This study investigated how well second language (L2) readers of English use context to identify proper names as such. It represents a first step in exploring a widely held assumption that L2 readers of English can easily identify proper names by their form and function. The study isolates the issue of function to investigate whether context alone…

Using Kuhn and McPartland's approach, 116 Chinese college students were recruited and asked to write as many sentences as possible beginning with "Chinese...," "Americans...," and "Japanese...." The population of sentences consisted of 258 adjectives, of which 96 described Chinese, 53 described Americans, and 109…

This paper experimentally examines the effects of the case-markings and the constraint on the assignments and the receptions of thematic roles in Japanese sentence processing. A self-paced reading experiment was carried out with syntactically well-controlled Japanese sentences including homonyms locally ambiguous between nouns and verbs. The…