Bidirectional Influence of L1 and L2 on Syntactic Parsing in L2 learners

The present study explores bidirectional influence of L1 and L2 on syntactic parsing by examining parsing preferences in English monolingual speakers, Korean monolingual speakers and Korean-speaking learners of English with some exposure to an L2 English environment. Six different types of English syntactic ambiguity were given to English monolingual speakers and Korean-English L2 learners. Contrary to the prediction that English and Korean speakers would show different baseline parsing preferences, Korean-speaking learners of English were similar to native English speakers in their parsing of the ambiguous constituents. In another experiment where Korean monolingual speakers and Korean-speaking learners of English read Korean equivalents of the English ambiguities, the L2 learners were different from Korean monolingual speakers in their parsing preferences, being more like native English speakers. The results provide evidence for Dussias and Sagarra (2007)'s claim that bilinguals' parsing experience with L2 sentences affects parsing strategies that bilinguals employ for the corresponding L1 sentences, suggesting that language exposure and experience influence the sentence parsing mechanism that operates for both L1 and L2.