Language Learning 51:2, June 2001, pp. 319–396
A Review of L1 and L2/ESL Word Integration
Skills and the Nature of L2/ESL Word
Integration Development Involved
in Lower-Level Text Processing
Michael Fender
University of Pittsburgh
This article examines the nature and development of
fluent L2/ESL word integration skills involved in lowerlevel text processing. Four theoretical approaches to word
integration and sentence processing in the L1 and L2/ESL
literature are discussed in conjunction with a review of the
relevant research. The research indicates that L1 and
fluent L2/ESL speakers utilize similar processing procedures to integrate words into larger phrase and sentence
structures. The research also indicates that the development of fluent and accurate L2/ESL word integration skills
depends to a substantial degree on the development of
L2/ESL syntactic structure–building skills.
Introduction to Lower-Level Text-Processing Skills
Reading and psycholinguistic research has firmly established the prevalence and importance of reading processes at the
word level. Word-level processing skills can be divided into word
recognition and word integration processes. Not surprisingly, word
recognition and word integration processes are the most widely
Michael Fender, Department of Instruction and Learning..
The author would like to thank the reviews and the editor, Nick Ellis for
their help and comments.
Correspondence concerning this article may be sent to Michael Fender,
Department of Instruction and Learning, 4H01 Posvar Hall, University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15217. Internet: [email protected]
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used of the cognitive and linguistic processes involved in reading
and interpreting texts (Just & Carpenter, 1980; Perfetti, 1985;
Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989; Rayner & Sereno, 1994). In brief, word
recognition is the ability to identify the printed form of a word or
lexical item in order to retrieve the word’s syntactic (e.g., part of
speech), semantic (e.g., conceptual meaning), and pragmatic information (e.g., world knowledge associations). Word integration, on
the other hand, involves the ability to utilize the syntactic (e.g.,
part of speech), semantic (e.g., verb argument structure), and
pragmatic information associated with words in order to incrementally integrate words into larger phrase, sentence, and discourse structures (Garrod & Sanford, 1998; Gibson, 1998; Just &
Carpenter, 1980).
The pervasiveness of word-level processing in fluent reading
is now well documented. Research shows that nearly every word
is focused on and processed when reading sentences for comprehension. A vast majority of words receive direct eye fixations,
whereas some function words and short content words are processed in the parafovea (Konieczny, Hemforth, Scheepers, & Strube,
1997; Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Kello, 1993; Tanenhaus, SpiveyKnowlton, & Hanna, 2000). Furthermore, research has established that all words are integrated as soon as possible into larger
syntactic and semantic units immediately after word recognition
(Frazier, 1987; Just & Carpenter, 1980; Murray & Rowan, 1998;
Pickering & Traxler, 1998). Therefore, word reading times captured by on-line measures during fluent reading primarily reflect
word recognition and word integration processes (Gibson, 1998;
Just & Carpenter, 1980; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989).
The aim of this paper is to review the psycholinguistic literature on the word integration processes that underlie fluent sentence processing. Word integration involves a set of processing
procedures that utilize a word’s syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic information to guide phrase, clause, and sentence construction and interpretation processes. In addition, word integration
procedures are influenced and constrained by discourse context as
well (e.g., Altmann & Steedman, 1988; van Berkum et al., 1999a,
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1999b; Britt, Perfetti, Garrod, & Rayner, 1992; Pickering & Traxler,
1998). Importantly, fluent word integration is an incremental
process in that each incoming word provides structural and conceptual information to update and guide sentence processing and
interpretation as it unfolds in real time (Ni, Fodor, Crain, &
Shankweiler, 1998; Gibson, 1998; Hagoort, Brown, & Osterhout,
1999; Mahesh, Eiselt, & Holbrook, 1999). For the purposes of this
review, the terms word integration and incremental sentence
processing will be used interchangeably to refer to the word-byword processing of sentences. In other words, both terms refer to
the post-lexical processes (i.e., after lexical activation or word
recognition) involved in attaching and interpreting each word to
the previous words in a sentence, and in some cases, immediately
into the wider context or discourse representation (van Berkum
et al., 1999a; 1999b; Garrod & Sanford, 1998). A vast majority of
the research examining incremental sentence processing has focused on L1 English sentence processing; however, sentence processing research with other languages clearly exhibits the
incremental nature of word integration and sentence processing
procedures (e.g., Hoover & Dwivedi [1998] and Frenck-Mestre &
Pynte [1997] with French sentence processing; Konieczny et al.
[1997] and Gunter, Friederici, & Schreifers [2000] with German
sentence processing; Gibson, Hickok, & Schutze [1994] and van
Berkum et al. [1999a] with Dutch sentence processing; and Inoue
& Fodor [1995] and Yamashita [1997] with Japanese sentence
processing).
However, much less word integration and sentence processing research has been conducted in the area of second language
sentence processing. As a consequence, little is known about incremental L2 word- and sentence-level processing procedures or how
L2 readers develop these processing skills (Devitt, 1997; Juffs,
1998a; Koda, 1994). This is particularly important because higherlevel L1 and L2 text comprehension and interpretation processes
are dependent on lower-level processing skills at the word level
(Carrell, 1988; Grabe, 1988; Eskey, 1988; Haynes & Carr, 1990;
Horiba, 1996; Taillefer, 1996). Ultimately, word recognition and
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word integration processes inform and constrain higher-level text
comprehension processes involved in generating situation models
or textbases, making elaborative inferences, and generating complex logical entailments. One line of research postulates that a
source of poor or inefficient L2 reading is poor or inefficient L2
word recognition processes (Brown & Haynes, 1985; Paran, 1996;
Segalowitz, Poulson, & Komoda, 1991; Koda, 1996). Another line
of L2 reading research has focused on deficiencies in L2 language
proficiency (Bernhardt & Kamil, 1995; Bossers, 1991; Cziko, 1980;
Horiba, 1996; Taillefer, 1996). Clearly, L2 word integration processes are a central component of L2 language proficiency in both
reading and listening. Together, L2 word recognition and word
integration skills are two potential sources of lower-level processing difficulty among L2 readers.
This review will examine L1 and L2 word integration skills
in general, but I will focus more specifically on L1 English and
English as a second language (ESL) word integration and sentence
processing skills. The primary aim of this review is to synthesize
research findings in L1 English and ESL reading and psycholinguistic research in order to examine the nature of fluent L2/ESL
word integration processes that are crucial for language comprehension. There is strong reason to believe that L1 and fluent
L2/ESL readers and listeners utilize similar word integration and
sentence-processing routines (Pienemann, 1998). Empirical evidence indicates that native speakers and fluent nonnative speakers of a language integrate words into larger units of meaning in
a similar manner (Juffs & Harrington, 1996; Hoover & Dwivedi,
1998; Kilborn, 1994; Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997), which contrasts with how less fluent nonnative speakers integrate L2 words
into larger units of meaning (Bernhardt, 1986; Pienemann, 1998).
Thus, it is important to keep in mind the similarities of L1 and
fluent L2 word integration and sentence-processing procedures
and how L1 research can inform L2 research. In fact, all studies
of L2 sentence processing assume that the same processing
mechanisms and processing procedures underlie the L1 and L2
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(e.g., Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997; Juffs & Harrington, 1996;
MacWhinney, 1987).
The first part of the review will briefly discuss some issues
involved in isolating and examining word integration and incremental sentence-processing skills. Then the review will briefly
summarize some of the general frameworks for sentence processing and their basic assumptions. The review will then focus on
some of the key characteristics of word integration and incremental sentence-processing procedures that have emerged in recent L1 English research.
The second part of the review will focus on the initial research
that has been done in L2/ESL word integration and sentence
processing. I will discuss some of the findings that have emerged
concerning the nature and development of incremental L2/ESL
sentence-processing skills. I’ll also discuss some of the implications and make some tentative conclusions.
Some Important Caveats About Isolating Word Integration Skills
There are three important points that need to be addressed
when examining L1 and L2/ESL word integration skills in reading
(and listening). As with L1 reading, L2/ESL vocabulary knowledge
is clearly indispensable for reading comprehension and text interpretation (Coady, 1993; Grabe, 1988; Eskey, 1988). However,
L2/ESL vocabulary knowledge is to a certain extent independent
of the ability to rapidly integrate familiar or known vocabulary
words into larger phrase, clause, and sentence units. That is,
vocabulary knowledge of a given set of words does not ensure the
ability to fluently utilize “procedural linguistic knowledge” to
rapidly integrate or parse the words into phrase and clause structures and interpret them. In part, words are merged or unified into
larger units of meaning through syntactic knowledge and constraints that are to a substantial degree independent of word
meanings (Frazier & Clifton, 1996; Gibson, 1998; Jackendoff, 1997,
1999; Stevenson, 1994; Vosse & Kempen, 2000).
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Secondly, any research involved in examining L1 or L2 reading must take into account the role that efficient word recognition
plays in reading, particularly for L2 readers (Haynes and Carr,
1990; Segalowitz, Poulson, & Komoda, 1991; Koda, 1996). Obviously, slow or inefficient word recognition skills not only impede
the rapid retrieval of a word’s meaning, but also the retrieval of a
word’s syntactic category (i.e., part of speech) along with other
syntactic and semantic information encoded or associated with a
word, all of which are crucial for integrating words into larger
phrase and clause units (cf. de Bot, Paribakht, & Wesche, 1997).
Finally, some clarifications need to be made about word
integration processes that underlie fluent sentence processing.
The term word integration can be used to refer to any lower- or
higher-level mental process involved in combining words together
into larger phrase and sentence structures. On the one hand, word
integration skills involve relatively automatic or fluent perceptual
processes that are often associated with a parser (Caplan &
Waters, 1999; Hoover & Dwivedi, 1998; Pienemann, 1998). It is
generally assumed that these automatic or fluent word integration skills are lower-level skills that are beyond conscious control
or manipulation (e.g., Caplan & Waters, 1999; Jackendoff, 1997;
Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). On the other hand, word integration
also involves higher-level, effortful processing procedures and
strategies that a reader can consciously generate and manipulate,
including certain types of elaborative inferencing procedures (e.g.,
Garrod & Sanford, 1998; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992), problemsolving or debugging procedures in response to comprehension
errors (e.g., Brown, 1980), reasoning and logic processes (e.g.,
Caplan & Waters, 1999), retrieval and use of grammar rules and
translation processes (e.g, Chavez, 1994; Kern, 1994), or use of
strategies relying on conceptual and/or background knowledge
(e.g., Pienemann, 1998; Strothers & Ulijn, 1987).1 Certainly, fluent
L1 and L2 readers utilize an array of mental processes to comprehend sentences, but this greatly depends on the complexity of the
sentences and surrounding text. As a consequence, any problems with word recognition, word integration (i.e., incremental
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sentence processing), and vocabulary or conceptual knowledge
would likely require the use of higher-level, consciously controlled
processing skills and strategies.
The focus of this review examines the nature and development of fluent, lower-level word integration and incremental
sentence-processing skills, or what Pienemann (1998) refers to as
“automatized linguistic skills” to fluently parse and integrate
words into phrase and clause structures.
Incremental Word Integration and Sentence-Processing
Skills—Central Issues
It is now widely accepted that words in a sentence are rapidly
integrated and interpreted in a word-by-word manner during L1
sentence reading (or listening). Incoming words carry an array of
word integration information, such as syntactic category, syntactic
complement structure (i.e., subcategorization), semantic argument structure, and conceptual/pragmatic information, any of
which can inform incremental sentence-processing procedures. In
addition, the wider discourse or context also plays a role in informing and constraining the incremental sentence-processing procedures. However, there are conflicting accounts concerning the time
course and hence availability of these sources of information
during incremental word integration procedures. For example, in
some sentence processing frameworks, only syntactic category
information is believed to guide initial word integration procedures (e.g., Frazier, 1987; Mitchell, 1994; Mitchell & Corley, 1994),
whereas in other processing frameworks a wide range of information, including discourse information, is available to constrain
initial word integration procedures (e.g., Altmann & Steedman,
1988; Gibson, 1998; Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994).
The different views on the time course of information available during incremental word integration correspond to the different theoretical perspectives of fluent L1 and L2/ESL word
integration and sentence-processing procedures. Not surprisingly,
most if not all L2/ESL sentence processing frameworks are based
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on L1 sentence processing research and theory. For example, Juffs
and Harrington (1995, 1996) examined ESL sentence processing
procedures by utilizing Pritchett’s (1992) principle-based parsing
framework with Government and Binding constraints. FrenckMestre and Pynte (1997) examined minimal attachment processing procedures among L2/ESL subjects based on the parsing
principles developed by Frazier (1987) and colleagues. Likewise,
Kilborn (1994) among others examined L2/ESL sentence processing procedures based on the competition model (MacWhinney,
1987). Each of these sentence-processing frameworks makes different assumptions about the sentence processor and the kind of
structural/syntactic constraints, if any, that are utilized during
incremental word integration and sentence-processing routines.
There are three central questions that differentiate the sentence
processing frameworks:
1. Is there a time course for the different types of information
(e.g., syntactic category, semantic argument, discourse information) involved in incrementally integrating words into
phrase and sentence structures?
2. Are there independent syntactic (i.e., structure-building)
and semantic/conceptual (i.e., structure-interpreting) processors underpinning the sentence processor? Or, is there one
incremental sentence processor that accumulates all syntactic, semantic/conceptual and context information?
3. Is there a specified set of syntactic/structural constraints
that are utilized by the sentence processor during incremental
sentence-processing procedures? If so, what kind of structural
constraints are utilized?
The answers to these basic questions have enormous theoretical
implications that concern how incremental word integration and
sentence-processing procedures function and develop.
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Different Word Integration and Sentence Processing Frameworks
The dynamics of incremental word integration and sentenceprocessing procedures are difficult to pin down, because processing procedures may vary somewhat by the task and the
experimental stimuli employed in research studies. Nonetheless,
incremental sentence processing research in the last 10 years has
provided considerable insights into the nature of word integration
procedures, thus limiting or shaping the theoretical boundaries of
possible sentence processing frameworks. Currently, there are
four general theoretical approaches concerning incremental sentence processing.
1. Sentence processing frameworks with structure- or syntaxfirst building procedures. There are two general types of models
that advocate a syntax or structure-building first approach to
incremental sentence processing. Both approaches conceptualize
a parser or structure builder that is independent of semantic/
conceptual knowledge and corresponding interpretation procedures. In one account of syntax-first sentence processors, the
parser or incremental structure builder initially integrates each
incoming word through the use of syntactic category or part of
speech information (Frazier, 1987; Frazier & Rayner, 1982;
Mitchell, 1994). Another account suggests that the incremental
structure builder is capable of utilizing a larger range of grammatical constraints to initially integrate words into phrase and
clause structures (Gibson et al., 1994; Pritchett, 1992; Stevenson,
1994). According to this latter account, the incremental structure
builder utilizes syntactic category knowledge along with other
structure-building constraints, such as the use of subcategorization or lexical complement knowledge, wh-movement procedures,
and constraints on wh-movement.
