제2언어 중의적 문장처리를 위한 지시물 상황과 억양정보의 처리

Referential Context and Prosodic Phrasing in the Resolution of L2 Syntactic Ambiguity

The present study examines the use of referential context and prosodic phrasing information in the resolution of L2 English syntactic ambiguity. In two experiments, pairs of participants completed a referential communication task where a speaker described a demonstration of an action using the sentence that involves a global syntactic ambiguity (e.g., ‘She taps the frog with the flower’) and a listener had to choose an object in a referential context. Experiment 1 presented the speaker and listener with the same ambiguous referential context where two alternative meanings of the ambiguity phrase are accommodated. Experiment 2 presented an unambiguous referential context where only one interpretation of the syntactic ambiguity is plausible. The results showed that both native and non-native English speakers employed prosodic phrasing to distinguish the meanings of ambiguous sentences in their production and comprehension. However, the finding was more strongly manifested in the ambiguous referential context. The results suggest that speakers’ awareness of ambiguity in the referential context immediately affects speakers’ use of informative prosodic cues in their production of English sentences, whether the speakers are native or non-native speakers. This in turn influences listeners’ comprehension of the sentences in such a way that L2 learners of English use prosodic cues when presented as do native English speakers.