Drew Milewski, Fatima College of Health Sciences, UAE
Research into syntactic ambiguity resolution provides insight into how languages are acquired, stored, retrieved and processed (Harley, 2014). The present study developed existing experimental techniques by modifying off-line questionnaires to include additional ambiguity forms. Whilst past studies were limited to comparisons of same-script languages, the present one compared syntactic ambiguity perception rates across different script languages. Recent findings have indicated high attachment (HA) preferences for monolingual speakers of both English and Arabic (Dussias, 2003). This applies for sentences of the form noun phrase 1 – noun phrase 2 – prepositional phrase. It was predicted that monolingual English speakers and Arabic-English bilinguals would demonstrate L1 parsing strategies as was found in prior studies. The findings evidenced the following; L1 parsing strategies, a preference for high attachment for all participants and an experience based model of language processing. In addition, a bilingual advantage was identified when perceiving and resolving ambiguities; bilinguals were more accurate and adept at identifying and resolving ambiguities than their monolingual counterparts. The paper acknowledges other factors, in addition to L1 parsing strategies, which influenced ambiguity resolution. These include bilinguals’ prior L2 exposure and their age of L2 acquisition.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.LLLD.IR), 2-3 February 2017, Iran-Ahwaz.