2. Sentence processing frameworks with autonomous
structure-building and structure-interpreting processes that are
weakly interactive. In these frameworks, the incremental sentence
processor is guided by syntactic structure-building procedures
independent of semantic/conceptual knowledge and interpretation
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procedures. According to this general approach, syntactic structure-building procedures are fast and obligatory and generally play
the predominant role in initial word integration procedures, though
semantic/conceptual factors can influence structure-building operations, especially when there is syntactic/structural ambiguity
(Altmann & Steedman, 1988; Gibson, 1998; Gorrell, 1995; Jackendoff, 1997, 1999; Mahesh et al., 1999; Pickering & Traxler, 1998).
In general, these frameworks postulate segregated syntactic (i.e.,
structure-building) and semantic/conceptual (i.e., structure-interpreting) processing procedures within the architecture of the
incremental sentence processor. All of the frameworks postulate
that a structure builder utilizes a generative grammar to initially
integrate words into phrase and clause structures, though semantic and discourse factors are fully capable of determining the
structural commitment in cases of structural/syntactic ambiguity.
In other words, initial syntactic parsing or structure-building
processes delimit or constrain the interpretation space of the
incremental semantic/conceptual processor. In cases of structural
ambiguity, the incremental sentence processor makes use of semantic/conceptual and discourse constraints to guide initial structural commitments. The syntactic principles informing initial
structure-building procedures vary among these interactive processing frameworks. Mahesh et al. (1999) incorporate a lexicalfunctional grammar in their processing framework, whereas
Pickering (1994) and Altmann and Steedman (1988) advocate a
categorial grammar in their work. Gorrell (1995) bases his parsing
framework on a variation of a principles and parameters grammar.
Gibson (1998) incorporates a sentence processor with a generative
grammar that is compatible with head-driven phrase structure
grammar, lexical-functional grammar, and a principles and parameters approach.
3. Constraint-satisfaction models that rely on lexico-syntactic
and other constraints to guide incremental sentence-processing
procedures. In these models, words are integrated according to an
array of constraints that include lexical co-occurrence or frequency
patterns that are associated with lexical items or words. The
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prototypical example of lexical co-occurrence patterns involves
verb subcategorization and semantic argument structures. For
example, verbs such as “realize” and “see” always co-occur with a
sentence complement structure or a direct object structure. However, “realize” is a mental-state verb that is more frequently
encountered and thus associated with a sentence complement
structure (e.g., realize that the teacher is right), and verbs such as
“see” are more frequently encountered and thus associated with
direct object (DO) noun complements (e.g., see the teacher).
Though both complement structures may be activated for either
verb, the most frequent complement structure for each respective
verb receives the strongest initial activation in ambiguous direct
object/sentence complement sentences (Holmes, Stowe, & Cupples, 1989; Trueswell et al., 1993). Therefore, complement structure and other lexical co-occurrence information generate
structural possibilities during incremental sentence processing
(MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994; McRae, SpiveyKnowlton, & Tanenhaus, 1998; Trueswell & Kim, 1998). However,
lexical co-occurrence information also interacts with semantic/
conceptual, context, and discourse information, all of which combine to select out the most likely word integration and consequent
structural possibility at any given moment in a sentence parse
(Boland, 1997; McRae et al., 1998; Trueswell & Tannenhaus, 1994;
Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, & Hanna, 2000). One other important point needs to be made. There is very little in the way of
structure-building processes with an independent syntactic/
structural processor that utilizes a generative grammar, at least
outside of frequency-based structural information associated with
lexical items. For that reason, these models can also be referred to
as lexico-syntactic processing models (Vosse & Kempen, 2000).
4. General sentence processors utilizing general cognitive
processing strategies. In these models, sentence processing is
guided by general processing heuristics with no independent,
syntactic structure-building processes (MacWhinney, 1987;
Kempe & MacWhinney, 1999). Such general processing heuristics
include the use of word-order cues, case-marking cues, and animacy
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cues to interpret sentences, but these processing cues are based
on the surface frequency of the cues without any reference to
syntax. There is very little structure building in the way of syntactic principles, which includes little or no role for syntactic or
semantic complement information to integrate words into larger
phrase and clause structures. The competition model falls within
this framework, though there are other general processing frameworks that utilize non-syntactic word integration principles that
rely on general world knowledge or other heuristic processing
strategies (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1990).
These four approaches exhibit differences in how the various
sources of structural, semantic/conceptual, and discourse information interact and function during word integration. These differences involve the word integration or incremental processing
procedures and the architecture that supports the processing
procedures. Next, I will examine some of the word integration
characteristics that have emerged in the L1 sentence processing
research that need to be accounted for in a comprehensive word
integration and sentence processing framework in English. In
other words, a viable incremental processing framework needs to
account for a range of English sentence-processing phenomena
that have emerged in the psycholinguistic literature. Then, I
will summarize the research and revisit the sentence-processing
approaches.
Sentence Processing Among Native English Speakers
An analysis of L1 English word integration and incremental
sentence-processing procedures is motivated for two primary reasons in the examination of ESL/L2 word integration and processing procedures. As mentioned before, it is widely assumed that the
same incremental sentence-processing procedures and mechanisms underlie both L1 and fluent L2/ESL sentence processing
(Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997; Juffs & Harrington, 1995; Kilborn,
1994; MacWhinney, 1992; Pienemann, 1998; Ying, 1996). In fact,
some studies with native and L2/ESL speakers show that more
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experienced and proficient L2/ESL subjects utilize more nativelike word integration procedures than less proficient L2/ESL
subjects (Bernhardt, 1986; Pienemann, 1998; Sasaki, 1994).
Therefore, an in-depth analysis and understanding of L1 English
word integration and incremental sentence processing should tell
us a great deal about fluent ESL word integration and incremental
sentence processing. For that reason, a review of the relevant L1
English literature affords some important insights into the nature
of fluent ESL word integration and processing skills (cf. Pienemann, 1998). Five important word integration characteristics
have emerged in the L1 English word integration and sentence
processing literature: (1) the immediate use of syntactic category
information to incrementally integrate words; (2) the use of lexical
complement and lexical preference information to incrementally
integrate words; (3) the use of semantic/conceptual and discourse
information to incrementally integrate and interpret words; (4)
the use of global syntactic information to incrementally integrate
words; (5) incremental restructuring and reinterpretation processes during sentence processing. I will address each of these in
turn.
In much of the ensuing discussion, I will refer to two sets of
processes involved in word integration and incremental sentence
processing that appear in the literature. One set of processes is
syntactic in nature and is generated by some type of structure
builder (i.e., syntactic parser). The other is a semantic/conceptual
processor, which I’ll also refer to as a structure interpreter. As we’ll
see, converging evidence suggests that these two component processes are distinct, yet interact and drive word integration and
incremental sentence processing.
1. The immediate use of syntactic category information to
incrementally integrate words. An extensive line of research by
Frazier and colleagues using various on-line measures have demonstrated that words are incrementally attached and integrated
to open phrase and clause structures through the immediate use
of syntactic category information, otherwise known as part-ofspeech information (Frazier & Rayner, 1982; Frazier, 1987; Frazier
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& Clifton, 1996; Mitchell, 1994; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). Thus,
a syntactic parser (i.e., structure builder) initially relies on a
word’s syntactic category to structurally integrate each word into
the currently available structure(s) being processed. In the gardenpath model devised by Frazier and colleagues (see Frazier, 1987,
for an overview), the parser or structure builder immediately
applies each incoming word’s syntactic category information to a
general set of phrase-structure rules to make the simplest structural attachment of each word (minimal attachment) to any open
phrase or clause if possible (late closure). The attachment principles of minimal attachment and late closure along with general
phrase structure constraints account for a wide range of word
reading times and on-line sentence-processing behaviors, particularly in structurally ambiguous sentences in which the simplest
attachment possibility is incorrect (Frazier & Rayner, 1982;
Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). In addition, Mitchell (1994) argues
that syntactic category information functions in accordance with
frequency-based information. That is, the syntactic category of
lexical items along with the frequency with which those items are
integrated into phrase and clause structures constrain initial
sentence-processing procedures.
On-line naming tasks in which target words are read aloud
during sentence-processing tasks are particularly sensitive to an
early stage of word-processing and word integration procedures
(Boland, 1997; West & Stanovich, 1986). A now widely cited study
by O’Seaghdha (1997) found that words with incongruent syntactic category information (e.g., the message of that send) take
significantly longer to name than words containing incongruent
semantic information (e.g., the nose that he sent). Thus, syntactic
category information is available early enough to disrupt naming,
but semantic information is not. O’Seaghdha’s study and other
research indicate that a word’s syntactic category information is
available at an earlier stage of word integration than corresponding semantic information (Frazier & Rayner, 1982; Hahne &
Friederici, 1999; McElree & Griffith, 1995; 1998; Mitchell & Corley,
1994). In fact, most researchers acknowledge that ambiguous
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noun phrases that may have more than one attachment and
interpretation possibility in a sentence fragment must first be
identified as a noun phrase before any type of disambiguating
semantic/conceptual or discourse factors can be used to resolve the
ambiguity (e.g., Altmann & Steedman, 1988; Pickering & Traxler,
1998; van Berkum et al., 1999a).
2. The use of lexical complement and lexical preference information to incrementally integrate words. It is widely accepted in
linguistics and psycholinguistics that individual words allow or
require certain phrase and clause constructions. For example,
particular verbs permit or require certain types of complement
structures that determine the syntactic and semantic structure of
the verb phrase (Baker, 1989; Culicover, 1997; Holmes et al., 1989;
MacDonald et al., 1994; Pritchett, 1992; Tanenhaus & Carlson,
1989). The verbs “put” or “place” require a noun phrase complement (e.g., the book) and a location phrase complement (e.g., on
the shelf). Various complement structures are closely associated
with verbs, but other categories of words such as adjectives permit
complement structures as well (Baker, 1989; Culicover, 1997).
Many researchers believe that word recognition and lexical activation immediately activate a lexical item’s syntactic complement
(i.e., subcategorization) information and feed it forward to the
sentence processor; hence, the structure builder can utilize the
lexical complement information to integrate subsequent words
into phrasal and clausal complement structures (Boland, 1997;
Ford, Bresnan, & Kaplan, 1982; Gibson, 1998; Gorrell, 1995;
Pritchett, 1992; Pienemann, 1998; Stevenson, 1994; Vosse & Kempen, 2000).
For example, Trueswell and Kim (1998) used a fast-priming
research method to examine the effects of a verb’s complement
information on incremental structure-building operations. Simple
fast-prime tasks involve a brief presentation of a prime word
before a target word to see what effects the prime-word presentation has on the processing of the target word. For example, a prime
word such as “rate” facilitates the orthographic and phonological
processing of a target word such as “rake” and consequently
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facilitates the word recognition of “rake.” A fast prime word
presented for 40–55 milliseconds prior to a target word has been
shown to activate the target word’s phonological, orthographic,
and semantic features even though the fast prime may not be
consciously recognized (Berent & Perfetti, 1995; Lesch & Pollatsek, 1993). Nonetheless, information from the fast prime is perceptually detected and facilitates word-processing procedures on
the target word.
In the same manner, Trueswell and Kim (1998) displayed
prime words immediately prior to a target word inside a sentence
during a sentence-reading task. The primes consisted of verbs
such as “realize,” verbs with a strong preference for sentence
complement structures (e.g., the man realized the answers were
wrong), and verbs such as “obtain,” which strongly prefer and
perhaps only allow DO complement structures (e.g., the man
obtained a degree). These two types of prime verbs with different
complement structures were presented for 39 milliseconds immediately before the main verb in a sentence. The main verbs in the
sentences were verbs such as “accept,” which strongly prefer a DO
structure as in (1. a.) below, but can also subcategorize and integrate words into a sentence complement, as in (1. b.) below:
1. a. The man accepted the prize. (DO)
1. b. The man accepted (that) the prize was not going to him.
(Sent. Comp.)
1. c. The photographer accepted (that) the fire could not have
been prevented.
When the optional (that) word is deleted in (1. b.), DO-biased verbs
like “accept” initially structure a noun phrase like “the prize” as a
DO complement structure and interpret it as the semantic theme
before any further words are processed (Holmes et al., 1989;
Trueswell et al., 1993; Trueswell & Kim, 1998; Stevenson, 1994;
Weinberg, 1999). However, when the embedded verb “was” is
encountered in (1. b.), the structure-builder has no way to integrate it. In fact, a tensed verb such as “was” requires a subject
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noun phrase in English (Baker, 1989; Culicover, 1997). As a consequence, backward eye regressions and sometimes longer word
reading times on “was” occur as the noun phrase “the prize” is
reanalyzed and restructured from the initial DO of the main verb
“accept” to the subject noun of an embedded clause. In fact,
Trueswell and Kim (1998) even found that the initial reading of
“fire” as the DO in (1. c.) was significantly longer than the initial
reading times of “prize” as the DO in (1. b.), which indicates that
the incremental sentence-processor initially attempted to structure and interpret “prize” and “fire” as the DO complements,
respectively, though with significant semantic/conceptual processing difficulties in the case of “fire” (also see Pickering & Traxler,
1998). In addition, eye-regressions and long reading times on
“could” in (1. c.) relative to control sentences with the “that” at the
head of the sentence complement indicate restructuring and reanalysis as the DO complement reading is reanalyzed so that a
sentence-complement structure can be generated. There is considerable evidence that DO-biased verbs such as “accept” initially
activate DO complement structures in ambiguous DO/sentence
complement situations with “that” deletion, such as (1. b.) and
(1. c.) above (Frazier & Rayner, 1982; Trueswell et al., 1993;
Holmes et al., 1989; Sturt, Pickering, & Crocker, 1999; Pickering
& Traxler, 1998). However, as will be discussed later, these reanalysis and restructuring procedures are mild relative to other types
of reanalysis and restructuring procedures (see pp. 24–26).
When Trueswell and Kim (1998) flashed prime verbs such as
“realize” and “obtain” for 39 milliseconds immediately before main
verbs such as “accept” during a sentence-reading task, it immediately affected the complement information that “accept” projected.
That is, “realize” primed the main verb “accept” so that the sentence complement was initially activated and not the DO complement. In brief, “realize” overlapped with and activated the
complement structure of “accept” and caused the main verb “accept” to initially generate the less preferred sentence-complement
structures in sentences such as (1. c.). As a consequence, “realize”
caused significantly faster reading times on the direct object “fire”
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and disambiguating verb “could” in sentences like (1. c.) as compared to when “obtain” primed “accept.” However, the stronglybiased DO verbs such as “obtain” did not hinder the main verb
“accept” from initially generating a DO complement structure in
(1.c.), which resulted in an initial DO structuring of “fire” and then
reanalysis and restructuring when “could” was encountered (i.e.,
longer reading times). Such results clearly indicate that verb
complement (i.e., subcategorization) information is immediately
active and helps guide the initial integration of words downstream
in the verb phrase.
