-4.Experiment 1 investigated the L2 processing of Chinese SRCs and ORCs,adopting a self-paced,whole sentence reading task,using a moving window display.Extraction types(SRC vs.ORC)and modification types(subject-modifying vs.object-modifying)were manipulated,forming four test conditions.Each condition was composed of 6 sentences,and 24 fillers were also constructed.A plausibility norming survey on the target trials and corresponding adjustment were done before the experiment.Participants were asked to read carefully the sentences shown on the computer,and then complete a simple true/false judgment presented at the end of each sentence.Reading times and accuracy rate were collected to show the processing preference of Chinese SRCs and ORCs.Experiment 2 was conducted a week later to investigate the production preference of Chinese SRCs and ORCs among L2 learners,using a sentence-combining task.Likewise,extraction types and modification types were manipulated,forming four conditions.Each type was composed of 6 pairs of sentences,and 12 pairs of fillers were added.Each pair of sentences consisted of two simple sentences.Participants were asked to use the Chinese character “de” to combine the two sentences into one.Accuracy rate was collected to show the L2 production advantage of Chinese RCs.The results were analyzed using repeated measure ANOVAs and paired-samples t-tests,by both participants and items analysis.Major findings include 1)A weak SRC preference was found in sentence-judging accuracy among L2 learners,but no clear-cut asymmetry between Chinese SRCs and ORCs was shown on reading time.2)Chinese ORCs were easier to produce than SRCs only in object-modifying conditions,but such asymmetry disappeared in subject-modifying conditions.Modification type was found to play a crucial role in affecting L2 learners' production of Chinese RCs.3)L2 learners and L1 controls performed differently in both the self-paced reading task and sentence-combining task.Furthermore,the production advantage of Chinese SRCs and ORCs wasn't consistent with the processing preference among L2 learners.The results help to illustrate the great variety and complexity of different factors in influencing the L2 processing and production of Chinese RCs.This study has both theoretical and pedagogical implications.Theoretically,it provides evidence of Chinese L2 learners for understanding the controversy on the asymmetry between Chinese SRCs and ORCs processing or production.Pedagogically,the present study investigated the features of L2 processing and production of Chinese RCs,offering some useful guidelines for the learning and teaching of Chinese as a second language.