Harrington: Processing transfer. - hence the Competition Model. The mapping of the particular surface forms onto underlying functions is assumed to be the ...
Applied Psycholinguistics (1987) 8, 351-377 Printed in the United States of America
Processing transfer: Languagespecific processing strategies as a source of interlanguage variation MICHAEL HARRINGTON International University of Japan ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Michael Harrington, International University of Japan, Yamato-machi, Minami Uonuma-gun Niigata 949-72, Japan ABSTRACT A sentence interpretation experiment based on the functionalist Competition Model of speech processing (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982) was administered to three groups of university-age English LI, Japanese ESL, and Japanese LI subjects (« = 12 per group) in an attempt to elicit evidence for (1) processing strategies characteristic of the Japanese and English LI groups and, (2) transfer/influence of Japanese LI strategies on the English sentence interpretations of the Japanese ESL group. Subjects selected the subject/actor of simple sentences incorporating word order, animacy, and stress cues in random converging and competing orders. The English LI and ESL groups were tested on English sentences and the Japanese LI group tested on Japanese sentences. The Japanese LI interpretations were most heavily influenced by animacy cues, while the English LI group showed a higher overall sensitivity to word order manipulations. The ESL group resembled the Japanese LI group in reliance on animacy cues, with the exception of allowing inanimate nouns to act as subjects. While the ESL group showed greater sensitivity to word order effects than the Japanese LI group, no "second-noun" strategy (i.e., systematically interpreting the NNV and VNN orders as left- and right-dislocated SOV and VOS orders) was evident. Although the findings were generally consistent with previous research, the presence of contrasting response patterns in the English LI group suggests caution in attempting to typify languages on the basis of processing strategies drawn from probablistic tendencies evident in grouped data, and leaves open the role of such processing strategy typologies as a potential source of variation in interlanguage.
INTRODUCTION
While the relative importance of LI transfer/influence1 on interlanguage variation is debated (cf. Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982; Corder, 1983), there is compelling evidence that language transfer plays a substantial role in the process and outcome of L2 acquisition, and with it the general agreement that transfer constitutes an important area of L2 research (see Gass & Selinker, 1983; Kellerman & Smith, 1986). A variety of transfer phenomena, ranging from the phonological to the dis© 1987 Cambridge University Press 0142-7164/87 $5.00 + .00 351
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course level have been identified: phonological transfer (Tarone, 1980; Eckman, 1981); lexico-semantic transfer (Snow, 1976; Hyltenstam, 1977; Gass, 1980); syntactic transfer (Rutherford, 1983; Jordens, 1983; Mazurkewich, 1984; White, 1985); discourse/pragmatic transfer (Olshtain, 1983; Scarcella, 1983.) Recently researchers have also begun to take a closer look at transfer at the processing level, that is, transfer of underlying strategies for encoding and decoding speech (Xia-Chun, 1981; Zobl, 1983, 1984; Gass, 1985; Bates & MacWhinney, 1981; and Wulfeck, Juarez, Bates, and Kilborn, 1986). The interest in the processing level is motivated by a belief that processing strategy differences can account for certain types of typological transfer otherwise difficult to explain (Zobl, 1983), or that it can provide evidence for transfer not readily apparent in normal L2 transfer data, e.g., phenomena like discourse accent (Bates & MacWhinney, 1981). Findings on L2 processing also have implications for issues related to speech processing and language development in general (Slobin & Bever, 1982). The present study investigates the suitability of the Competition Model2, a functionalist processing model proposed in Bates and MacWhinney (1981) and Bates, McNew, MacWhinney, Devescovi, and Smith (1982) as a model of L2 speech processing. Of interest is the evidence the model provides for inter-language variation, in particular the influence of Japanese LI processing strategies to the English L2 sentence interpretations of Japanese ESL learners. The first part of the paper describes the model and discusses its potential contribution to our understanding of L2 processing and transfer, including a review of relevant monolingual and bilingual studies. The experiment reported in the second part of the paper tests processing strategies used by English LI, Japanese ESL, and Japanese LI subjects to identify agent/object relationships in simple transitive sentences incorporating word order, animacy, and stress cues in random converging and competing orders. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the Competition Model as an account of L2 processing and implications and directions for further research. BACKGROUND The Competition Model