The early role of lexical complement information in guiding
initial word integration procedures has been found in on-line
measures using word-by-word reading tasks on the computer (e.g.,
Holmes et al., 1989; Britt, 1994; Boland & Boehm-Jernigan, 1998),
speed–accuracy trade-off procedures (e.g., McElree & Griffith,
1995; 1998), eye-tracking studies (e.g., Trueswell et al., 1993) and
research methods measuring event-related potentials (ERP; e.g.,
Osterhout et al., 1994; Hagoort et al., 1999).
3. The use of semantic/conceptual and discourse information
to incrementally integrate and interpret words. I will proceed from
the assumption that lexical complement information corresponds
with semantic argument information, but that they are not the
same, and there is evidence to this effect (McElree & Griffith, 1995,
1998; Boland, 1997; Pinango, 2000). The evidence suggests that
lexical complement information is available earlier than semantic
argument and pragmatic (henceforth semantic/conceptual) information in constraining incremental word-integration procedures,
though within a very narrow time frame. However, some researchers have found evidence that semantic/conceptual information appears to constrain incremental word-integration processes
at a very early stage as well (Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994; Fodor,
Ni, Crain, & Shankweiler, 1996; Ni et al., 1998; Pickering &
Traxler, 1998; van Berkum et al., 1999b). For example, Trueswell
and Kim (1998) found that the poor semantic match between the
verb “accept” and the DO theme “fire” in (1.c.) results in relatively
long reading times primarily because “fire” is not difficult to
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structurally attach as a DO but because it is difficult to interpret
semantically and pragmatically as the theme argument of “accept.” In other words, the problem is not with the processing in the
structure builder, but with processing in the corresponding structure interpreter.
A wide range of research techniques have been utilized to
examine the influence of semantic and pragmatic information
during initial structure-building and structure-interpreting processes that underpin incremental sentence processing. Fodor et al.
(1996) utilized the eye-tracking methodology to examine how
syntactic and semantic/conceptual anomalies affected incremental sentence processing. For example, their subjects read
sentences with a syntactic anomaly (2. a.), a pragmatic (i.e.,
semantic/conceptual) anomaly (2. b.), and a well-formed sentence
condition with no anomaly (2. c.), as shown below:
2. a. It seems that the cats won’t usually eating the food we
put on the porch.
2. b. It seems that the cats won’t usually bake the food we put
on the porch.
2. c. It seems that the cats won’t usually eat the food we put
on the porch.
The eye-tracking data indicate that both syntactic and semantic/
conceptual anomalies trigger instant repair procedures as compared with the well-formed condition (2. c.). However, syntactic
anomalies and semantic/conceptual anomalies triggered qualitatively different response patterns. Syntactic anomalies, as in “eating” in (2. a.), immediately triggered an increase in eye regressions
back to previously read words in the sentence, with some longer
reading times on “eating” and the word following it, whereas
semantic/conceptual anomalies such as “bake” in (2. b.) triggered
longer word reading times that progressively increased for each
subsequent word until the end of the sentence. Ni et al. (1998)
replicated the study and found identical results. Both Fodor et al.
(1996) and Ni et al. (1998) concluded that syntactic and semantic/
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conceptual information is available to constrain the incremental
word integration processes. However, the different types of anomalies also appear to affect different types of sentence-processing
procedures and hence trigger different types of reanalysis and
repair procedures.
Murray and Rowan (1998) found extraordinarily rapid plausibility (i.e., semantic/conceptual) effects during incremental word
integration procedures in a same/different sentence-matching
task. They were able to do so by using an eye-tracker to keep a
record of the subjects’ reading patterns. The subjects read pairs of
short sentences on a computer to determine if the sentences were
exactly the same. The pairs of sentences involved plausible (e.g.,
the hunters stacked the bricks) and implausible (e.g., the bishops
stacked the tulips) sentences. Murray and Rowan found that
implausible subject noun–verb combinations (e.g., the bishops
stacked . . .) caused significantly longer first eye fixations (i.e.,
initial reading times) on the verb compared with the first eye
fixation of the verb in the plausible noun–verb combinations. A
similar pattern was also found for the implausible and plausible
verb–object noun integrations, though the plausibility effect was
reflected in the longer first eye fixation times for implausible
objects compared with times for the plausible objects. Surprisingly,
the exact same “plausibility” effect was found in both the first and
second reading of the plausible and implausible sentences, even
though the subjects had read the exact same sentence two seconds
earlier. The researchers logically concluded, “. . . only after an NP
is assigned to the role of syntactic subject or object that the
plausibility of its combination with the verb is apparent” (p. 19).
Thus, structure building seems to initially precede structure interpretation, though the results of this study indicate that they
are overlapping and parallel procedures (cf. Gunter, Friederici, &
Schreifers, 2000). Again, it appears to be the semantic/conceptual
representation or aspect of the sentence that is difficult to generate, not the syntactic representation (Murray & Rowan, 1998). In
short, the semantic/conceptual effects in terms of plausibility are very
rapid and can affect the first fixation as the structure interpreter
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begins to generate an initial semantic representation of the word
when it is initially processed.
Further research using gap-filler sentences has been insightful in examining the early use of semantic/conceptual information
during incremental sentence-processing procedures as well. One
type of gap-filler structure involves wh-words at the front of a
clause or sentence that must be structured (i.e., moved) and
interpreted as a verb or preposition argument within a clause. This
processing procedure is generally referred to as wh-movement and
gap filling. Some research has shown that verbs can activate
semantic/conceptual information (i.e., pragmatic and thematic
role restrictions) to aid in rapidly structuring and interpreting
gap-filler assignments (Boland, 1997; Traxler & Pickering, 1996;
McElree & Griffith, 1998). For example, Traxler and Pickering
(1996) found that readers spent significantly more time processing
verbs with implausible fillers (e.g., garage) than plausible fillers
(e.g., pistol) in sentences such as “That’s the garage/pistol with
which the heartless killers shot the man __ yesterday afternoon.”
Thus, the reading times on the verb “shot” were longer in the
implausible condition with the “garage” filler than the plausible
condition with the “pistol” filler. This indicates that a verb’s
semantic/conceptual information with regards to plausibility is
available to constrain gap-filler assignments, though it has been
argued that this occurs only after the verb activates or projects a
possible complement position (Crocker, 1994; Gibson & Hickok,
1993; Stevenson, 1994).
Until now, most of the incremental sentence processing research has focused on the reading and comprehension of isolated
sentences. However, research suggests that previous discourse
context is immediately available to constrain the incremental
semantic/conceptual or structure-interpreting processes (Altmann & Steedman, 1988; Just & Carpenter, 1980; Britt et al., 1992;
van Berkum et al., 1999a, 1999b; Pickering & Traxler, 1998). For
example, Pickering and Traxler (1998) found that a minimal
context or discourse can completely eliminate plausibility effects
involved in interpreting implausible word integrations. For example,
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implausible sentences such as “While the janitor was polishing the
professor . . .” exhibited relatively long reading times (i.e., plausibility effects) on “professor” when the sentence was presented in
isolation, indicating some difficulty semantically/ conceptually
interpreting “professor” as the direct object and theme of “polish.”
However, when the same sentence was presented after a one-sentence context establishing a statue of a professor, there were
significantly faster reading times on “professor” compared with
those under the isolated reading condition. This finding suggests
that established discourse referents and discourse representations affect the interpretive aspects of incremental sentence
processing (i.e., incremental structure- interpreting). In fact, discourse and text processing research have established that unmentioned discourse objects and events require more time to process
and establish at both the sentence and discourse levels (Haviland
& Clark, 1974; Miller & Kintsch, 1980; Gibson, 1998).
More impressively, a number of studies in English and Dutch
indicate that context or discourse factors also constrain the initial
structure-building processes when there is structural ambiguity.
In English, the structure builder initially uses structural considerations to parse ambiguous prepositional phrases and reduced
relative/complement clauses in high-attachment positions in a
verb argument position in isolated sentences (Frazier & Rayner,
1982; Mitchell & Corley, 1994; Stevenson, 1994; Stevenson &
Merlo, 1997; but see Trueswell & Tanenahus, 1994; Tanenhaus
et al., 2000). However, these same ambiguous preposition and
relative/complement clause structures can be initially integrated
and interpreted in either high-attachment or low-attachment
positions (i.e., referential noun modifier) depending on the discourse context (Altmann & Steedman, 1988; Altmann, Garnham,
& Dennis, 1992; Britt et al., 1992; van Berkum et al., 1999a; Crain
& Steedman, 1985; Hagoort et al., 1999; Perfetti and Britt, 1995;
Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994; Tanenhaus et al., 2000; SpiveyKnowlton, Trueswell, & Tanenhaus, 1993). That is, if the discourse
clearly signals the need for a referential reading of a restrictive
relative clause or prepositional phrase to identify a noun, then
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prepositional and relative clause modifiers are initially generated
in low-attachment positions during incremental sentence processing. Thus, research in this area indicates that context or discourse
factors play a role in initial structure-building procedures, though
perhaps only when there is structural ambiguity (Gorrell, 1995;
Hagoort et al., 1999; van Berkum et al., 1999a; Jackendoff, 1997,
1999).
Overall, it appears that structure-building procedures that
are syntactic in nature and structure-interpreting procedures that
are semantic/conceptual in nature function in tandem to incrementally constrain word integration and sentence-processing procedures. Furthermore, the research evidence suggests that the
incremental structural attachment possibilities of each word precede the corresponding semantic/conceptual interpretation during
the incremental word integration processes, though these processes clearly overlap (Frazier & Clifton, 1996; Jackendoff, 1997;
McElree & Griffith, 1995, 1998; Murray & Rowan, 1998;
O’Seaghdha, 1997; Pickering & Traxler, 1998; van Berkum et al.,
1999a). In cases of structural ambiguity, the structure builder
provides and delimits structural possibilities, and the structure
interpreter seems quite capable of selecting out and making initial
structural commitments among the structural possibilities, provided that context and discourse cues are available (Gorrell, 1995;
Pickering & Traxler, 2000; van Berkum et al., 1999a).
4. The use of global syntactic information to incrementally
integrate words. A structure builder within the incremental sentence processor must be capable of utilizing structural information
that is not in the lexicon. Among these types of information are
the structural constraints associated with linking or binding pronominal and reflexive pronouns to their noun referents. For example, the English pronominal pronouns such as “him” and reflexive
pronouns such as “himself” appear in structurally defined ways
(e.g., Lasnik & Uriagereka, 1988; Culicover, 1997). Similarly, there
are structural constraints on long distance dependencies involved
in wh-movement. I will present some of the research examining
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constraints on the long distance dependencies to exhibit the global
nature of structure-building constraints.
Research indicates that the structure builder and structure
interpreter attempt to deposit and interpret filler arguments as
soon as possible (Boland, 1997; Traxler & Pickering, 1996; Shapiro,
2000). For example, Traxler and Pickering (1996) found that filler
arguments in gap-filler sentences were deposited and interpreted
in the first structurally permissible position even though the first
structural position is not the correct location for the filler, as
illustrated in (4. a.) below:
4. a. We like the book that the author wrote __ unceasingly
and with great dedication about __ while waiting for a
contract.
4. b. We like the book that the author who wrote unceasingly
and with great dedication saw __ while waiting for a contract.
Traxler and Pickering found significantly longer reading times at
the first possible structural position or gap in the critical region
“wrote — unceasingly” in (4. a.) compared with the corresponding
non-gap “wrote unceasingly” in (4. b.). The longer reading time in
the critical region in (4. a.) reflects initial attempts to deposit the
filler argument as the direct object and interpret it as the semantic
theme of the embedded verb “wrote.” Later, however, the structure
builder within the incremental sentence processor must reanalyze
and reassign the filler in a second structural gap associated with
“about,” owing to the preposition’s overriding structural requirements. As a consequence, the verb “wrote” must be restructured
as an intransitive structure.
Of more interest is the fact that the sentence processor is
precluded from initially attempting to deposit and interpret the
filler argument as the DO for “wrote” in (4. b.), but can do so in (4.
a.). In short, the structure builder is not capable of depositing a
filler argument within a relative clause that is further embedded
within a noun phrase (i.e., “the author”) as in (4. b.), but the
structure builder can easily deposit a filler argument in a relative
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clause with no intervening noun phrases between the filler argument and the relative clause, such as in (4. a.). Thus, there is a
structural constraint or barrier that prevents the structure
builder from attempting to deposit a filler argument in certain
structural configurations including relative clauses embedded
within noun phrases as in (4. b.). This syntactic constraint, often
referred to as an island constraint, precludes the incremental
sentence processor from generating structural gap positions
within certain types of structures. Stowe (1986) also found that
structural gaps were not generated in wh-island structures, but
were initially generated in all other permissible structures even
when there was a word within the structural gap. McElree and
Griffith (1998) found clear evidence that wh-island constraints
were immediately activated when the wh-word is processed and
thereby prevent the structure builder from generating any structural positions or gaps for filler arguments inside wh-island constructions. They, along with Traxler and Pickering (1996),
postulate that wh-island constraints inform structure-building
operations that underpin the earliest stage of word-integration
procedures. Thus, the initial structure-building procedures are
sensitive to and informed by global syntactic configuration information such as wh-island constraints.
5. Incremental restructuring and reinterpretation processes
during sentence processing. Sentence processing misanalysis and
garden path readings often occur because of incorrect initial
structure-building and interpretation processes involving sentences that are ambiguous between two readings. Some garden
path sentences, such as (1. a.), which is repeated as (6. a.) below,
cause relatively mild restructuring and reanalysis procedures,
whereas other sentences cause more severe garden path readings
that require more extensive reanalysis and restructuring (as in
[7. a.] and [7. b.] below). In (6. a.), the structure builder can attach
the noun phrase “the prize” as the DO or as a subject NP in an
embedded complement clause.
6. a. The man accepted the prize . . . (DO or Sent. Comp.)
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6. b. The man accepted (that) the prize was not going to him.
(Sent. Comp.)
As mentioned before, the DO structure is initially generated
because verbs like “accept” more commonly take a DO complement
(Holmes et al., 1989; MacDonald et al., 1994; Trueswell & Kim,
1998), or, according to another account, the incremental sentence
processor constructs DO structure because it is the simplest
structure that satisfies the grammatical or structure-building
constraints (Gorrell, 1995; Pritchett, 1992; Stevenson, 1994;
Weinberg, 1999). Regardless, the embedded verb “was” clearly
disambiguates the sentence and forces a reanalysis and restructuring of the “the prize” from the initial DO and theme argument
to the subject noun phrase (NP) in the clause complement. This
reanalysis and restructuring procedure constitutes a mild garden
path sentence, because restructuring does not destroy the original
structural relations. In other words, both the initial DO structural
position and restructured subject NP position in the embedded
clause are governed and dominated by the verb “accept,” and both
occupy the same thematic role or theta-marked position (Gorrell,
1995; Pritchett, 1992; Sturt et al., 1999; Weinberg, 1999). Sturt et al.
