Επεξεργασία δομικά αμφίσημων προτάσεων στην ελληνική ως Γ1 και ως Γ2

Abstract

This paper investigates how L1 and L2 children process garden-path sentences, such as: (1) While she was eating the pizza fell on the floor and (2) While she was sleeping the pizza fell on the floor. Garden-path effects have been claimed to result from the parser’s preference for the structurally simplest analysis. Garden-path effects do not arise with intransitive verbs, such as in (2), because readers make use of subcategorization information of the verb. Traxler (2002) using a self-paced reading task showed that, in English, when punctuation was not present, L1 English 8–12 yearold children are garden-pathed. To date studies in the processing of garden-path sentences in Greek, L1 children have failed to show garden-path effects (Papadopoulou & Tsimpli 2005). However, this study used the moving-window paradigm and involved reading. Children’s developing literacy may have interfered in processing, causing the lack of garden-path effects. The present study has used a self-paced listening task manipulating argument structure. Given that intonation provides cues for clause boundaries, Experiment 1 used flat intonation to eliminate those cues; Experiment 2 used natural intonation to examine whether intonation cues reduce garden-path effects. 22 9:6–12:5 year-old Russian-Greek children and 22 9:0–12:1 monolingual Greek children took part in the two experiments. Analyses of accuracy showed that L2 children were less accurate than L1 children in both experiments. Natural prosody facilitated sentence processing in L1 but not L2 children. In the absence of prosodic cues (Experiment 1) L1 children showed garden-path effects. L2 children, on the other hand, were not garden-pathed. When natural intonation provided cues for sentence boundaries, there was no garden-path effect for any of the groups. This shows that when tested in the auditory modality, L2 children do not process garden-path sentences as L1 children; they are not sensitive to subcategorization information of the verb or to prosodic cues. The L2 children’s absence of sensitivity to these two features can lead to comprehension difficulties, which may affect their school performance and overall educational attainment.