Underutilization of Syntactic Processing by Chinese Learners of English in Comprehending English Sentences, Evidenced from Adapted Garden-Path Ambiguity Experiment

TL;DR

This study investigates how Chinese learners of English under-utilize syntactic processing during sentence comprehension, revealing partial and complete parsing deficiencies through an adapted garden-path experiment, and suggests new parsing methods for improvement.

Contribution

It introduces an innovative experiment with semantically ambiguous but syntactically clear sentences to specifically examine syntactic processing deficiencies in Chinese learners of English.

Findings

Chinese learners under-utilize syntactic processing in English comprehension

Two types of parsing under-utilization identified: partial and complete

Syntactic processing errors are linked to trial and error during parsing

Abstract

Many studies have revealed that sentence comprehension relies more on semantic processing than on syntactic processing. However, previous studies have predominantly emphasized the preference for semantic processing, focusing on the semantic perspective. In contrast, this current study highlights the under-utilization of syntactic processing, from a syntactic perspective. Based on the traditional garden-path experiment, which involves locally ambiguous but globally unambiguous sentences, this study's empirical experiment innovatively crafted an adapted version featuring semantically ambiguous but syntactically unambiguous sentences to meet its specific research objective. This experiment, involving 140 subjects, demonstrates through descriptive and inferential statistical analyses using SPSS, Graph Pad Prism, and Cursor that Chinese learners of English tend to under-utilize syntactic processing when comprehending English sentences. The study identifies two types of parsing under-utilization: partial and complete. Further exploration reveals that trial and error in syntactic processing contributes to both. Consequently, this study lays a foundation for the development of a novel parsing method designed to fully integrate syntactic processing into sentence comprehension, thereby enhancing the level of English sentence comprehension for Chinese learners of English.