The Competition Model is a probablistic model of speech processing based on a functionalist theory of grammar. For present purposes only the major features of the model will be introduced. A complete description, including the linguistic and psychological assumptions underlying the model, is available in Bates and MacWhinney (1982), and MacWhinney, Bates, and Kliegl (1984). The model is based on a functionalist theory of grammar wherein the relationship between the underlying meanings and intentions and their expression in surface form is stated as directly as possible (Givon, 1979). While the mapping between the underlying function and surface cues is direct, it is not one-to-one; the same cue(s) may serve to express different function(s). These surface cues, e.g., case-marking particles, word order, inflectional morphology, stress, etc., converge and compete during real-time processing to yield a particular meaning
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- hence the Competition Model. The mapping of the particular surface forms onto underlying functions is assumed to be the result of a strength-based conflict resolution among the competing and converging cues, hence the model is a parallel model of speech processing (see Marlsen-Wilson & Tyler, 1980). The Competition Model and L2 processing
The Competition Model framework offers several potential advantages for characterizing L2 processing and identifying areas of processing transfer. 1.
2.
3.
Directness of form-function mappings. The model assumes underlying function coalitions are mapped directly onto surface forms. For the adult L2 learner it is assumed that the underlying functions are already mastered and it is the learner's task to map these underlying functions onto a new set of surface forms in the L2 (Bates & MacWhinney, 1981). The directness of the formfunction mappings allow the functional equivalence of the LI and L2 forms to be compared across languages, e.g., the extent to which word order is a cue to the subject/agent function in, e.g., Japanese and English. Cue integration. As no a priori division is made as to the role of specific processing components, cues from all levels of processing are treated equipotentially as to possible effect on processing outcomes. This is in contrast to approaches analyzing L2 variation along a single, most commonly syntactic, dimension (e.g., Rutherford 1983; White 1985; Zobl 1983, 1984). Statistical nature of form-function mappings. As processing strategies can be expressed in terms of relative strengths of cues rather than discrete categories, it is possible to measure the magnitude of the differences between languages and between different stages of L2 acquisition. Thus it should be possible to speak of the "in betweenness" of L2 processing strategies (Bates & MacWhinney, 1981:205), and to locate an individual learner on a processing strategy continuum between the LI and the target language.
Of interest in the present study is whether, and to what extent, the model
serves to locate and identify specific processing strategy typologies, allowing one to establish such cross-language processing differences as a source of interlanguage variation. Evidence for the model: Sentence interpretation studies
Empirical support for the model has come mainly from sentence interpretation experiments in which a subject is required to interpret sentences with certain cues, e.g., word order and animacy in competing and converging orders. The sentences, of varying degrees of naturalness and grammaticality, are designed to elicit processing information not readily attainable from naturalistic data. A common task initially used in child-language research has been to have subjects interpret the subject/agent in transitive affirmative sentences expressing simple agent-patient relationships. Studies of this type done on monolingual developmental populations include Maratsos (1974), Strohner and Nelson (1974), Chap-
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man and Miller (1975), Bridges (1980), Frankel and Arbel (1981), Hakuta (1982), Slobin and Bever (1982), Bates, MacWhinney, Caselli, Devescovi, Natale, and Venza (1984). Bates et al. (1982) examined adult monolingual speakers in a cross-linguistic study. The procedure has also been used with clinical populations; aphasia studies include Ansell and Flowers (1982), Gallaher (1981), Heeschen (1980), and Smith and Mimica (1984). These studies have all yielded results consistent with the Competition Model approach (see Bates & MacWhinney, 1985), and provide the point of departure for the examination of L2 processing strategies. 12 processing studies A handful of studies have investigated sentence interpretation strategies by L2/bilingual subjects and three in particular are of relevance here, Xia-Chun (1981), Bates and MacWhinney (1981), and Wulfeck, Juarez, Bates, and Kilborn (1986). The studies, while differing in size, scope, and purpose, all show first- or other- language influence on processing outcomes. Bates and MacWhinney (1981) in a pilot study compared English agentpatient interpretation strategies of sentences contrasting word order, stress, animacy, and topic cues by German and Italian bilinguals with baseline data from English, German, and Italian monolingual speakers. Transfer of LI processing strategies was evident in varying degrees for all subjects, despite the fact that several of the subjects were quite fluent in English, one having resided in the United