(1999) found very clear evidence that structures such as (6. b.) are in
fact significantly easier to reanalyze and restructure than sentences
such as (7. b.) that require initial governing and dominating relations
to be broken and destroyed during restructuring (in [7. a.] and [7. b.]
below). As a consequence, the restructuring (7. b.) requires significantly more processing resources (Gorrell, 1995; Pritchett, 1992;
Sturt & Crocker, 1997; Sturt et al.,1999). The following sentence from
Gorrell (1995) illustrates this phenomenon:
7. a. Ian gave the man the report . . .
7. b. Ian gave the man the report criticized a demotion. (IO
with relative cl.)
The verb “gave” requires direct object (DO) and indirect object (IO)
complements. Thus, the structure builder utilizes the verb’s complement structure information to initially integrate the second
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noun “report” as the direct object noun and fully interpret it as the
theme argument.
However, the structure builder and consequently the incremental sentence processor must stop and reanalyze the initial
ditransitive complement structure when the verb “criticized” is
processed, because there is no way to integrate “criticized” into the
structure. The incremental sentence processor and structure
builder must then backtrack to diagnose the problem and generate
a new sentence structure that can accommodate the verb “criticized,” which results in the eventual construction of a relative
clause that is embedded within the IO noun phrase “the man.”
Consequently, the noun “report” must be restructured as the
subject noun and agent of “criticize” within the relative clause.
Most importantly, the noun “report” can no longer be dominated
or governed by the verb “gave,” because it is in a relative clause
within a noun phrase that acts as a structural barrier from “gave”
(Gorrell, 1995; Weinberg, 1999). In summary, the reanalysis and
restructuring in (7. b.) is more destructive and resource consuming
to repair than the reanalysis and restructuring of (6. a.), because
the initial governing or dominance relations between the verb and
ambiguous noun must be destroyed in (7. a.), but not in (6. a.). That
is, the main verb in (6. a.) directly dominates and governs the
ambiguous noun in the initial structure and in the reanalyzed
structure (see Sturt et al., 1999, for discussion). However, in (7. a.),
the main verb directly dominates and governs the ambiguous
noun in the initial structure, but not in the revised structure in
(7. b.). Thus, the severity of a garden path breakdown can be
accounted for in general structural terms (Frazier & Clifton, 1996;
Gibson et al., 1994; Gorrell, 1995; Pritchett, 1992; Stevenson, 1994,
1998; Sturt & Crocker, 1997; Sturt et al., 1999; Weinberg, 1999).
Important Final Considerations on the Nature of Incremental Word
Integration and Sentence-Processing Procedures
Most if not all researchers acknowledge that incremental
sentence processing is composed of a set of skills that operate with
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a limited set of working memory resources. These working memory
resources limit the amount of conscious and unconscious linguistic
and cognitive processes that can be performed at any given time
(Just and Carpenter, 1980; Perfetti, 1985; Rayner and Pollatsek,
1989). However, it is not clear whether there is one pool of working
memory resources or whether there are particular sets of working
memory resources associated with specific processing domains.
According to the former account, incremental sentence processing
procedures are one of many linguistic and nonlinguistic processing
procedures that must compete for a limited pool of working memory resources shared across all processing domains. In contrast,
others have argued that incremental sentence-processing procedures utilize a specialized set of language and linguistic working
memory resources that are independent of more consciously controlled working memory resources used in digit span, reading
span, and problem-solving tasks (Caplan & Waters, 1999; Martin
& Romani, 1994). At present, the situation is unresolved between
these two positions.
Regardless of these two perspectives, the efficiency of the
reader/listener’s word recognition and incremental word
integration–processing procedures greatly determines the working memory resources available for structure-building and
structure-interpreting processes (Gibson, 1998). Incremental sentence processing requires working memory resources for word
integration procedures (i.e., processing resources) necessary to
generate intermediate and partial structure-building and
structure-interpreting sentence fragments. Incremental sentence
processing also requires resources to store intermediate and partial sentence fragments for later integration with any words
downstream in the sentence parse (e.g., for both local and longdistance dependencies). Deficient or inefficient word integration
procedures require more processing time and resources, and in the
process, tax the limited pool of working memory resources available to the incremental sentence processor. As a consequence, more
conscious attention and hence working memory resources may
have to be employed to successfully integrate words into phrase
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and sentence structures (Perfetti, 1985; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989).
In contrast, fluent or automatic word recognition and word integration skills allow for more working memory resources to be
allocated to higher levels of sentence and discourse-processing
procedures.
Summary and Conclusion of Incremental Word Integration
Procedures in English
Sentence processing frameworks must account for how words
are rapidly integrated and interpreted in phrase and clause structures. Each word contributes information to structure-building
and structure-interpreting processes and drives the sentence
processor to incrementally generate and constrain the overall
sentence interpretation as much as possible. Structure-building
procedures appear to have early access and use of syntactic category information (Frazier & Clifton, 1996; O’Seaghdha, 1997;
McElree & Griffith, 1995, 1998) as well as the early access and use
of lexical complement or subcategorization information (Britt,
1994; Holmes et al., 1989; Trueswell et al., 1993; Trueswell & Kim,
1998) to structurally integrate words into phrase and clause
structures. In addition, the structure builder utilizes global
syntactic processing constraints to integrate long distance dependencies and prevent such structures as illicit wh-island constructions (McElree & Griffith, 1998; Pickering & Traxler, 2000;
Traxler & Pickering, 1996; Stowe, 1986). The structure builder is
also capable of rapidly and efficiently restructuring phrases and
clauses if the initial governing and dominating relations are not
broken during restructuring. In contrast, the structure builder
and hence the incremental sentence processor exhibit more severe
garden path breakdowns, which require considerable processing
resources when the initial governing and dominating relations are
broken during the restructuring processes (Gorrell, 1995;
Pritchett, 1992; Stevenson, 1994, 1998; Sturt & Crocker, 1997;
Sturt et al., 1999; Weinberg, 1999). Taken together, incremental
structure-building procedures require structural information
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from lexical items and a structure-building processor capable of
integrating lexical items into nonlinear structures. In the remainder of the review, I’ll refer to these two sources of structural
building information as (1) a functional lexicon composed of lexical
items capable of projecting syntactic category and subcategorization information to the structure builder, and (2) a functional
structure builder (i.e., syntactic processor) capable of integrating
or unifying lexical items into larger phrase and sentence structures according to the structural or syntactic constraints of the
language (e.g., local phrase and global sentence-structure
constraints).
The structure interpreter appears to play less of a role in
initial structure building. Instead, the structure interpreter is a
semantic/conceptual processor that plays more of a role in semantically and conceptually coding incoming words while they are
incrementally attached and structured into phrase and clause
units. In impoverished structure-building situations involving
agrammatic aphasia (Grodzinsky, 2000; Pinango, 2000), sentence
processing with grammatically ill-formed structures (Eubank,
1993; Gibson, 1992), or partial knowledge of the structural constraints of a language (Pienemann, 1998), the structure interpreter (i.e., semantic/conceptual processor) must compensate and
undertake more of the incremental sentence-processing work.
However, in circumstances involving fully functional structurebuilding and structure-interpreting processes, the structure interpreter can influence structure-building processes. For example,
the structure interpreter can determine structural commitments
when there is structural ambiguity during incremental word
integration and sentence processing procedures (Altmann et al.,
1992; Boland, 1997; Britt et al., 1992; Pickering & Traxler, 1998;
van Berkum et al., 1999a). The structure interpreter can also play
a role in rapidly resolving gap-filler assignments (Boland, 1997;
Traxler & Pickering, 1996).
There is now a considerable body of research evidence that
indicates structure-building procedures are functionally independent of structure interpretation procedures. There is some
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experimental evidence to this effect (e.g., Boland, 1997;
O’Seaghdha, 1997). Other differences in syntactic and semantic
processing procedures have been found as well. For example, the
speed–time accuracy tradeoff experiments by McElree and
Griffith (1995, 1998) indicate a time-course difference in the
temporal processing of syntactic and semantic information. There
are also indications that semantic and syntactic anomalies trigger
qualitatively different types of reanalysis and repair procedures
(Fodor et al., 1996; Ni et al., 1998).
More conclusive support for independent processing procedures comes from a growing number of studies in the neurocognitive literature. One methodology employed in neurocognitive
research records and measures event-related potentials (ERPs),
which are the electrophysiological responses emitted by the brain
during cognitive processing. ERP responses are time-locked to
sensory and cognitive processes, much like the eye tracking methodology is. Crucially, ERP studies clearly and consistently show
that semantic/conceptual and syntactic factors modulate distinctly different ERP components and generate qualitatively different ERP responses (Gunter et al., 2000; Hahne & Friederici,
1999; Kaan, Harris, Gibson, & Holcomb, 2000; Osterhout &
Hagoort, 1999; see Hagoort et al., 1999, and Brown & Hagoort,
2000, for reviews). In addition, brain-imaging studies with carefully manipulated syntactic and semantic variables clearly indicate distinctively different brain activation patterns associated
with syntactic and semantic processing procedures (e.g., Dapretto
& Bookheimer, 1999; Ni et al., 2000; Vigliocco, 2000). However, the
neurocognitve literature is very complex and suggests that different cortical regions in the left hemisphere are associated with
structure-building procedures involving syntactic category information, lexical complement information (i.e., subcategorization),
and wh-movement and gap filling (Caplan, 2000; Grodzinsky,
2000; Hagoort et al., 1999; Hahne & Frederici, 1999; Kuperberg et
al., 2000). Thus, there may be a number of neural generators that
handle particular structure-building operations, yet these generators function in a tightly coordinated fashion to support the
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structure-building procedures that underpin incremental sentence processing.
In short, the results from an array of research methodologies
provide strong evidence of the independence of syntactic and
semantic processing procedures and their corresponding syntactic
and semantic representations. For the two domains or aspects of
sentence processing to operate together to incrementally constrain sentence processing, the syntactic structure builder must
communicate extensively with the semantic/conceptual processor
(i.e., the structure interpreter). Consequently, there must be an
interface or mechanism that enables the syntactic structure
builder and structure interpreter to incrementally interact and
constrain the word-by-word processing of sentences (Crain &
Steedman, 1985; Jackendoff, 1997, 1999; Mahesh et al., 1999;
Hagoort et al., 1999; Perfetti, 1990). Furthermore, the interface
must be able to incrementally amalgamate structural (i.e., syntactic) and semantic/conceptual representations into one coherent
sentence interpretation, which is not a trivial task, because syntactic and semantic representations do not necessarily map onto
each other in a straightforward one-to-one mapping (Jackendoff,
1999; Perfetti and Britt, 1995; Pinango, Zurif, & Jackendoff, 1999).
At the very least, the research shows that structural information from lexical items plays a large role in guiding the incremental integration or attachment of words into larger units of
meaning during sentence processing. The general sentence processing models that utilize general cognitive processes or strategies
(e.g., Gernsbacher, 1990; Kilborn, 1994; Bates et al., 1999) do not
account for the research data indicating the use of syntactic/
structural information to constrain incremental word-integration
processes. Furthermore, general cognitive strategies employing
word-order and verb agreement cues in English are not suitably
equipped to handle a range of complex sentence processing
phenomena involving long-distance dependencies or rapid reanalysis and restructuring procedures triggered by syntactic factors
(Gibson, 1992).
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Sentence parsing models advocating the use of syntactic
category information to guide all initial structure-building commitments (e.g., Frazier, 1987; Mitchell, 1994) appear to be too
restrictive and may not account for the array of initial structurebuilding procedures that occur. In particular, they don’t account
for how lexical subcategory information or even more global aspects of syntax guide and constrain initial structure-building
procedures (e.g., McElree & Griffith, 1998; Pickering & Traxler,
2000; Trueswell & Kim, 1998). Though syntactic category information is almost certainly the first structural information available
during structure building, it is likely not the only information used
to guide incremental sentence-processing procedures. In addition,
even other strictly syntax-first models such as Pritchett (1992) or
Stevenson (1994) do not account for the pragmatic and discourse
factors that can play a role in guiding initial structural commitments when there is structural ambiguity.
All in all, both weakly interactive and lexico-syntactic models
are consistent with the psycholinguistic evidence. The evidence
clearly supports incremental sentence processing models that
have independent structure-builders that utilize a generative
grammar and are at least weakly interactive with a fast-acting
structure interpreter (e.g., Altmann & Steedman, 1988; Frazier &
Clifton, 1996; Gibson, 1998; Gorrell, 1995; Jackendoff, 1997;
Mahesh et al., 1999; Pickering, 1994; Pickering & Traxler, 2000).
The evidence also potentially supports the constraint-satisfaction
or lexico-syntactic processing models, which also might allow for
distinctly different structure-building and structure-interpreting
processes if lexical co-occurrence (i.e., structural) patterns are
generated separately from semantic/conceptual and discourse factors, all of which must select out and interpret one structural
possibility (e.g., Boland, 1997; Boland & Boehm-Jernigan, 1998;
MacDonald et al., 1994; Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994; Tanenhaus
et al., 2000; Trueswell & Kim, 1998; Vosse & Kempen, 2000).
However, it should also be mentioned that lexico-syntactic models
are presently underdeveloped to handle a range of syntactic structures involving local and global structure-building procedures
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(e.g., McElree & Griffith, 1998; Pearlmutter et al., 1999; Traxler
et al., 1998). It is also not clear if lexico-syntactic models can
systematically account for a broad range of severe and less costly
reanalysis and restructuring procedures.
L2/ESL Sentence Processing
There is evidence that fluent L2/ESL word integration and
incremental sentence-processing skills are very similar to nativespeaker processing skills. However, there are likely to be some
significant processing differences between native speakers and
corresponding L2/ESL populations, particularly among L2/ESL
students that have acquired their L2 during adolescence or adulthood. To what extent this is true can be determined in part by
research examining the incremental L2/ESL sentence-processing
skills of L2/ESL speakers.
