© 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. Previous research reported that in processing structurally ambiguous sentences comprehenders often preserve an initial incorrect analysis even after adopting a correct analysis following structural disambiguation. One criticism is that the sentences tested in previous studies involved referential ambiguity and allowed comprehenders to make inferences about the initial interpretation using pragmatic information, suggesting the possibility that the initial analysis persisted due to comprehenders' pragmatic inference but not to their failure to perform complete reanalysis of the initial misanalysis. Our study investigated this by testing locally ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese, in which the initial misinterpretation contradicts the correct interpretation. Our study using a self-paced reading technique demonstrated evidence for the persistence of the initial analysis with this structure. The results from an eye-tracking study further suggested that the phenomenon directly reflected the amount of support given to the initial incorrect analysis prior to disambiguating information: The more supported the incorrect main clause analysis was, the more likely comprehenders were to preserve the analysis even after the analysis was falsified. Our results thus demonstrated that the preservation of the initial analysis occurs not due to referential ambiguities but to comprehenders' difficulty to fully revise the highly supported initial interpretation.

© 2014 American Psychological Association. A number of previous studies showed that comprehenders make use of lexically based constraints such as subcategorization frequency in processing structurally ambiguous sentences. One piece of such evidence is lexically specific syntactic priming in comprehension; following the costly processing of a temporarily ambiguous sentence, comprehenders experience less processing difficulty with the same structure with the same verb in subsequent processing. In previous studies using a reading paradigm, however, the effect was observed at or following disambiguating information and it is not known whether a priming effect affects only the process of resolving structural ambiguity following disambiguating input or it also affects the process before ambiguity is resolved. Using a visual world paradigm, the current study addressed this issue with Japanese relative clause sentences. Our results demonstrated that after experiencing the relative clause structure, comprehenders were more likely to predict the usually dispreferred structure immediately upon hearing the same verb. No compatible effect, in contrast, was observed on hearing a different verb. Our results are consistent with the constraint-based lexicalist view, which assumes the parallel activation of possible structural analyses at the verb. Our study demonstrated that an experience of a dispreferred structure activates the structural information in a lexically specific manner, leading comprehenders to predict another instance of the same structure on encountering the same verb.

Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on parsing but whether prosody can impact even the initial parsing decision is still not evident. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing temporarily ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese. Our results showed that listeners used the prosodic cue to make a structural prediction before hearing disambiguating information. Importantly, the effect was limited to cases where the visual scene provided an appropriate context for the prosodic cue, thus eliminating the explanation that listeners have simply associated marked prosodic information with a less frequent structure. Furthermore, the influence of the prosodic information was also evident following disambiguating information, in a way that reflected the initial analysis. The current study demonstrates that prosody, when provided with an appropriate context, influences the initial syntactic analysis and also the subsequent cost at disambiguating information. The results also provide first evidence for pre-head structural prediction driven by prosodic and contextual information with a head-final construction. © 2012 Elsevier B.V..

Abstract

We present CELER (Corpus of Eye Movements in L1 and L2 English Reading), a broad coverage eye-tracking corpus for English. CELER comprises over 320,000 words, and eye-tracking data from 365 participants. Sixty-nine participants are L1 (first language) speakers, and 296 are L2 (second language) speakers from a wide range of English proficiency levels and five different native language backgrounds. As such, CELER has an order of magnitude more L2 participants than any currently available eye movements dataset with L2 readers. Each participant in CELER reads 156 newswire sentences from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in a new experimental design where half of the sentences are shared across participants and half are unique to each participant. We provide analyses that compare L1 and L2 participants with respect to standard reading time measures, as well as the effects of frequency, surprisal, and word length on reading times. These analyses validate the corpus and demonstrate some of its strengths. We envision CELER to enable new types of research on language processing and acquisition, and to facilitate interactions between psycholinguistics and natural language processing (NLP).

© 2017 Association for Computational Linguistics. A fundamental question in language learning concerns the role of a speaker's first language in second language acquisition. We present a novel methodology for studying this question: analysis of eye-movement patterns in second language reading of free-form text. Using this methodology, we demonstrate for the first time that the native language of English learners can be predicted from their gaze fixations when reading English. We provide analysis of classifier uncertainty and learned features, which indicates that differences in English reading are likely to be rooted in linguistic divergences across native languages. The presented framework complements production studies and offers new ground for advancing research on multilingualism.