States for as long as 19 years (Bates & MacWhinney, 1981:143). The apparent gap between proficiency level and processing results led the authors of the study to suggest that processing strategy transfer may be responsible for more subtle forms of transfer, impeding the attainment of "native-like selection" and "native-like fluency" (Pauley & Sidey, 1983), by otherwise communicatively competent L2 speakers. Xia-Chun (1981) found evidence of LI influence on the Chinese sentence interpretations of American university students of Chinese as a second language. The subjects, all with three years of university Chinese, transferred English word order strategies in the interpretation of the Mandarin sentences contrasting animacy and word order cues. They also showed less sensitivity to animacy cues than the native Mandarin speakers (Xia-Chun, 1981:109). In contrast to the preceding cross-linguisitic studies, Wulfeck et al. (1986) investigated whether processing strategy differences evident across languages would appear in bilinguals when processing the respective languages. Twelve Spanish-English bilinguals were tested in both Spanish and English on sentences containing varying word order, animacy, and number agreement cue orders. The subjects fell into two distinct groups according to the relative importance of the cue types used in the sentence interpretations. Subjects in one group (n = 7) showed a greater reliance on word order cues than on animacy and agreement in their interpretation of both English and Spanish test sentences, the dominant word order strategy of this group approximating that of monolingual English speakers in a similar study (see Bates et al., 1984). In contrast, subjects in the second group (n = 5) were more heavily influenced by animacy and agreement
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effects relative to word order, again, like the first group, applying the same set of strategies to the interpretation of both languages. The responses of the second group were nearly identical to those found for Italian monolinguals in Bates et al. (1984), a finding ascribed to a large part to the typological similarities between Spanish and Italian (Wulfeck et al., 1986:19). As a result we have bilinguals applying strategies typically associated with one language to the interpretation of sentences of a language typified by a different set of strategies. In summary, the three studies indicate that processing strategies do appear susceptible to transfer in both high and low proficiency L2 speakers, as well as between languages in the case of individual bilingual speakers. The results are tentative, however, due to the small number of subjects involved, as well as the lack of base line data for the English in Xia-Chun (1981) and for the Spanish in Wulfeck et al. (1986). The fact that considerable variation was evident in the types of strategies employed by the bilinguals in the latter study raises interesting questions as to the interaction of language-specific and individual processing strategies. These factors are considered in the present experiment comparing processing strategies across native English, Japanese ESL, and native Japanese subjects. Before presenting the study some important typological differences between Japanese and English relevant to the study will be introduced. Japanese and English
The experiment reported here tests the effect of varying word order, semantic (animacy), and contrastive stress cues on sentence interpretations of English and Japanese sentences. The two languages provide clear contrasts in the way these cues are utilized. English is a rigid SVO language, with a minimum of inflectional verb morphology and no grammatical case markings (Lehmann, 1978). Developmental and cross-linguistic processing studies have demonstrated the importance of the canonical SVO order in sentence comprehension and production for adults and children (Bever, 1970; Maratsos, 1974; Slobin & Bever, 1982). The non-standard OSV and VOS orders, while unusual, are acceptable in certain discourse contexts, (left- and right-dislocations). Other orders, e.g., VSO, OVS, are not considered acceptable. Japanese is an SOV language, rigid in the respect that a verb is required in the sentence-final position. Post-verbal constructions are possible in certain discourse contexts, but are considered "afterthoughts" (i.e., supplied when the speaker thinks the message was not clear) and hence carry no information not already contained - or believed by the speaker to be contained - in the preverbal part of the utterance (Kuno, 1978:65). A pervasive feature of Japanese discourse is subject ellipsis in environments where the subject is linguistically or contextually recoverable, the subject being deleted as much as 70% of the time in normal discourse (Martin, 1975:155). The information contained by the ellipted element can come from the context, the grammatical particles, or from honorific verb endings which indicate the person who is being spoken to or about. The particles signal grammatical case roles, and