Perhaps more importantly, research examining incremental
word integration skills among intermediate and advanced proficiency L2/ESL learners could reveal general patterns or trends in
the development of L2/ESL sentence-processing skills. Research
and anecdotal evidence indicate that lower-proficiency L2/ESL
learners rely on semantic/conceptual processing skills along with
nonlinguistic processing strategies to compensate for insufficient
structure-building skills (Bernhardt, 1986; Bley-Vroman, 1991;
Glisan, 1985; Lee & Van Patten, 1995; Pienemann, 1998; White,
1991). In fact some researchers have focused on the development
of L2 structure-building skills as the key to fluent sentence processing (e.g., Myles, 1995; Pienemann, 1998). Pienemann (1998)
has indicated that most lower-proficiency L2/ESL learners have
already acquired a broad range of semantic/conceptual knowledge
and processing skills from their L1 language experience, at least
for those learning ESL or an L2 after early childhood. Therefore,
according to Pienemann, the key to developing incremental
L2/ESL sentence-processing fluency is, to a substantial degree,
dependent on developing L2/ESL structural knowledge that directly informs incremental sentence-processing procedures.
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This brings us to the primary assumption that language
or linguistic knowledge is necessary to inform fluent wordintegration and sentence-processing skills. More specifically,
fluent incremental sentence processing requires that language
and linguistic knowledge be activated rapidly enough to inform
and constrain word integration procedures (Gorrell, 1995; Perfetti
and Britt, 1995; Stevenson, 1994; Weinberg, 1999; Pickering and
Traxler, 2000, among others). For fluent L1 and L2 sentenceprocessing procedures, this involves lexical items capable of projecting structure-building information (e.g., syntactic category),
and a structure builder capable of applying linguistic knowledge/
constraints to integrate lexical items into larger phrase and
sentence structures. Ultimately, the link between linguistic
knowledge/constraints and fluent or functional processing skills
must be a close one.
Of course, there is more to developing L2/ESL sentenceprocessing skills than structure building, because languages organize or encode semantic/conceptual information in different
ways. For example, Juffs (1996) found that Chinese ESL learners
experience some difficulty acquiring particular English verbs that
encode semantic/conceptual information in different thematic
argument structures compared with the corresponding L1 Chinese verbs (i.e., direct translations). Therefore, the L2/ESL structure interpreter may find such verbs and their semantic
arguments hard to integrate. More generally speaking, L2/ESL
semantic and conceptual knowledge and corresponding word
integration skills must be developed as well. Clearly, L2/ESL
learners must acquire the necessary L2/ESL knowledge and
processing skills to inform fluent word recognition processes
(i.e., orthographic and phonological knowledge and processing
skills), incremental structure-building processes (i.e., syntactic/
grammatical knowledge and processing skills), and incremental
structure-interpreting processes (i.e., semantic/conceptual processing knowledge and processing skills). The notion of distinct
processing skills corresponding to different knowledge or
representational formats is consistent with a wide range of
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psycholinguistic theories and research (e.g., Boland, 1997; Brown
& Hagoort, 2000; Jackendoff, 1997, 1999; Mahesh et al., 1999;
Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989; Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1994). Assuming the same for fluent L2/ESL speakers, then L2/ESL learners
must also develop the ability to incrementally integrate information from the lexical processor, the structure builder, and the
structure interpreter in order to become fully proficient in L2/ESL
sentence processing (Carroll, 1999). However, I will assume along
with Pienemann that developing fluent and accurate L2/ESL
sentence-processing skills greatly depends on developing
structure-building skills. Nonetheless, we must be mindful of how
word recognition and structure-interpreting skills operate in conjunction with structure building during incremental sentenceprocessing procedures.
At present, there has only been a limited amount of research
examining incremental L2/ESL sentence processing, and none of
it to the best of my knowledge has investigated the processing
skills of beginning- and intermediate-level language learners.
Nonetheless, the incremental L2/ESL sentence processing research with advanced-level L2/ESL speakers in conjunction with
off-line research examining the sentence processing outcomes
among beginning- and intermediate-level language learners can
begin to provide some insights into the development of L2/ESL
sentence-processing skills. These two research areas will be discussed in the following sections.
Caveats and Issues Involving L2/ESL Processing Skills
Again, it is important to draw the distinction between the
different types of word integration skills that are available to
native speakers and relatively proficient L2/ESL speakers. Word
integration processes include automatized word integration procedures, but also more effortful or consciously controlled word
combination procedures that may be more dependent on content
words to construct the conceptual gist (Lee and VanPatten, 1995),
on canonical word order strategies (Glisan, 1985), on translation
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processes (Kern, 1994), and on problem-solving or repair procedures. These two modes of sentence processing constitute qualitatively different sentence-processing procedures, though both types
of processing procedures can be used during language comprehension (Caplan & Waters, 1999; Hoover & Dwivedi 1998; Pienemann,
1998). L2/ESL researchers have drawn similar distinctions between fluent processing procedures that rely on linguistic constraints and more effortful or consciously controlled processing
procedures that rely on general cognitive processing procedures
or strategies (Glisan, 1985; Hoover and Dwivedi, 1998; Lee &
VanPatten, 1995; Pienemann, 1998; VanPatten, 1984; White,
1991). Unfortunately, much of the L2/ESL research has blurred
the distinction between these different types of word integration
or word combination skills by utilizing off-line research techniques
(e.g., Ying, 1996), and in some cases, using off-line techniques with
ungrammatical sentence stimuli (e.g., Harrington, 1987; Kilborn,
1994).
Therefore,it is important to examine some of the issues involved
in isolating and examining incremental ESL/L2 sentence-processing
skills, which will be addressed first in the following sections of the
review. After that, I will examine some of the findings that have
begun to emerge from the initial research investigating the incremental L2/ESL word integration and sentence-processing skills of
fluent L2/ESL speakers. I will also attempt to draw some general
though tentative conclusions about the development of L2/ESL
word integration procedures. Overall, I think that some of the
research examining the off-line sentence processing strategies of
L2/ESL learners along with the incremental L2/ESL sentence
processing research provides a general picture of L2/ESL development in this area.
General Sentence-Processing Strategies and Evidence
of L1–L2 Interactions
There has not been much on-line research examining the incremental processes involved in L2 sentence processing. However, a
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number of studies employing the competition model framework
(MacWhinney, 1987) have examined the comprehension and processing strategies that are involved in L2/ESL sentence-processing
procedures. The methodology used in testing the competition
model does not directly measure incremental word integration
processes. Instead, researchers examine word combination procedures that involve general cognitive strategies without a distinct
set of syntactic structure-building skills. Most of these studies
involve the processing of sentences in the auditory mode (Gass,
1987; Harrington, 1987; MacDonald, 1987; Koda, 1993; Sasaki,
1994; Kilborn, 1994), though Gass (1987), Chitri and Willows
(1994), and some L1 studies, such as Bates, Devescovi, & D’Amico
(1999), used printed stimuli. Nonetheless, it is widely assumed
that the same set of L2/ESL word integration skills underlie both
modalities; therefore, these studies have direct relevance to the
development of lower-level L2/ESL word integration or sentenceprocessing skills.
Research in the competition model framework examines how
lexical forms are mapped to semantic functions or meaning. The
main assumption in this framework is that both L1 and L2 language learning involve the acquisition of sets of cues that are
weighted according to their strength and frequency in structuring
linguistic forms and semantic functions. The mapping cues can be
found across all human languages and include word-order cues,
animacy cues, case-marking cues, verb-agreement morphology
cues, and contrastive stress (Gass, 1987; MacWhinney, 1992;
Kilborn, 1994; Bates et al., 1999). These cues compete and interact
to determine how functions or meanings are mapped onto the
lexical forms of a sentence (MacWhinney, 1987; Kilborn, 1994). For
example, it is relatively easy for native speakers of English to
identify the subject noun forms and thereby map the agent/actor
function through basic word-order cues, because the first noun
phrase (NP) in simple active sentences functions as the agent or
actor (MacDonald, 1987; MacWhinney, 1992; Kilborn, 1994).
Furthermore, the rigid Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order of
English provides the primary cue in establishing form–function
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relations of the action (i.e., verb) as well as the patient/theme
functions in active transitive sentence structures. In Japanese,
word-order cues are less weighted, so that subject and object NPs
are assigned agent/actor and patient/recipient roles primarily
through case marking and animacy cues (Harrington, 1987; Koda,
1993; Sasaki, 1994). In Italian, word order is also permitted to
vary; thus, native speakers must rely on verb morphology and
animacy cues to map agent/actor or patient/theme functions onto
subject NPs and object NPs (Gass, 1987; Bates et al., 1999).
Therefore, second language learners must acquire the L2 cue
system to map form–function relationships, though they may be
heavily influenced by their native language cue-processing strategies. For example, Sasaki (1994) found that some beginning and
intermediate Japanese foreign language (JFL) learners who were
native speakers of English tended to rely more on word order cues
to comprehend Japanese sentences than native Japanese speakers did. This processing tendency by the JFL subjects indicates a
“meta-transfer” of word order processing strategies from their L1
English processing skills (Sasaki, 1994). However, intermediateproficiency JFL subjects were better able to use case-marking cues
than the beginning-level JFL subjects, though there was predominant reliance on semantic (i.e., animacy) cues for both JFL groups.
Koda (1993) found that cue-processing strategies transfer
from the L1 to the L2 among JFL learners. She examined the
Japanese sentence-processing skills of L1 English, L1 Chinese,
and L1 Korean JFL learners. Since Korean incorporates a very
similar case-marking (i.e., noun particle) system as Japanese,
Koda tested to see whether the Korean JFL subjects were able to
transfer and utilize their L1 Korean cue-processing skills to inform their JFL sentence-processing procedures. Interestingly, all
three JFL groups demonstrated nearly identical knowledge of
case-marking cues on a paper-and-pencil test. However, the
Korean JFL subjects were significantly better than the English
and Chinese JFL subjects in utilizing case-marking information
in interpreting sentences during a sentence listening task.
Harrington (1987) examined the English cue-processing skills of
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Japanese ESL learners and found that they used English cueprocessing strategies that were intermediate to native Japanese
and native English cue-processing strategies. Gass (1987) found
similar results among native Italian speakers learning English
and native English speakers learning Italian. However, she found
that it was easier for native English speakers to acquire the
semantic-based cueing patterns of L2 Italian than it was for the
native Italian subjects to learn L2 English word order cues. Thus,
in acquiring second-language processing skills, much seems to
depend on how the cue-processing patterns in the L1 and L2
overlap, as demonstrated in the Koda (1993) study. Ultimately,
L2/ESL learners must acquire the appropriate L2/ESL cue
weights and subsequent cue-processing skills that enable accurate
and efficient form–function mappings to interpret L2/ESL
sentences.
Problems with general sentence-processing strategies. The
competition model has certain advantages and drawbacks in
accounting for L2/ESL sentence-processing skills. Research
within this framework provides insights into how L2 readers/
listeners utilize processing strategies to construct meaning,
particularly when they have not yet developed appropriate L2
structure-building skills (Gass, 1997; Glisan, 1985; Hoover &
Dwivedi, 1998; Pienemann, 1998; VanPatten, 1984). Thus, this
line of research is particularly revealing of how lower- and
intermediate-level L2/ESL learners utilize general cognitive and
semantic/conceptual processing strategies to make meaning of the
L2/ESL language that is beyond their structure-building skills.
However, there are some problematic concerns and limitations in
fitting the competition model to the on-line data exhibited by both
native speakers and fluent L2/ESL speakers.
One set of concerns involves the research methods and in
particular the sentence stimuli that have been used to test the
competition model. Typically, the sentence stimuli include a range
of grammatically well-formed and ill-formed sentence structures
that potentially alter how an incremental processor integrates
words into phrase and clause units, especially with regards to
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incremental structure-building processes. For example, Eubank
(1993) performed a series of tests to examine the sentenceprocessing procedures of native German speakers and L2 German
speakers who were native speakers of English. The L2 German
speakers had studied for four and five college semesters at the
university level. Both subject groups read pairs of simple transitive German sentences that were grammatically well-formed and
ill-formed in a same/different sentence matching task, a task that
has been shown to be very sensitive to both syntactic and
semantic/conceptual variables in recent research (Murray &
Rowan, 1998; Pienemann, 1998). Eubank used sentence stimuli
that included adverbs in preverbal position in a simple transitive
sentence. Because of the constraint that a tensed verb must
appear as the second constituent in a simple transitive sentence,
subject–auxiliary inversion was required for the sentence to be
well formed grammatically. Thus, some of the simple transitive
sentences were correctly inverted (advVSX), whereas other sentences were not inverted (advSVX) and were therefore ungrammatical. Interestingly, Eubank found that the L1 and L2 German
speakers processed grammatically well-formed and ill-formed
German sentences in surprisingly different ways. The L2 German
speakers were sensitive to the syntactic features of the sentences
in the same/different matching task, and as a result they read and
responded to the grammatical sentences significantly faster than
the ungrammatical sentences. Unexpectedly, the native German
speakers responded just as quickly to the grammatical and ungrammatical sentence strings and thereby exhibited no grammatical sensitivity. Eubank also tested native speakers of English and
found no difference in sentence processing speed for both the
grammatical (e.g., last week the delegate found a clue) and ungrammatical (e.g., last year signed the diplomat the manuscript)
simple sentences. It should be mentioned that the latter results
run counter to the predictions of the competition model, because
native English speakers should process sentences with the correct
(i.e., grammatical) English word order faster than the ungrammatical sentences with the incorrect word order. Actually,
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Eubank’s results indicate that native speakers of German and
English can relax grammatical constraints during sentence processing with little or no processing costs if the sentences have a
small number of constituents with semantic transparency between the constituents. Then, the semantic processor (i.e., structure interpreter) can assume more of a role in processing the
sentences (cf. Bley-Vroman, 1991).
However, when Eubank added a relative clause to the subject
NP of the sentence stimuli, a different processing pattern emerged
for the native-speaker groups. Both German and English nativespeaking subjects exhibited grammatical sensitivity by processing
grammatical sentences significantly faster than ungrammatical
sentences in a same/different sentence-matching task. These results indicate that the native speakers relied on their structurebuilding skills as much as possible to help them structure and
interpret the more complex sentences. In other words, the structure builder can coordinate and facilitate incremental semantic/conceptual integration by establishing the structural relations
among sentence constituents (Jackendoff, 1997, 1999; Mahesh et
al., 1999). The idea is a simple one: a structured set of words is
easier to integrate into larger syntactic and semantic/conceptual
units than a nonstructured set of words. Complex sentences with
more severe syntactic violations will disrupt the structure builder
and result in even longer processing times compared with complex
sentences with less severe syntactic violations. In fact, this is
another way of accounting for the data reported by Bates et al.
(1999), which clearly show that processing times reflect the severity of the syntactic violations, though this possibility is never
considered in the Bates et al. (1999) study and other research
conducted within the competition model framework.
