TRANSITIVITY IN THE PROCESSING OF INTRANSITIVE CLAUSES
Laurent Dekydtspotter, Hyun-Kyoung Seo · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 2016
We document weak garden paths after intransitive verbs, modulated by intransitivity type, in the treatment of DP1VintransitiveDP2V2sequences as inAs the journalist arrived the editor postponed the meetingin first language (L1) and second language (L2) sentence processing. In a noncumulative moving-window experiment, 25 English native speakers and 22 low-intermediate Korean learners of English with no naturalistic exposure read critical items in which a subordinate clause was either headed by an intransitive verb (unaccusative vs. unergative) or by a copular predicate. A linear mixed model revealed greater processing loads evidenced in longer reading times on V2after intransitive verbs than after copular predicates. This finding echoes post hoc observations in Juffs (2004). These asymmetries were driven by significantly greater loads after unaccusative verbs than after copular predicates and unergative verbs. These asymmetries, found in both L1 and L2, are unexpected on the basis of valence information only, as one-place predicates should rule out a second argument. However, we argue that they receive an explanation if parsing involves the interaction of lexically encoded intransitivity information with a transitivity prediction.