Previous
Next
Katrina Connell (Penn State) – Lexical Prediction on the Basis of Phonological Alternation in L2 English: A Visual World Eye-Tracking Investigation
October 23, 2020
9:00 am
ZOOM Virtual Room (Link will be provided)

Katrina Connell (Penn State) – Lexical Prediction on the Basis of Phonological Alternation in L2 English: A Visual World Eye-Tracking Investigation

Lexical Prediction on the Basis of Phonological Alternation in L2 English:A Visual World Eye-Tracking Investigation

Past studies have demonstrated that asymmetric distributional patterns in language use differentially contribute to language comprehension and the ability to predict upcoming information. These effects have been reported largely for morphosyntactic alternations, such as grammatical gender, and provide mixed results for second language (L2) learners. In the present work, we ask if L2 learners are able to demonstrate use of a different type of alternation, such as a phonological alternation, to predict upcoming elements in spoken-speech comprehension. The English indefinite article system allows us to examine this question. In English, the indefinite articles a and an alternate depending on a phonological rule triggered by the upcoming word form, with a before consonant-initial words and an before vowel-initial ones. In this talk,Dr. Connell will present results from a visual world eye-tracking study that tested a group of L1-Spanish L2-Engish speakers’ use of this phonological rule to predict upcoming words in a spoken sentence. Dr. Connell will additionally discuss the role of proficiency and then conclude by briefly discussing how this experiment was adapted for remote data collection in Puerto Rico during summer of 2020.