It seems quite likely that the German and English nativespeaking subjects exhibited a task effect when processing the
simple transitive sentences that were grammatically ill- and
well-formed, but were also semantically transparent. The native
speakers were probably able to relax their structure-building
procedures because they weren’t needed and were even potentially
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disruptive in processing the grammatically ill-formed sentences
(Eubank, 1993). This is an important possibility to keep in mind
when considering the stimulus items used by Kilborn (1994) and
others to test the competition model with English stimuli. In
most of the studies, stimulus sentences consisted of NVN (SVO),
NNV (OSV), and VNN (VOS) patterns; many of these stimulus
patterns don’t constitute well-formed sentences (e.g., NNV—the
baskets the teacher kicks) or are obvious violations of phrase
structure constraints (e.g., VNN—kisses the table the apple)—and
thus constitute stimulus items that potentially alter sentenceprocessing procedures by relaxing or disarming some incremental
structure-building processes and biasing strategic processing procedures (Eubank, 1993; Gibson, 1992; Caplan & Waters, 1999; also
Ellis, 1994, and Pearlmutter, Garnsey, & Bock, 1999 with similar
concerns regarding ungrammatical stimuli). In fact, Harrington
(1987) found that close to half of his L1 English subjects were using
animacy cues instead of more standard word-order cues when
processing simple English sentence structures that were both
well- and ill-formed. Therefore, having native speakers as well as
fluent L2/ESL speakers process a mix of well- and ill-formed
sentences is, at best, suspect and potentially alters how fluent L1
and L2/ESL speakers utilize syntactic and semantic information
to incrementally integrate words into clause and phrase units. It
is important to note that the intermediate L2 German speakers
in Eubank’s study did process the syntactically well-formed sentences faster than the ill-formed sentences, even though both types
of sentences were semantically transparent. This suggests that
when L2/ESL learners acquire structure-building skills, they can
process the L2/ESL more efficiently as long as the L2/ESL is
within their competence, whereas native speakers can flexibly and
rapidly process semantically transparent sentences with some
structural violations.
One other problematic issue involves the capability of the
competition model to handle much more complex language. It is
not at all clear how the competition model can be applied to
sentences with long and often complex syntactic structures (e.g.,
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Berman, 1984; Cohen, Glasman, Rosenbaum-Cohen, Ferrara, &
Fine, 1988). Using a variety of texts in different subject areas,
Cohen et al. (1988) found that native English speakers could
process and comprehend heavy NPs that included multiple adjunct or modifier attachments with multiple NPs that resulted in
NPs of up to 16 words in length. Not surprisingly, ESL speakers
experienced considerable difficulty processing and comprehending such structures. Efficiently processing and comprehending
such structures must rely in part on syntactic structure-building
skills (Berman, 1984; Cohen et al., 1988).
Perhaps a larger concern is the competition model’s inability
to account for the incremental structure-building procedures
widely documented in the L1 literature. The evidence clearly
indicates that words are incrementally attached and interpreted
with structural information from lexical items (Frazier & Clifton,
1996; Trueswell & Kim, 1998; McElree & Griffith, 1995; Gorrell,
1995; MacDonald et al., 1994; Stevenson, 1994) as well as more
global syntactic constraints (McElree & Griffith, 1998; Stevenson,
1998; Traxler & Pickering, 1996; Pickering and Traxler, 2000).
Similar on-line evidence also suggests that fluent incremental
structure-building procedures are employed by relatively proficient L2/ESL speakers (Pienemann, 1998; Juffs, 1998a; Juffs &
Harrington, 1996; Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997; Hoover &
Dwivedi, 1998). Therefore, the key to developing fluent L2/ESL
sentence-processing skills seems much more likely to depend on
acquiring structure-building skills bound by linguistic constraints
(Pienemann, 1998; Myles, 1995; Hoover & Dwivedi, 1998).
On-line L2/ESL Word Integration and Sentence Processing
Research and Issues
As with L1 research, care must be taken to examine incremental L2/ESL word integration and sentence-processing procedures. Bernhardt’s (1986) study using the eye-tracking methodology
is a case in point. She found that English native speakers with low
L2 German proficiency skills attempted to use their English
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sentence-processing procedures when they read L2 German texts,
which contrasted with how proficient L2 German readers (native
English speakers) and native German speakers processed sentences in German texts. Aside from finding faster reading rates
for the native and proficient L2 speakers relative to lower L2
proficiency speakers, Bernhardt found that the different proficiency groups exhibited different processing patterns. The low L2
proficiency readers either skipped over or read articles (i.e., determiners) quickly and spent more time processing the multisyllabic
adjective and noun content words that followed the articles. As
Bernhardt reasonably suggested, this appears to be an L1 English
sentence-processing tendency (e.g., Just & Carpenter, 1980). In
contrast, the native German speakers spent much more time
processing articles compared with the low proficiency group, and
sometimes spent even more time on articles than on some of the
multisyllabic adjectives and nouns that followed them. Similarly, the higher-proficiency readers exhibited a native-like pattern in processing articles more extensively, indicating that they
had acquired some native-like word integration and sentenceprocessing skills. It is important to note that articles in German
carry significantly more syntactic information than English articles carry. German articles encode gender and number features as
well as case-marking information that is crucial for the structure
builder to utilize in order to incrementally generate syntactic
structures and interpret them (Koneizcny et al., 1997; Friederici,
1998; Gorrell, 1996). Furthermore, the low L2 proficiency speakers
exhibited a lack of sensitivity to crucial syntactic markers in the
punctuation, which again contrasted with the high L2 proficiency
speakers and native speakers. Thus, it seems apparent that the
low-proficiency speakers were processing sentences in a nonsyntactic and nonnative-like manner because they were clearly not
utilizing the syntactic information present in articles and punctuation crucial for structure-building processes. This, along with
fact that the low-proficiency group exhibited more processing
time on semantic content words than the native-speaker or highproficiency group, strongly suggests that the low-proficiency
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subjects were relying on the semantic processor and thereby
reading for semantic/conceptual gist.
The more proficient and experienced L2 speakers clearly
exhibited more fluent and functional structure-building processes
during incremental sentence-processing procedures. However,
the proficient L2 speakers and the native German speakers
exhibited some sentence-processing differences that implicate
other processing factors, such as L1–L2 word integration and
sentence-processing interactions, less facile L2 German vocabulary knowledge, perhaps slower word recognition and word identification skills, varying degrees of background knowledge effects
or combinations of these. In fact, it is likely that all of these factors
contributed to processing differences among all three groups.
Another case in point involves a study conducted by Oller and
Tullius (1973). They also utilized an eye-tracking method to compare the differences between native English and proficient ESL
speakers reading college-level texts. The native speakers and ESL
speakers tested similarly on many general reading measures, such
as total number of fixations in a passage, total number of regressions, and length of word span, with the key exception of fixation
duration. It is important to note that fixation duration and total
word-reading time reflect both word recognition and incremental
word integration procedures (Just & Carpenter, 1980; Rayner,
Sereno, Morris, Schmauder, & Clifton, 1989). Consequently, it is
difficult to determine the reason for the longer fixation durations
among the proficient ESL speakers. However, at a very general
level, it seems that most words were processed at a relatively
comparable rate for both the proficient ESL and native English
speakers (280 words per minute and 239 words per minute,
respectively). It is interesting to note that a less proficient ESL
group showed a significantly different pattern than the native
English speakers and the more proficient ESL groups on almost
all the word reading measures, clearly indicating that they were
much less efficient in processing the texts at the word level.
In general, there are some parallels between the Oller and
Tullius (1973) and the Bernhardt (1986) studies, mainly that
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proficient L2/ESL speakers exhibit processing patterns similar to
those of native speakers and contrast considerably with less
proficienct L2/ESL speakers. However, neither study controlled for
vocabulary, which introduces all kinds of sentence processing noise
in isolating and examining incremental word integration and
sentence-processing procedures. Control of background knowledge and word frequency is important as well. Also, neither study
isolated specific syntactic variables that would allow the researchers to examine incremental structure-building and word
integration processes, though to be fair, neither study was concerned with teasing apart and isolating lower-level processing
variables.
Only a small number of studies have controlled for extraneous variables while using on-line methods to examine incremental
L2/ESL sentence-processing procedures. However, the results
from these studies indicate that fluent and functional L2/ESL
word integration and sentence processing characteristics are similar to corresponding L1 processing procedures, in that structurebuilding processes facilitate and constrain incremental sentence
processing. Thus, researchers have been able to gain some insights
into how L2/ESL readers and listeners utilize syntactic category
(i.e., part of speech) and subcategory knowledge along with corresponding semantic argument information to guide the incremental structure-building and structure-interpreting procedures
that underpin sentence processing (Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997;
Juffs, 1998a; Hoover & Dwivedi, 1998). Some research has also
examined the L2/ESL global syntactic constraints that inform and
guide L2/ESL word integration procedures (Juffs & Harrington,
1995, 1996; Myles, 1995). Finally, L2/ESL research using appropriately controlled methods and materials has provided some
insights into incremental reanalysis and restructuring processes
used by L2/ESL speakers (Juffs & Harrington, 1996; FrenckMestre & Pynte, 1997). Perhaps not surprisingly, one general
finding that seems to emerge from the initial research in this area
is that L1 word integration and sentence-processing skills interact
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with and influence L2/ESL processing skills. Each of these topics
will be discussed in turn.
Use of syntactic category information by L2/ESL sentence
processor. The most controlled L2 sentence reading study using
eye-tracking methods was done by Frenck-Mestre and Pynte
(1997). They examined how native speakers of French and English
parsed sentences in their respective languages and in their corresponding L2 French and L2 English. Frenck-Mestre and Pynte
used sentence materials that were controlled in terms of sentence
length, vocabulary, word length, word frequency, and types of
sentence syntax conditions involving different verb types in each
language. Their results indicate that words were incrementally
parsed into phrase and clause units according to syntactic category and lexical complement information. Their results also indicated that the L2/ESL subjects tended to overgenerate
attachments based on syntactic category and locality preferences.
Studies by Juffs (1998a, 1998b) and Juffs and Harrington (1995,
1996) using a subject-controlled sentence-reading task on the
computer (i.e., moving window task) found evidence that ESL
subjects incrementally integrate words into phrase and clause
structures by using structure-building information (i.e., syntactic
category and subcategorization information). Therefore, proficient
L2/ESL speakers are able to rapidly access lexical syntactic category and subcategory information during incremental sentence
processing. This information is used to constrain the integration
of words into phrase and sentence structures. Here, the set of
L2/ESL lexical items capable of projecting structure-building information is referred to as the functional L2/ESL lexicon (cf. de
Bot et al., 1997; Jiang, 2000).
Use of verb complement information to incrementally integrate words. Frenck-Mestre and Pynte (1997) utilized an eyetracking methodology to examine how native speakers of French
process L2 English sentences (i.e., an ESL group), and how native
speakers of English process L2 French sentences (i.e., an FSL
group). Both groups had an advanced proficiency in their respective L2. In one experiment, the researchers had the native English
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speakers and the ESL group read a set of English and French
sentences. In some of the English sentences, the verbs shared the
exact same verb complement information as their L1 French verb
translations. For example, the English verb “bark” and its direct
French verb translation “aboyer” are both intransitive verbs that
do not subcategorize a DO complement (as in [8. a.] and [8. b.]
below). In some of the other English sentences in the experiment,
the native English speakers and the ESL speakers read sentences
with verbs that did not share the exact same verb complement
structure as their L1 French translations (as in [9. a.] and [9. b.]
below). For example, the English verb “obey” is optionally transitive and allows for both an intransitive and a transitive structure,
whereas its L1 French translation “obeir” only allows an intransitive structure.
8. a. Every time the dog barked the pretty little girl showed
her approval. (intrans.)
8. b. Chaque fois que le chien aboyait la jolie petite fille
montrait sa joie. (intrans.)
9. a. Every time the dog obeyed the pretty girl showed her
approval. (optional)
9. b. Chaque fois que le chien obeissait la jolie petite fille
montrait sa joie. (intrans.)
Using these two kinds of verbs (i.e., verbs with the same complement structure in the L1 and L2 as in [8. a.] and [8. b.], and verbs
with different complement structures in the L1 and L2 as in [9. a.]
and [9. b.]), the researchers examined whether the ESL speakers
experienced any L1 interference when processing L2 English
verbs with different complement structures than the corresponding L1 French verbs. If so, then there would be some signs of L1
French complement information being activated during ESL word
integration.
It is important to note that native English speakers initially
attach and interpret noun phrases such as “the pretty girl” as the
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DO whenever possible, as in sentences with optionally transitive
verbs like “obey” in (9. a.), when there is no punctuation. In similar
situations with intransitive verbs such as “bark” in sentences like
(8. a.), native English speakers do not commit to a DO attachment
and interpretation of the NP “the pretty girl” when the NP is
processed (Pickering & Traxler, 1998; Sturt et al., 1999; Juffs &
Harrington, 1996). This simply follows from the incremental structure builder’s overriding impulse to attach each incoming word to
any permissible structure as soon as possible, which is clearly not
a possibility with intransitive verbs (Frazier & Clifton, 1996;
Gibson, 1998; Gorrell, 1995; Stevenson, 1994, 1998; Vosse & Kempen, 2000). Therefore, native English speakers only experience a
garden path when “showed” is encountered in the optionally
transitive condition (9. a.), which subsequently forces “the pretty
girl” to be restructured and reinterpreted as the subject NP of an
embedded clause. However, the ESL speakers reading the optionally transitive English sentences such as (9. a.) may inadvertently
activate and use the L1 French complement information of the
intransitive “obeir” and, as a consequence, avoid a garden path
reading in English just as they would with their L1 French (9. b.).
In fact, both the native English speakers and the ESL speakers initially attached “the pretty girl” as the DO complement of
the optionally transitive verbs such as “obey” in (9. a.). That is, the
native English speakers and the ESL speakers initially integrated
the post verb NP “the pretty girl” as the DO in the subordinate
verb phrase and attempted to interpret it semantically. Therefore,
both groups employed the possible transitive complement information of the verb “obey” to attach “the pretty girl” as the DO.
Then, when the subsequent main clause verb “showed” appeared
later in (9. a.), it triggered significantly more eye regressions (i.e.,
reanalysis and restructuring) than the verb “showed” in the intransitive (8. a.) condition for both the native speakers and the
ESL speakers. Of course, the intransitive nature of “bark” in (8.
a.) does not permit the DO attachment of “the pretty girl,” so (8. a.)
involves no garden path reading. In summary, the native English
speakers and the French ESL speakers utilized English verb
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complement information in very similar ways to guide incremental sentence-processing procedures.
Perhaps of most interest, Frenck-Mestre and Pynte (1997)
found that the ESL speakers spent significantly longer amounts
of time reading the English verbs with conflicting L1–ESL verb
complement information (i.e., such as “obey” in [9. a.]) than with
verbs with no conflicting L1–ESL verb complement information
(i.e., such as “bark” in [8. a.]). The authors concluded that conflicting L1–ESL verb complement information even causes fluent
L2/ESL readers to hesitate, as both L1 and ESL complement
structures seem to be activated at first, but only briefly. This
L1–ESL interference effect was only reflected on the verb, and
once this interference was resolved, the appropriate L2 English
complement information became fully activated and was then
utilized to integrate the subsequent words in the verb phrase
much like native English speakers do.
