EURASIAN JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, vol.6, no.2, pp.155-188, 2020 (ESCI)
The present study aims to
investigate the role of L1 transfer effects on L2 sentence processing
strategies during the interpretation of relative clause (RC) attachment
ambiguities. The main body of the study is divided into two sections. The first
section describes Experiment 1, which is designed to test the resolution of RC
attachment ambiguities by Turkish learners of L2 English both in Turkish and
English through the use of an off-line task (i.e., paper-and-pencil
comprehension tests) and compare their processing preferences to those of
native English speakers. The second section presents Experiment 2, which aims
to investigate the real-time processing of the RC attachment ambiguities by the
same participant groups employing eye-tracking methodology. The results
indicated that L1 Turkish and L1 English RC attachment preferences differed and
that Turkish learners of L2 English tended to transfer their Turkish sentence
processing pattern to real-time interpretation of the English RC attachment
ambiguities.