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Discourse-level factors, such as event structure and the form of referential expressions, play an important role in native speakers’ referential processing. This paper presents an experiment with Japanese- and Korean-speaking learners of English, investigating the extent to which discourse-level biases that have gradient effects in L1 speakers are also implicated in L2 speakers’ coreference choices. Results from a story continuation task indicate that biases involving referential form were remarkably similar for L1 and L2 speakers. In contrast, event structure, indicated by perfective versus imperfective aspect, had a more limited effect on L2 speakers’ referential choices. The L2 results are discussed in light of existing accounts of L1 reference processing, which assume that referential choices are shaped by speakers’ continually updated expectations about what is likely to be mentioned next, and argued to reflect L2 speakers’ reduced reliance on expectations.
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Discourse‐level adaptation in pronoun comprehension
Abstract It is well established that people adapt to statistical regularities at phonological, lexical, and syntactic levels. Much less is known about adaptation to discourse‐level structures, such as adaptation to structures defined as the relationship between a pronoun and its antecedent. To fill this gap, this paper reviews studies on the learning of referential patterns by asking (1) do people represent referential structures, (2) how long do discourse‐level representations last, (3) how specific are representations that are used for referential adaptation, (4) what mechanisms underlie this adaptation, and (5) what the current methods are used to test referential adaptation. This paper also briefly summarises the work on adaptation at other linguistic levels. This line of work extends adaptation to higher‐level structures and demonstrates how people learn language patterns that drive successful communication and reading skills.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1917840
- PAR ID:
- 10394304
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Language and Linguistics Compass
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1749-818X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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