First language influence on second language offline and online ambiguous pronoun resolution

TitleFirst language influence on second language offline and online ambiguous pronoun resolution
Publication TypeArticle de revue
Année de publication2018
AuthorsSchimke, Sarah, Israel de la Fuente, Barbara Hemforth, and Saveria Colonna
JournalLanguage Learning
Abstract

This study looks at L1 influence on L2 ambiguous pronoun resolution and investigates a) whether L1 influence takes place on the level of the pronominal form (form-dependent influence), and/or on the level of the construction in which the form appears  (construction-dependent influence) and b) whether effects differ in online compared to offline data. In Experiment 1, we replicated previously observed construction-dependent cross-linguistic differences between French and German (Hemforth et al., 2010), and provided new data on Spanish. In Experiment 2, we assessed offline and online interpretation preferences of intermediate L1 French and L1 Spanish learners of German. Our results provide evidence of form-dependent L1 influence, in that learners transferred a generalized antecedent bias associated with overt pronouns. Moreover, our results extend previous findings (Roberts, Gullberg & Indefrey, 2008) in showing that L1 influence on L2 pronoun resolution can occur during online processing.

DOI10.1111/lang.12293