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thus allow for some variance in the preverbal order. While (S)OV is the order most commonly occurring, the OSV and SV orders are also possible. The particles themselves can often be ellipted if the message is clear, the object marker o being the most often ellipted in colloquial speech (Martin, 1975:50). As a result of ellipsis and preverbal word order variation, the identity of the subject and object in Japanese is not predictable from word order cues alone. Hakuta (1982) demonstrated the relatively secondary role word order cues play in Japanese in a study of sentence interpretations by Japanese children. No word order bias was evident in the interpretation of simple sentences where the grammatical particles were removed, even for the canonical SOV order (Hakuta, 1982:70). English and Japanese differ sharply in the range of semantic case roles the noun phrase in the subject position can take (Hawkins, 1981). English allows a wider range of roles for the subject, particularly in allowing an inanimate noun to serve as the subject of an active sentence, where the grammatical subject and the logical subject coincide. Throughout this paper, I will be using subject to refer to this subject-agent, that is, the "doer" of the action. Japanese, in contrast to English, is more restrictive in the type of noun it allows in this situation, permitting only human or higher animals to serve as subjects. Kuno gives the following example of a sentence violating this constraint and hence considered unacceptable. "Taihuu GA mado O kowasi-ta typhoon SUBJ window OBJ break-PAST "The typhoon broke the window." The English version is, of course, perfectly acceptable. This sentence requires the use of an intransitive verb in Japanese (Kuno, 1973:31). Taihuu DE mado GA koware-ta typhoon INSTR window SUBJ break (intrans)-PAST "Due to the typhoon, (the) window was broken." In English, contrastive stress is used to highlight a word in a sentence or a group of sentences. It basically serves a pragmatic function, calling attention to the element the speaker wishes to highlight. It is assumed that the emphasized element usually represents new information in the discourse context (Bates et al., 1982:280). As the subject position in English is typically associated with given information (Rutherford, 1983), it is expected that the subject would normally not receive contrastive stress in English. The role played by contrastive stress (= accentual prominence) in English can be also signalled syntactically in Japanese using case marking particles. Consider the following example from Kuno (1973:49). Boku WA shuumatsu WA zasshi WA yomimasu. I TOPIC weekend CONTRAST magazine CONTRAST read. "On the weekend (as opposed to weekday), I read magazines (as opposed to newspapers)." Both "weekend" and "magazine" are marked with a contrastive WA marker
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(the WA on " I " is considered a topic marker). A single contrastive WA may be used, and it may or may not be accompanied by voice stress. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
The present study compares sentence interpretation strategies used by English, Japanese ESL (Interlanguage), and Japanese subjects to comprehend sentences in which word order, animacy and stress cues are systematically manipulated. The study is motivated by the following research questions: (1) Can language-specific Japanese LI and English LI processing strategies be identified such that they will provide a continuum along which Interlanguage processing strategies can be located? (2) Is there evidence of LI transfer/influence on the Interlanguage subjects' sentence interpretations? Based on Competition Model processing principles and previous findings from cross-linguistic and bilingual studies, a set of predications can be made as to the effects of the various cue combinations on the sentence interpretations of (I) first language (LI) English and Japanese subjects and, (II) Japanese ESL (IL) subjects. L1 processing strategies
Word order. Based on earlier studies it is predicted that word order will be of primary importance for the English speakers. The response measures will show considerable bias toward the canonical noun-verb-noun (SVO) order. A bias toward OSV and VOS interpretations will be evident among the nonstandard orders, reflecting the left- and right-dislocation allowed in informal discourse contexts, a strategy Bates et al. term the "second noun" strategy (1982:274). HYPOTHESIS 1.1. Word order cues will have a greater effect than animacy cues on the English subjects' interpretations as evident in a bias toward the canonical SVO order and the noncanonical OSV and VOS orders. The identity of subject and object in Japanese is difficult to predict from word order cues alone, due to the importance of case-marking particles, ellipsis, and preverb phrase word order variation. As a result, a smaller role for word order cues is expected in the Japanese responses. HYPOTHESIS I.2. Word order cues will have lesser effect on the Japanese subjects' interpretations, with no bias evident toward the canonical SOV order or nonstandard word order strategies. Animacy. In absence of strong word order strategies it is assumed that the Japanese subjects will make greater use of animacy cues. The animacy cue effect should be particularly strong in the present study as the Japanese stimuli sentences are presented without case-marking particles. HYPOTHESIS I.3. Animacy cues will have a greater effect than word order or stress on the Japanese subjects' interpretations.