In a separate experiment in the same study, Frenck-Mestre
and Pynte (1997) examined the incremental processing skills of
native English (FSL) speakers reading L2 French sentences. The
incremental L2 sentence-processing skills of the FSL speakers
were compared with L1 French sentence-processing skills. The
goal in the second experiment was to see if the FSL speakers were
able to utilize French verb complement information to help them
attach and interpret ambiguous prepositional phrases. Therefore,
the FSL and native French speakers read sentences with verbs
such as “regarder,” which translates into “look” in English (the
critical regions of which are in [10.] and [11.] below). The verbs
such as “regarder” in French and “look” in English subcategorize
a complement structure consisting of a prepositional phrase containing a noun phrase argument (i.e., at the lady). Most importantly, the sentences included ambiguous prepositional phrases
following the complement structures (e.g., “in anger” in [10.]). The
prepositional phrases were ambiguous because they could be
structurally attached to the verb and interpreted as an adverbial
modifier as in (10.) below, or attached to the argument noun
“saleslady” as a postnominal modifier as in (11.). Reading times
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on the noun phrases “travers” and “robes” in the prepositional
phrases indicate the ease of different types of structural attachments of the prepositional phrases.
10. Elle regarde la vendeuse de travers . . .(high attachment
to the verb)
She looks at the saleslady in anger . . .
11. Elle regarde la vendeuse de robes . . .(low attachment to
the noun)
She looks at the saleslady in the clothes department . . .
Frenck-Mestre and Pynte found that both the native French and
FSL speakers read the low attachment noun “robes” in (11.) faster
than the high attachment noun “travers” in (10.). These findings
indicate that the local attachment of ambiguous prepositional
phrases is faster when they are attached to local constituents.
Thus, these types of verbs appear to favor low attachment of the
prepositional phrase. However, the exact opposite occurred with
verbs such as “accuser” (“accuse” in English), as illustrated in (12.)
and (13.):
12. Ils accusent la femme de meurtre . . .(high attachment to
the verb)
They accused the woman of murder . . .
13. Ils accusent la femme de service . . .(low attachment to the
noun)
They accused the woman of the office . . .
Verbs like “accuser” license or subcategorize a DO complement
structure and a prepositional phrase structure. As a consequence,
verbs such as “accuser” strongly favor the high attachment site for
a prepositional phrase following the DO complement structure.
That is, the subcategorization or complement information activated by the verb “accuser” guides and facilitates the structural
integration of the prepositional phrases that are verb complements. As a consequence, the researchers found that verbs such
as “accuser” facilitated the integration and processing of nouns
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such as “meurtre” in (12.) significantly faster than nouns such
as “service” in (13.) for both the native French and the FSL
subjects (cf. Britt, 1994; Perfetti and Britt, 1995; Boland and
Boehm-Jernigan, 1998). In short, both L1 French and FSL speakers utilized French verb complement and argument information
to incrementally attach and structure lexical items into verb
phrases and interpret them.
Juffs (1998b) also found evidence that L2/ESL speakers
access and use lexical complement information to process adverbial clauses with optionally transitive and intransitive verbs without punctuation, like those used by Frenck-Mestre and Pynte
(1997). He examined the incremental ESL word-processing skills
of native Romance-language speakers, native Chinese speakers,
and native Korean/Japanese speakers who were studying in undergraduate and graduate programs at the university level in the
United States. A native speaker group was tested as well. All four
groups initially generated incorrect GP structures with optionally
transitive verbs much like (9. a.) above, in which post-verbal NPs
were initially structured as DOs but later had to be restructured
as subject NPs in a second clause (e.g., After the man drank the
water turned out to be poisoned). However, a somewhat different
pattern occurred when intransitive verbs such as “fell” appeared
in the adverbial clauses. The native English speakers and Romance language ESL group were able to rapidly utilize their verb
complement knowledge of intransitive verbs such as “fell” to close
the initial adverbial clause and quickly open the second clause to
structure the post-verb NPs as the subject of the second clause
(e.g., After the man fell the girl got help). Thus, the native English
speakers and the Romance language ESL subjects were able to
rapidly structure the NPs as subjects in a second clause by using
subcategorization information from the intransitive verbs, much
the same as the L1 English and French ESL participants were
able to do when reading adverbial clauses with intransitive
English verbs (as in [8. a.]) in the study by Frenck-Mestre and
Pynte (1997). However, the Chinese and Korean/Japanese ESL
subjects exhibited considerable difficulty using the intransitive
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verb information of verbs such as “fell” to structure the post-verbal
NP (i.e., the girl) in a second clause. Thus, the Chinese and Korean/
Japanese ESL groups exhibited relatively long reading times
while processing the post-verbal NP and even the second verb.2 As
a side note, Juffs and Harrington (1996) found similar results, in
which Chinese ESL speakers exhibited considerable difficulty
utilizing intransitive verb complement information to close a
clause and open a second clause when commas were removed.
Nonetheless, all the native English and nonnative English
groups in the studies by Juffs and Harrington (1996) and Juffs
(1998b) exhibited very similar grammaticality judgments of the
intransitive structures, even though the East Asian subjects had
more difficulty utilizing their complement structure knowledge of
intransitive English verbs during incremental structure-building
and structure-interpreting processes.
Overall, the incremental L2/ESL sentence processing research indicates that relatively proficient L2/ESL speakers use
verb complement (i.e., subcategorization) and semantic argument
knowledge to integrate words into phrase and clause units. This
has been found in off-line sentence-completion tasks (e.g., Ying,
1996), but most importantly in on-line tasks with eye-tracking
(e.g., Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997) and subject-controlled moving
window tasks (e.g., Juffs, 1998a; Juffs & Harrington, 1996). Therefore, it would seem that developing L2/ESL word integration skills
greatly depends on developing a functional L2/ESL lexicon. A
functional lexicon consists of lexical items that can project syntactic category information as well as subcategorization and theta
role information upon lexical activation, and that information is
available to constrain and guide structure-building and structureinterpreting processes (for similar proposals, see de Bot et al.,
1997; Jiang, 2000). It is likely that L2/ESL learners build up a
functional lexicon through repeated exposures to lexical items in
comprehensible and meaningful input (de Bot et al., 1997). However, Frenck-Mestre and Pynte’s (1997) results indicate that conflicting L1–ESL verb-complement structures interact among
proficient L2/ESL speakers, which suggests that these L2/ESL
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verbs may be delayed in becoming fully functional lexical items
relative to other L2/ESL verbs.
In addition, Juffs (1998) and Juffs and Harrington (1996)
found some evidence that ESL subjects from Indo-European languages are able to more effectively utilize verb subcategorization
information than ESL subjects from non-Indo-European language
backgrounds, even though both groups exhibit the same intuitions
on grammaticality judgments. The incremental structure-building
difficulties exhibited by the non-Indo-European ESL speakers in
the Juffs (1998a, 1998b) study is not due to L1 verb-complement
interference, because the ESL verbs in the study were intransitive
in the L1 and corresponding L2. Thus, the difficulties may be
traced in part to conflicts with L1 and L2 phrase structure–building procedures, though it is not immediately clear how, because
the ESL learners with L1 verb-initial phrase structures (e.g., native Chinese speakers) and L1 verb-final phrase structures
(e.g., native Japanese/Korean speakers) experienced the same
difficulties using intransitive verb information to close clauses and
open new ones. Clearly, more research needs to be done.
Processing loads, incremental restructuring, and reintegration processes during incremental sentence processing. The most
detailed and in-depth research examining processing difficulties
and restructuring procedures during incremental sentence
processing involves the set of studies conducted by Juffs and
Harrington (1995, 1996) and Juffs (1998a, 1998b). Before further
discussion, I would like to make it clear that an array of generative
grammars such as lexical-functional, principles and parameters,
and categorial grammars, and perhaps other generative grammars, can potentially account for a range of structure-building
processes underlying incremental sentence processing. I will
discuss Juffs and Harrington’s research through a principles
and parameters approach, because this is how they operationalized their structural or syntactic variables. It should be stressed
that other generative grammars can potentially constrain the
structures discussed in this section (e.g., Gibson, 1998; Traxler and
Pickering, 1996).
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Juffs and Harrington (1995, 1996) employed a principlebased (i.e., principles and parameters) parsing framework to make
specific predictions about the processing difficulties that native
speakers of English and highly proficient ESL learners have with
two types of English sentences. One type included sentences with
long-distance wh-movement that required extensive processing
resources and that incurred a heavy processing load, yet did not
require breaking and restructuring any initial dominating or
governing relations ([14.] below). The second set of sentences were
severe garden path sentences that required the sentence processor
to restructure initial governing and dominating relations (e.g.,
After he drank the water proved to be poisonous). Notice that the
NP “the water” is initially governed and hence structured and
interpreted as the DO and theme of “drank,” but then must be
restructured into a different governing domain, thereby destroying the initial governing relations with “drank.” For native speakers of English, only severe garden path sentences and not
sentences with heavy processing loads caused sentence processing
breakdowns and characteristically long reading times in critical
regions. In contrast, the Chinese ESL subjects exhibited similar
patterns of processing breakdowns for non–garden path sentences
with certain types of long distance dependencies and for severe
garden path sentences that required reanalysis and restructuring
of the initial governing and dominating relations.
In the first of their two studies, Juffs and Harrington (1995)
examined how Chinese ESL and native English speakers incrementally processed questions with long-distance dependencies
involving wh-words. The sentence structures contained a wh-word
or filler that must be associated with either the subject (14.) or
object (15.) position within an embedded complement clause, as
exhibited below:
14. Who did Jane believe __ likes her friend?
15. Who did Jane believe her friend likes __ ?
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In both sentence structures, one source of processing difficulty
briefly arises because the main verb “believe” allows for the initial
construction of a DO complement so that the wh-word can begin
to be deposited and interpreted (cf. Traxler & Pickering, 1996;
Stowe, 1986). However, the subsequent word in either sentence
immediately forces restructuring from a DO complement to a
sentence complement, though no severe garden path breakdown
occurs, because restructuring is confined to two positions within
the same complement and theta-role domain of “believe,” resulting
in no initial governing and dominating relations being destroyed
during restructuring (Gorrell, 1995; Pritchett, 1992; Stevenson,
1998; Sturt et al., 1999; Sturt and Crocker, 1997; Weinberg, 1999).
A second source of processing difficulty in (14.) and (15.) occurs
because the sentential clause complement is a reduced clause;
thus, there is not a salient cue (i.e., a “that” complementizer) to
signal a sentential clause complement, which helps to guide the
structure builder. In brief, the structure builder must first identify
and construct a complement clause, find the appropriate structural gap (i.e., trace) for the wh-word in the complement clause,
and then link the wh-word to the subject or object position with
an argument chain that connects the wh-word to the gap position
or trace (Juffs & Harrington, 1995).
However, a principle-based parser predicts that depositing
the wh-word in the subject gap (14.) involves more computations
and hence processing load than depositing the wh-word in the
object gap (15.). First, the incremental structure builder must
discard the simple main clause reading (i.e., DO complement)
when the embedded verb “likes” in sentence (14.) is encountered,
causing the structure builder to generate a sentential complement
for “believe.” Therefore, the structure builder must construct a
comp phrase, an inflectional phrase, and a verb phrase around the
embedded verb “likes” when it is processed (Juffs & Harrington,
1995). Concurrently, a subject gap or dependency is generated that
must then be filled. Immediately, the wh-word must be deposited
and integrated with the embedded verb through the nominative
case and agreement features made available by the inflectional
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phrase activated by the embedded verb. Then the wh-word can be
interpreted as the external argument (i.e., agent theta role) of the
embedded verb “likes,” but only after a new chain with nominative
case and agent-role features has been generated to link the subject
gap to the wh-filler. In summary, when the embedded verb “likes”
is encountered in (14.), it triggers a large number of restructuring
and word integration procedures over a short parse space, which
again does not constitute a severe garden path situation that
would result in processing breakdowns for native speakers.
Sentence (15.) also requires some restructuring when the NP
“her friend” is encountered, again causing the simple main clause
structure to be discarded and an embedded sentence complement
to begin to be generated. When the embedded verb “likes” is
processed next, it projects an Inflected phrase that integrates the
NP “her friend” as the subject noun through case and agreement
features. In addition, “likes” signals to the structure builder that
there is a DO complement structure and hence a possible DO
structural gap within the embedded clause. This then enables the
sentence processor to anticipate and begin depositing and interpreting the wh-word before the object gap position (Crocker, 1994;
Gibson and Hickok, 1993; Gorrell, 1995; Stevenson, 1994). In short,
sentences such as (15.) with object gaps involve a simple reassignment of similar accusative case and theta features from the matrix
verb “believe” to the embedded verb “likes.” In contrast, sentences
such as (14.) with subject gaps involve a reassignment of accusative case features from the verb “believe” to the nominative case
conveyed by the functional category Inflection. In addition, the
reassignment of theta roles must also be altered from the internal
argument of “believe” to the external argument of “likes.” It is
important to note that the restructuring processes in both (14.)
and (15.) take place within the same governing and thematic
domain of the matrix verb “believe.” Therefore, there should be
no severe garden path breakdowns in either (14.) and (15.) in
which reanalysis involves restructuring a constituent from inside
the governing and theta domain of “believe” to a position outside
the governing and theta domain of “believe.” Nonetheless, the
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processing of (14.) involves a more complex set of structurebuilding procedures during restructuring. This account is also
theoretically plausible according to a principle-based account of
incremental structure building, because the asymmetry in
processing the subject/object gaps is likely related to the different
binding conditions associated with the two trace or gap positions
(see Culicover, 1997, and Lasnik & Uriagereka, 1988, for discussion on the different binding conditions for subject and object
traces or gaps).
The results from the moving-window task clearly indicated
that the Chinese ESL subjects had significantly greater difficulty
processing sentences with subject gaps (14.) than sentences with
object gaps (15.). The native English speakers, on the other hand,
exhibited no significant differences in processing subject and
object gap sentences in terms of reading times at the subject and
object structural gap regions, though they exhibited slightly longer
processing times with subject gap regions. These results are accounted for by the complexity of the reanalysis and restructuring
involved in filling subject gap positions in real-time processing.
