Anaphora Resolution by EFL Learners
Wukyung Ko · 응용언어학 · 2013
In order to understand how grammatical and thematic roles cues influence the anaphora resolution processes of Korean EFL learners and how they differ from those of native speakers of English and Korean respectively, an experiment employing a self-paced reading task was performed with native speakers of English (NSE), higher-level learners (HLL), lower-level learners (LLL) and native speakers of Korean (NSK). The results suggest that, in general, grammatical and thematic role cues seem to influence anaphora resolution processes by Korean EFL learners. It was faster for them to read sentences starting with the subject reference than the object-of-PP reference. It also took shorter time for them to read sentences with Goal reference than those with Source reference. In addition, it took longer for the learners, especially lower-level learners, to read sentences with pronouns than those with proper nouns. When comparing the data of target language and native language speakers, surprising similarities were found in both native speaker groups and higher-level learners, confirming the existence of a universal nature of language processing. The lower-level learners’ anaphora resolution processes, on the other hand, showed an independent pattern, possibly because of their limited proficiency and their dependency on semantic cues.