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Stress. Contrastive stress is predicted to play a secondary role, its effect only apparent in interaction with other cue combinations. For both the Japanese and English subjects, HYPOTHESIS 1.4. Stress will have a secondary role in the sentence interpretation, evident only in combination with the word order and animacy cues. Interlanguage processing strategies
World order. Evidence from studies of L2 learners' written output suggests that word order as a typological parameter is nearly impervious to transfer (Rutherford, 1983; Duff, 1985). As such, it is expected that the IL subjects will not exhibit LI word order influence on their L2 English sentence interpretations. HYPOTHESIS 11.1. The IL subjects will show a relatively greater sensitivity to word order cues than the Japanese LI subjects, approximating the English subjects' responses on the canonical NVN orders. While it is expected that the IL subjects will be sensitive to the English canonical order, they are not expected to show a second noun selection bias in the non-canonical orders, due to the lower level of proficiency and limited exposure to native English. HYPOTHESIS II.2. The English second noun strategy will not be evident in the IL subjects' sentence interpretations. Animacy. While the IL subjects' interpretations will show a greater sensitivity to word order cues than the Japanese LI subjects, they will still retain LI animacy biases, this being particularly evident in their reluctance to choose an inanimate noun as a subject. HYPOTHESIS II.3. Animacy cues will have a greater overall effect than word order cues on the sentence interpretations of the Interlanguage subjects. HYPOTHESIS II.4. The Interlanguage subjects will not choose inanimate nouns as subjects. Stress. Stress predictions for the IL group are identical to those made for the Japanese and English groups. HYPOTHESIS II.5. Stress will have a secondary role in the sentence interpretation, evident in combination with the word order and animacy cues. METHOD Subjects
Thirty-six young adults consisting of one group of native English speakers, one of native Japanesee ESL learners, and one of native Japanese speakers (n = 12 for
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Table 1. List of nouns and verbs used in stimuli sentences Animate nouns
Verbs
Inanimate nouns
English
Japanese
English
Japanese
English
Japanese
fish monkey dog giraffe cat bear deer donkey turtle horse Pig cow
sakana saru mu kirin neko kuma shika roba kame uma buta ushi
rock pen pencil ball spoon cigarette
iwa pen enpitsu boru supuun tabako
greets pulls pats kisses watches smells bites licks eats
ojigisuru hipparu naderu kisusuru mini
kagu kamu nameru taberu
each group) participated in the study. Each group consisted of 6 males and 6 females. The English subjects were graduate and upper level undergraduates in the ESL program at the University of Hawaii. None of the English subjects were fluent in Japanese. The Japanese LI subjects were graduate and upper level graduate students at the University of Hawaii. None were ESL or Linguistics majors, though all were obviously capable of doing university-level work in English. The Interlanguage subjects were enrolled in a beginning level class in a UH language program. While the language program was not part of the regular university curriculum, the IL subjects had generally comparable levels of schooling as the LI subjects. The educational background of the IL subjects is as follows: eight had completed or were on leave from four-year colleges, and the remaining four had attended a two-year college or post-high school vocational school. The IL group was homogeneous as to length of exposure. With the exception of one subject who had been in the United States for over five months, all the subjects had been in the country less than three months at the time of the experiment. Materials
Each subject was tested on 81 test sentences, administered in three blocks of 27 sentences each. The sentences and testing procedures were adapted from Bates et al. 1982. The sentences were in English for the English and Interlanguage subjects, and in Japanese for the Japanese group. Each English sentence consisted of a verb in the third person singular and two common nouns with the definite article "the." The Japanese test sentences consisted of two common nouns and a verb in the present indicative. The identical 18 nouns (12 animate and 6 inanimate) and 9 verbs were used in both the English and Japanese sentences. The words are given in Table 1. In order to avoid bias due to particular combinations of nouns and verbs, all
