Korean L2 English Learners’ Processing of Sluicing Interacting with Reflexive Resolution: A Self-paced Reading Study

Abstract

In this paper we perform an online self-paced reading experiment with Korean L2 English learners to examine to what extent the L2 parser goes about predictive processing during sentence comprehension, specifically focusing on whether the parser opts for sluicing/TP-ellipsis when both sluicing and non-sluicing are potentially prospective structures. Our findings point to the fact that unlike L1 speakers investigated in Yoshida, Dickey, and Sturt (2012), L2 learners are not sufficiently attentive in real time to the structural details of the syntactic environment to predictively construct hierarchical structure for the sluiced site. Nor are they cognizant of the Binding Principle A that should play out in establishing the relation between a reflexive and its antecedent formed online in the course of sentence construction. We will also discuss the possible rationale behind L2 learners’ deficiency in predictive sentence processing and the Binding Principle A.