© 2016, International Speech Communications Association. All rights reserved. Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on initial parsing decision. However, whether prosody functions in the same way in adult second language (L2) sentence processing is not known. In visual world eyetracking experiments, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing locally ambiguous sentences with L1 speakers (native English speakers) and L2 learners (Japanese adult learners of English). Our results showed that referential visual context alone helped both L1 speakers and L2 learners to correctly analyze the sentence structure. Interestingly, however, the results also revealed that contrastive intonation accompanied by referential visual context facilitated the correct interpretation with L1 speakers but misled L2 learners “down a garden path”. L2 learners did not interpret the contrastive intonation as a cue that highlights a contrastive set in the visual scene. Instead, they interpreted the contrastive intonation as a simple emphasis and adopted the incorrect syntactic analysis.

It is known that previous experience of a particular syntactic structure facilitates subsequent processing of the same structure. We investigated this phenomenon, called syntactic priming, in the comprehension of noun-phrases in Japanese. We report eye-tracking data providing evidence for syntactic priming of the internal branching structure of noun-phrases.

An eye-tracking experiment examined whether prosodic information can be immediately used to predict and analyze a correct sentence structure in processing of structurally ambiguous sentences in Japanese such as Otokonoko-ga sanrinsha-ni notteiru onnanoko-wo mitsumeta ('The boy stared at the girl who was riding on the tricycle'). In our experiment, participants heard such a sentence either with contrastive intonation on the RC-theme (tricycle) or without. At the same time, they saw a visual scene that contained either an object that established contrast to the RC-head noun (e.g., another girl riding on a hobbyhorse) or an object that did not (e.g., a woman riding on a bicycle). The results showed that when a visual scene include contrast, participants made more looks to the correct RC-head object with contrastive intonation than without the intonation. However, when a scene did not include contrast, there was no difference in looks to the RC-head object between a sentence with the intonation and the one without. The results demonstrated that prosodic information can help listeners to analyze a correct syntactic structure before encountering any disambiguating information but this is limited to when the prosodic information is contextually meaningful.

Several previous studies on language comprehension found that processing difficulty due to structural ambiguity can be reduced by a phenomenon of structural priming (e.g., Traxler & Pickering, 2005). What is still not clear is whether priming only helps comprehenders to recover from an initial misanalysis or it also helps to make a prediction of a correct analysis before encountering disambiguating information. We conducted two eye-tracking visual world experiments to investigate this issue with structurally ambiguous relative clause sentences such as Roujin-ga shinbun-wo yondeiru bijinesuman-ni hanashikaketa ('The old man talked to the businessman who was reading the newspaper'). The results showed that while listening to the structurally ambiguous part of a sentence, participants made a prediction of the same sentence structure as a prime structure. Importantly, the effect was observed both when the verb was repeated between prime and target and when it was not. Our study demonstrated that a past experience to a sentence structure not only influences listeners on the recovery from misanalysis but also on the probabilities of upcoming dispreferred structures.

本研究では、構造的暖昧文(ガーデンパス文)を用いたセルフペースドリーディングタスクにより日本人の英語文処理の過程を検証した。実験では、一般的に自動詞として使われる頻度が高い動詞と、他動詞として使われる頻度が高い動詞を用いた文を提示し、一単語ごとの読み時間を計測した。先行研究によれば、英語母語話者は動詞の後に続く名詞句を動詞の目的語として捉えるため、ガーデンパス文を読む際に他動詞/自動詞に関わらずガーデンパスに陥ることが報告されている。本実験の結果からは、日本人英語学習者は他動詞が使われた暖昧文を読む際は英語母語話者と同様ガーデンパスに陥る一方、自動詞が使われた暖昧文ではガーデンパス効果が小さいことが示された。さらに、実験内の文理解を見る設問に対して正確に答えた被験者においては、この傾向がより強いことが明らかとなった。本研究により、日本人英語学習者、中でも正しく文構造分析を行った者程英語文を読む際に動詞の下位範疇情報の知識を用いてガーデンパスを回避する可能性が示唆された。

