ERIC Number: EJ1081786
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Sep
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1916-4742
EISSN: N/A
Quantification Scope Ambiguity Resolution: Evidence from Persian and English
Asadollahfam, Hassan; Lotfi, Ahmad Reza
English Language Teaching, v3 n3 p180-193 Sep 2010
This study investigates the interpretation of scopally ambiguous sentences containing noun phrases with double quantified constituents from a processing perspective. The questions this study tried to answer were: whether or not the preferred interpretation for doubly quantified ambiguous sentences in English was influenced by English learners' L1 scope interpretation possibilities; whether or not the preferred interpretation of ambiguous sentences with double quantificational noun phrases was driven by surface configurations of sentences in English and Persian for SL learners of English either in off-line or on-line reading; and finally, whether or not the referential contexts of ambiguous sentences with double quantificational noun phrases in English and in Persian guided interpretation preferences for SL learners in off-line and on-line readings. Using an off-line judgment task and an on-line truth-value judgment task combined with a self-paced reading technique, the data of the study were collected from the Persian speakers and English learners. The results obtained from offline tasks indicated that the interpretation preferences of L2 learners of English were influenced by their background language. However, such influences were not found in the self-paced study. Furthermore, it was indicated that the surface configurations of sentences strongly affected L2 learners' interpretation preferences favoring isomorphic interpretation for the universal quantifiers included in the subject position. Concerning the semantically referential-context effect on ambiguity resolution, the collected data revealed that context played a crucial role in the processing of scope ambiguity since the RTs for a contextualized stimuli were more than for contextualized ones in constructions with QNP-QNP in Persian and English.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, English (Second Language), Second Language Instruction, Second Language Learning, Ambiguity (Semantics), Interlanguage, Graduate Students, Indo European Languages, Nouns, Phrase Structure, Control Groups, Experimental Groups
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Iran
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A