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noun-verb combinations were assigned randomly to the 27 sentence types, each representing a unique combination of contrasting factors. These factors were: Word order: NVN; NNV; VNN Animacy: Both nouns animate (AA); 1st noun only animate (AI); 2nd noun only animate (IA). Contrastive stress: No stress (No); 1st noun stress (1st); 2nd noun stress (2nd) The use of ungrammatical or unnatural sentences is considered appropriate in the present study as we are investigating how the manipulation of converging and competing cue orders affects real-time comprehension processing outcomes. This type of information is extraordinarily difficult to obtain from natural speech samples, if it is available at all (see Kellerman & Smith, 1986:35-60.) Each of the three blocks of 27 sentences contained one unique sentence for each combination of word order, animacy, and stress contrasts. A pool of 162 test sentences divided into 6 blocks of 27 sentences each was developed. The sentences were randomized within the blocks and three blocks randomly assigned to each subject. The 6 blocks of sentences were recorded in Japanese and English. The English sentences were recorded by the author and the Japanese sentences by a male Japanese graduate student also who served as the tester for the Japanese subjects. Both sets of sentences were then piloted on native speakers (different from the subjects) to assure proper stress placement and consistency. Procedures
Each subject was tested individually. Two tape recorders were used during the testing, one to play the test sentences and the other to record the subject's responses. The subjects listened to the sentences through earphones to minimize ambient noise. Before playing the taped sentences the following instructions were read (adapted from Bates et al., 1982:266): You are going to hear a tape with a series of very simple sentences. After each sentence is read you will have to interpret it: you should say which of the two nouns in the sentence is the subject of the sentence, that is, the one who does the action.
So as not to inadvertently introduce a syntactic versus semantic bias, half of the subjects were given the instructions with the "the subject" first, and half received instructions with the order reversed and "the one who does the action" given first. The subjects were not told the purpose of the study nor the relevant variables, e.g., word order, animacy, stress. This is in contrast to the Bates et al. (1982) study, where the subjects were informed beforehand as to the types of cues operative, and then periodically asked during the course of the test which cues they attended to. It was felt that having the subjects do the study "blind" would safeguard against artificial response strategies on the part of the subjects. A written Japanese translation of the instructions was shown to all the IL subjects to ensure that the directions were understood. In addition, a chart containing pictures of all the nouns was reviewed with each subject prior to testing, in order
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to make sure that the lexical items were understood. After the instructions three practice sentences were given to each subject, using lexical items different from those in the test sequences. Analysis
Two dependent measures were used: Choice: Selection of subject, tallied by counting the number of first nouns chosen. Latency: Response time, measured by stopwatch from time of voice offset of taped test sentence to subject's response. The first noun selections were tallied and the latency responses obtained from the audiotapes. As the timings were done by the two experimenters, interrater reliability was calculated for agreement within 0.30 seconds, or roughly the mechanical response time for starting and stopping the watch. The timings were in 93% agreement.3 Each of the dependent variables was analyzed with a 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 (Language X Word order X Stress X Animacy) repeated measures design with language as a between-subjects variable, and word order, stress, and animacy as within-subject measures, using the SPSSX package MANOVA procedure (SPSS Inc., 1985). The MANOVA procedure, which provides a more straightforward treatment of the within subject variables, was performed on each dependent measure separately, since the noun-choice and latency measures are not on the same scale of measurement. RESULTS
The results section is organized as follows. The results of the multivariate tests of significance (Pillias) for the dependent measures Choice and Latency will be reported first. Then the results will be presented in terms of the LI (Japanese and English) and Interlanguage hypotheses proposed earlier. In the last part of the Results section, basic processing claims made by the Competition Model will be considered in light of the findings. Analysis of variance
Choice. The between subjects effect language was not significant at .05 but entered into a number of higher interactions. These include (p-values are given in parentheses), the two-way interactions Language x Word Order (.001) and Language x Animacy (.017), the four-way interaction Language x Word Order x Animacy x Stress (.044). Word Order (.000), Animacy (.000), and Stress (.010) main effects were significant. The other significant choice interactions were the two-way Word Order x Animacy (.000) and Animacy x Stress (.002) interactions, and the four-way interaction Language x Word Order x Animacy x Stress (.044).