本研究では、文内の語彙が表現する統語形態論的要素が示す構文と、発話音声が表現するプロソディ情報が示す構文を故意に矛盾させた文(形態統語-プロソディミスマッチ文)を用いた実験により、日本人英語学習者の英語音声提示文理解における注目情報を検証した。結果として、初級英語学習者がプロソディ情報を重要な手がかりとする一方、英語力が上がるに伴い構文情報に基づいた音声文理解を行うようになる可能性が示された。この理由として、英語力の高い被験者は英語音声文理解においてプロソディ情報よりも単語の意味や形態など構文情報に関連した情報に頼った処理を行う一方、初級英語学習者は統語形態論的情報を担う活用形などを充分に聞き取れないことから音声によるプロソディ情報に基づいた回答を行ったことが推測される。本研究により、英語力の相違に伴い英語音声提示文理解の方略がプロソディ情報に基づいた判断から統語形態論的情報に基づいた判断へと変化が生じる可能性が示唆された。

本研究では、文を構成している要素を統語的まとまりに分け、その区切れを示すプロソディの 「統語的韻律機能」 の側面に焦点を当て、日本人英語学習者が音声文理解において音声言語に特有の情報であるプロソディ情報と、文字言語上でも表現される構文情報のどちらに依存した処理を行っているかについて 2 種類の実験を行った。実験結果から、英語音声文理解において初級英語学習者がプロソディ情報を重要な手がかりとする一方、英語力が上がるに従い、学習者は構文情報を重要な手がかりとした理解をするようになる可能性が示された。The purpose of this study is to determine what information Japanese EFL learners tend to rely on in analyzing sentence structure in English and if it varies with their English levels. The experiments were performed to determine which types of information between prosodic and syntactic cues Japanese EFL learners would apply to the sentence structure, under conditions where syntax and prosody were placed in conflict. As a result of the experiments, prosodic cues seem to be the most important information for Japanese EFL learners at primary level, but as the learners' English levels become higher, they tend to rely more on syntactic cues in sentence comprehension.

音声言語におけるプロソディ特性は、話者の感情や意図に関する情報を伝え、言語の音声構造に特有のリズムを構成し、更に発話の意味的、統語的な文節位置を示す手がかりとなることが知られている。外国語習得においても、限られた語彙数の中での意図伝達を強いられる外国語でのコミュニケーションにおいては、プロソディ情報により表現される会話内容の重要箇所、話し手の情動状態を推測する能力が非常に重要であると考えられる。本研究においては、英語力の指標としてTOEFLスコアを用い、2つの実験を通して日本人英語学習者の英語力と英語音声理解における英語文処理の選好的処理の関係性を検証する。

英文を自然なスピードで録音した素材を文単位のファイルに整理し、キーとなる名詞・動詞の適切な語形（単数形・複数形・現在形・過去形など）を選択する課題を提示した上で、ノイズ加工しない音声を1度だけ再生、該当箇所をノイズでマスクした音声ファイルを何度でも必要なだけ再生、ノイズ加工しない音声を1度だけ再生という3段階でリスニング練習を行った。並行して、平易な英語ニュースについて、名詞・動詞などは辞書形で提示し、冠詞・前置詞は削除した単語列を提示した上でのディクテーション作業を行ったところ、学習者が文法的冗長性に着目するようになったことを示唆するアンケート結果を得ることができた。

研究課題について、日本語文理解における韻律情報、統語プライミング、語彙の意味情報と節の長さの影響について検討するため、「医師が白衣を持っている高校生をあわてて追いかけた。」のような一時的曖昧性を伴うガーデンパス文の理解過程を、眼球運動計測手法を用いた実験により検証した。
関係節構造の予測を反映した視線の動きから、日本語ガーデンパス文の統語処理において、上記の3つの言語情報が遅延することなく用いられていることが明らかとなった。これらの結果により、これまで主要部前置型言語を対象とした研究で検証されてきた上記の言語情報が、日本語のような主要部後置型言語でも文理解の漸次的処理に用いられていることを明らかにした。
続いて、日本語文処理における研究成果を踏まえた上で、日本人英語学習者の英語文理解における文処理方略の特性について学習者が英語文を理解する際に動詞情報をどのように用いるかについて検証を行うため、自己ペースリーディング実験を行った。その結果、日本人英語学習者は英語母語話者とは対照的に自動詞直後の名詞句を動詞の直接目的語として誤って解釈する傾向が確認された。また、文完成課題の結果から、他動詞の使用については学習者と母語話者の間に違いが見られない一方、自動詞の使用についてはグループ間で有意差が見られたことから、英語文理解における学習者と母語話者の違いは、学習者の自動詞に対する下位範疇化情報の獲得が不完全であることに起因する可能性を示した。