Juffs and Harrington (1996) speculated that long-distance
parsing deficits with subject gap structures in sentences such as
(14.) were due to heavy processing loads as well as the L1 processing experience of the Chinese ESL speakers. The thinking here is
that long-distance wh-movement is more difficult for Chinese ESL
subjects to execute during incremental sentence processing because they do not have any comparable L1 experience with structuring and interpreting long-distance dependencies linking
wh-words to structural gaps, especially with more difficult subject
gap sentences such as (14.). As a consequence, the Chinese ESL
subjects should exhibit similar sentence-processing breakdowns
in the critical region of subject gap sentences, as in (14.), and in
the critical region of severe garden path sentences in which fully
structured and interpreted governing and dominating relations
must be broken during reanalysis and restructuring (e.g., Before
the woman visited the doctor was busy). In contrast, the native
English speakers should only experience sentence-processing
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breakdowns in critical regions of severe garden path sentences but
not subject gap sentences such as (14.).
Juffs and Harrington found that the native speakers and the
Chinese ESL participants in their study experienced a similar
difficulty in incrementally processing and grammatically judging
the severe garden path sentence structures. Word-by-word reading times indicated that both native-speaker and Chinese ESL
word integration procedures did indeed slow down quite dramatically at critical regions in severe garden path sentences. However,
the native speakers showed negligible processing problems with
subject gap structures such as (14.) relative to critical regions in
severe garden path sentences. In contrast, the Chinese ESL subjects exhibited similar processing problems for both the subject
gap region (14.) and critical regions in the severe garden path
structures, indicating severe garden path breakdowns in both
instances. Taken together, these results suggest that advanced
Chinese ESL subjects have incremental sentence processing deficits in filling subject gaps in embedded clauses such as (14.). Juffs
and Harrington concluded that this deficit is likely due in part to
an L1 processing influence.
However, it is not entirely clear whether proficiency-matched
German or Romance language ESL speakers would exhibit the
same difficulties as Chinese ESL speakers in processing longdistance dependencies with relatively heavy processing loads such
as (14.). What seems more certain is that incrementally processing
sentences like (14.) and (15.) would require a certain degree of
fluency in word integration skills by any ESL speaker. Any type of
incremental processing deficiencies would strain or even overload
working memory capacity during incremental sentence processing. In that case, the ability to incrementally integrate words with
long-distance dependencies (e.g., wh-questions, relative clauses,
pseudo-cleft constructions, sentence-final adverbial modifiers in
complex sentences, etc.) may be severely constrained by inefficient
or deficient word integration processes and thereby limit the
domain over which an incremental processor can operate fluently
(Myles, 1995).
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Global syntactic information in structure building. Juffs and
Harrington’s (1995) study clearly showed that proficient Chinese
ESL subjects had acquired the ability to incrementally process
sentences with long-distance wh-movement. In grammaticality
judgment tasks with both whole sentence and word-by-word moving window conditions, the Chinese ESL subjects were able to
accurately reject sentence structures with illicit wh-movement
90% of the time in the whole-sentence reading condition and 82%
of the time in the word-by-word reading condition. These percentages were comparable to the native-speaker results and suggest
that the ESL subjects had acquired many of the wh-island constraints necessary to structure and interpret sentences with longdistance wh-movement. Thus, these results, in conjunction with
the finding that the ESL subjects in both experiments were
interpreting the fillers in the correct structural positions, indicate
that the ESL subjects were utilizing global syntactic constraints
to incrementally process the sentences and detect wh-island
violations.3
L1–L2 incremental sentence processing interactions. Most of
the studies of L2/ESL sentence processing indicate that L1
sentence-processing procedures influence corresponding L2/ESL
sentence-processing procedures. The range of L1 processing effects
on incremental L2/ESL sentence processing is illustrated in a
study conducted by Juffs (1998a). He had ESL students from three
different L1 backgrounds read sentences that were ambiguous
between a reduced relative clause and a simple past tense sentence ([16.] and [17.] below). The ESL participants were studying
at the university level in the United States and were composed of
Chinese, Romance language, and Korean/Japanese subject
groups. A group of native-English speakers was tested as well. For
native speakers, an incremental sentence processor will initially
generate a simple past tense sentence during the initial reading
whenever possible, as in (16.), but not in sentences such as (17.),
because the unambiguous past participle verb clearly signals a
reduced relative clause structure (Juffs, 1998a; MacDonald et al.,
1994).
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16. The boys watched during the morning were playing in the
park.
17. The boys seen during the morning were playing in the
park.
Using a subject-controlled moving window method, the subjects
read a set of sentences that contained sentences with reduced
relative clauses in which morphosyntactic cues (i.e., ambiguous or
unambiguous past participles), verb argument information, and
verb–object adjacency cues were manipulated to create varying
degrees of garden path sentences.
As expected, there were some L1 effects in the results. Interestingly, some ESL subject groups were better able to recognize
and utilize the past participle cues (i.e., morphosyntactic cues) to
guide initial structure-building procedures and avoid severe garden path readings. Overall, the control group of native speakers
and the ESL Romance language groups performed about the same
in terms of grammatical accuracy on the sentences. More specifically, the Romance language group performed significantly better
on the grammaticality judgments than the Chinese subjects in
processing sentences with unambiguous verb forms (e.g., seen)
that contained clearly marked past participles indicating reduced
relative clause structures. This suggests that the Chinese subjects
may have had some difficulty utilizing morphological cues during
incremental sentence-processing procedures, which is likely an L1
effect in that Chinese incorporates minimal amounts of inflectional
and derivational morphology as compared with English. Consequently, Chinese ESL subjects may be less sensitive to certain
morphological cues during incremental sentence-processing
procedures.
The Japanese/Korean group was the only group to perform
significantly worse than the native speaker group in judging the
grammaticality of sentences with transitive and optionally transitive verbs with poor post-verbal cues (e.g., The boys criticized
almost every day were playing in the park). Notice that the words
“almost every” contribute to a garden path reading induced by the
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DO-biased verb “criticized,” because they continue to support a
DO structure. However, the initial DO structure turns out to be
incorrect when “day” is encountered and incorporated into an
adverbial time phrase. In contrast, the Chinese ESL subjects
showed greater variability in processing sentences with good and
poor post-verbal cues. Specifically, the Chinese ESL subjects exhibited longer reading times on these disambiguating cues than
the Japanese/Korean group did, especially when processing sentences with poor post-verbal cues. This is an indicator that the
Chinese ESL students were more sensitive than the Japanese/Korean group in incrementally processing post-verbal cues. Overall,
these data suggest that the Chinese subjects took longer to read
these ambiguous structures because they may have been able to
incorporate post-verbal cues and verb argument cues to help them
reanalyze and restructure the garden path structure better than
the Japanese/Korean subjects could. This is what one might expect
if the Chinese ESL subjects transferred some of their L1 verb
phrase integration and construction skills (i.e., the word order of
English and Chinese verb phrases is similar and contrasts with
Japanese verb phrase word order, which is head final). In short,
the Japanese and Korean subjects were faster but less accurate
than the Chinese subjects in processing transitive and optionally
transitive sentences with poor post-ambiguity cues, and thus they
may have been unable to restructure and reanalyze these structures as well as the Chinese subjects, as indicated by the grammaticality accuracy. This also suggests the possibility that the
Japanese and Korean students process more rapidly in L1 fashion
so as to fully integrate words at the end of a phrase, where phrase
heads appear. Finally, the Romance language group was generally
faster in incrementally processing and reanalyzing the reduced
clause structures, most likely an advantage that can be attributed
to the syntactic similarities and hence shared incremental processing procedures between students’ two languages in terms of
phrase and clause integration processes.
These results are consistent with other research indicating
that the L1 shapes and influences the development of incremental
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ESL word integration and sentence-processing skills. More specifically, the evidence suggests the possibility that specific differences between L1 and L2/ESL sentence-processing procedures
may have a long-lasting effect or even delay the development of
some incremental L2/ESL processing skills (Hoover and Dwivedi,
1998). There is some evidence to suggest this is the case with
Chinese ESL speakers in developing incremental processing procedures that are sensitive to some inflectional features (Juffs,
1998a). The findings by Frenck-Mestre and Pynte (1997) further
indicate how L1–L2 interactions occur when there is conflicting
L1–L2 verb subcategorization and argument information for verbs
that are direct translations. It seems quite likely that conflicting
L1–L2 verb information is more disruptive for lower-level L2/ESL
learners during incremental sentence processing. In addition,
there is some evidence indicating that conflicting L1–L2 procedures involving long-distance dependencies may be problematic
in the L2 and cause heavy processing loads that deplete working
memory resources (Juffs & Harrington, 1995). Also, conflicting
L1–L2 word integration processes at the phrase level are likely to
result in some incremental L2 sentence processing difficulties
(e.g., Hoover and Dwivedi, 1998; Juffs, 1998a; Juffs and Harrington, 1996). Again, more research needs to be done to replicate
and further extend each of these findings with different L2/ESL
populations at different proficiency levels.
Conclusions and Future Directions of L2/ESL Word Integration
and Sentence Processing Research
At present, any conclusions involving incremental L2/ESL
word integration and sentence-processing procedures must be
tentative because of the lack of research in this area. Nevertheless,
the initial research indicates that relatively proficient L2/ESL
speakers utilize incremental processing procedures that are
similar to corresponding native-speaker processing procedures,
particularly with regard to the use of syntactic information to
constrain incremental processing procedures. The on-line
Fender
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sentence-processing studies indicate that proficient L2/ESL learners make use of lexical syntactic category and subcategorization
information during initial structure-building procedures (FrenckMestre & Pynte, 1997; Juffs, 1998a; Pienemann, 1998). Relatively
proficient L2/ESL readers and listeners also employ global
L2/ESL structure-building procedures (Myles, 1995), even when
corresponding syntactic constraints and knowledge don’t exist in
the L1 (Juffs & Harrington, 1995, 1996; White and Juffs, 1998). In
addition, there are initial indications that ESL subjects develop
reanalysis and restructuring skills that are comparable to native
speakers and function in much the same manner (Frencke-Mestre
& Pynte, 1997; Juffs & Harrington, 1996). As with native speakers,
evidence shows that fluent L2/ESL speakers utilize a set of functional lexical items in conjunction with a structure builder capable
of integrating words into phrase and sentence structures. Less
fluent L2/ESL speakers appear less able to use structure-building
procedures, and as a consequence compensate by relying on the
semantic/conceptual processor or other general cognitive processing strategies (e.g., Bernhardt, 1986; Bley-Vroman, 1991; Glisan,
1985; Lee & Patten, 1995; Pienemann, 1998).
The research further suggests that as more sophisticated
L2/ESL word integration and incremental sentence-processing
skills develop, L1 sentence-processing procedures interact with
and influence L2/ESL processing skills in particular ways. These
L1–L2 interactions potentially influence the developmental path
of particular L2/ESL word integration and sentence-processing
skills. Regardless, all L2/ESL learners must gradually acquire
expanding sets of processing skills in order to develop incremental
L2/ESL sentence-processing capabilities on their path to proficiency. Unfortunately, there is very little or no research with loweror even intermediate-level L2/ESL subjects, so there is little outside of a speculative nature that can be said about the development of incremental L2/ESL sentence-processing skills.
Pienemann (1998) discusses one account, though the development
of language production processes and of language comprehension
processes are not clearly distinguished.
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Clearly, more research needs to be done to track the growth
and development of L2/ESL sentence-processing skills, particularly with regard to how L2/ESL language and linguistic knowledge become functional in constraining word integration
processes. Such an endeavor would involve studying the development of incremental phrase and clause construction skills while
being careful to stay within the vocabulary range of the L2/ESL
speakers. One approach could focus on which structure-building
processes (e.g., integrating words through syntactic category information, integrating words through subcategorization information, integrating words through long-distance dependencies such
as wh-movement and gap-filling) are functional in an automatic
manner and which structures must be mediated by more consciously controlled processes (cf. Segalowitz, 2000). Such a research agenda would involve some type of subject-controlled
word-by-word reading task on a computer so that word reading
times and some sort of word integration accuracy measures could
be used (e.g., comprehension tasks with true/false statements).
Furthermore, a range of syntactic and semantic variables could
be manipulated to probe both structure-building and structureinterpreting processes and how they interact to drive incremental
L2/ESL sentence processing. If such a database were created, then
researchers could potentially gain insights into how L2/ESL learners gradually extend their incremental word integration skills to
operate over larger numbers of L2/ESL sentence structures as well
as further examine what types of constraints gradually develop to
inform incremental sentence-processing procedures.
Though it may be trivial to state that more proficient L2/ESL
speakers have more L2/ESL word integration and sentenceprocessing capabilities than less proficient L2/ESL learners, it is
not trivial to understand the nature of the underlying L2/ESL
constraints that inform the incremental sentence processor. Some
of these constraints involve information from lexical items as well
as structural or linguistic constraints available to the structure
builder that are necessary to integrate lexical items into larger
phrase and sentence units. As more L2 grammatical knowledge
Fender
385
and constraints become functional to guide incremental sentence
processing and structure-building procedures in particular, the
more L2 sentence structures there are that potentially fall within
range of the incremental sentence processor’s capabilities (Carroll,
1999; Gass, 1997; Pienemann, 1998). With research, more and
more can be learned about the nature and development of incremental L2/ESL structure-building and sentence-processing skills
in general.
Revised version accepted 27 November 2000
Notes
1
Some types of severe garden path breakdowns (e.g., The horse raced past
the barn fell) may result in more effortful and consciously controlled
reanalysis and repair procedures (Caplan & Waters, 1999; Frazier, 1987;
Gibson et al., 1994; Sturt & Crocker, 1997; Sturt et al., 1999; Weinberg, 1999;
among others). However, it is not clear that severe garden path breakdowns
necessarily trigger conscious reanalysis (i.e., diagnosis) and repair procedures (i.e., restructuring and reinterpretation) during sentence-processing
breakdowns. It is clear that they result in relatively costly diagnoses and
repair (see Sturt et al., 1999, for evidence to this effect). Thus, these types of
sentence-processing breakdowns are moments when more effortful and consciously controlled processes may be utilized.
2
The removal of punctuation in sentences such as “After the man fell the girl
got help” is potentially problematic for both native and nonnative speakers
alike, because it removes a crucial structural cue indicating an important
clause boundary. As a consequence, other structural information such as verb
subcategorization information must be used to constrain structure-building
processes at ambiguous clause boundaries. One reviewer raised the possibility that missing punctuation may render intransitive sentences ungrammatical for the Chinese ESL subjects, especially if such structures conflict with
the L1 punctuation conventions of written Chinese. It may be the case that
punctuation conventions from the L1 interfere with L2/ESL sentence processing in some situations. However, the empirical results indicate that both
the native and nonnative groups showed the same grammaticality judgment
results with intransitive structures that are temporarily ambiguous due to
missing punctuation (Juffs and Harrington, 1996; Juffs, 1998b).
3
One reviewer pointed out that the grammaticality judgment task does
clearly indicate that wh-island constraints were used to constrain incremental sentence processing. I agree that the grammaticality judgments are
not conclusive on this point. It is possible that wh-island constraint violations
were detected downstream from the gap position.
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