LSLA 09: Investigating Reconstruction in a Second Language

Investigating Reconstruction in a Second Language

Ian H.G. Ying

Highly significant in current linguistic research (e.g., Barss, 2001; Lasnik, 2001), but not fully investigated in second language (L2) acquisition research (see Ying, 1999 for discussion), reconstruction refers to structures with a reflexive inside a moved noun phrase (e.g., Johni wonders which pictures of himselfi/j Billj likes.) or predicate (e.g., How proud of herselfi does Maryj think that Janei is ti/*j?). This research monograph examined L2 learners' interpretation of reconstruction in three separate studies.
The first study used a fresh online timed judgment task. The experimental stimuli were programmed to stay on the screen for three seconds. It elicited both reaction times and measure of error rates. The second study, aimed at finding out whether the experimental results obtained from the online task can be replicated, used an offline sentence interpretation task (MacLaughlin, 1998). The first two studies focused on investigating the interpretation of reconstruction in English by Chinese-speaking learners of English. To find out how English-speaking learners of Chinese would interpret reconstruction in Chinese, I conducted a third study using an offline sentence interpretation task by Lakshmanan and Teranishi (1994). The results indicate that L2 learners' interpretation of reconstruction was constrained by linguistic principles and L1-induced language mapping.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ch. 1 Introduction
Ch. 2 Linguistic Theories on Reconstruction
Ch. 3 Prior studies on L2 learners' knowledge of reflexives
Ch. 4 Timed Sentence Judgments on Reconstruction in English
Ch. 5 Offline Sentence Judgments on Reconstruction in English
Ch. 6 English Learners' Interpretation of Reconstruction in Chinese
Ch. 7 Summary and Conclusion

ISBN 9783895868429. LINCOM Studies in Language Acquisition 09. 250pp. 2003.