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Table 2. Language I Word orderI Animacy orders: Choice and latency data Interlanguage
English con.
time (sec)
%
.93 .99 .50
.43 .49 .00
1.94 1.33 2.04
.27 .61 .10
.23 .11 .40
% NVN A/A A/I I/A VNN A/A A/I I/A NNV A/A A/I I/A
.31 .65 .08
Japanese con.
time (sec)
.79 .98 .01
.29 .48 .49
.94 .29 .34
2.35 1.91 1.82
.60 .94 .06
.10 .44 .44
.80 .33 .26
2.41 .12 .43 1.94 2.05 .29 r = -.91
.68 1.00 .02
.18 .50 .48 r = -.87
.94 .23 .48
con.
time (sec)
.77 .97 .31
.27 .47 .19
2.17 1.68 2.07
2.65 2.40 2.89
.61 .86 .17
.11 .36 .33
2.50 .19 2.21 .15 1.90 .42 r = -.64
.62 .93 .21
%
% = % of first noun choices. con. = consistency measure (% of first noun choices - . 5 0 , disregarding direction). r = correlation of time and consistency.
Latency. The latency results were less stable than the choice results as evident in fewer significant effects and interactions. Word Order (.001) and Animacy (.001) main effects reached significance. Two significant two-way interactions occurred: Language x Word Order (.013), and Word Order x Animacy (.010). The three-way Word Order x Animacy x Stress interaction was significant (.010), and the Language x Word Order x Animacy interaction (.059) was just at the 0.5 significance level. Given the individual variation evident in the latency data the subsequent analysis will mainly use the choice data. Interactions
The presence of three- and four-way interactions dictates caution in interpreting the two-way interactions and the main effects. While the main effects and the language x word order and language x animacy interactions will be discussed in some detail, any conclusions drawn need to be considered in light of these higher order interactions. Tables 2 and 3 report Choice and Latency responses at the three- and four-way level. The tables contain the percentage of first noun choice, a consistency score and the mean response time (in seconds) for the cue combinations. The consistency score reflects the degree to which a particular cue combination will yield a consistent interpretation. The consistency measure is obtained by subtracting 50% (the random choice factor) from the percentage of first noun choices, ignoring direction (Bates et al., 1982:277). As a result, an order in which the first noun is never chosen is as consistent as an order in which the first noun is always chosen, (perfect consistency = .50). Furthermore, it is expected
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Table 3. Order/Animacy/Stress configurations: Choice and latency data English
time
%
.78 .78 .75 .94 1.00 .97 .31 .33 .28
.28 .28 .25 .44 .50 .47 .19 .17 .22
2.00 2.29 2.23 1.92 1.64 1.47 2.20 2.10 1.92
2.62 2.39 2.49 2.07 2.51 2.04 1.67 1.94 2.09
.54 .71 .62 .97 .83 1.00 .19 .22 .21
.04 .21 .12 .47 .33 .50 .31 .28 .29
2.45 2.53 2.98 2.31 2.52 2.36 1.88 1.91 1.66 2.09 0.42
.54 .47 .82 .83 .78 .17
.04 .03 .32 .33 .47 .28 .33
.18
.32
time
%
.86 .97 .94 1.00 1.00 .97 .49 .47 .56
.36 .47 .44 .50 .50 .47 .01 .03 .06
2.09 1.97 1.75 1.16 1.73 1.11 2.14 1.83 2.17
.22 .31 .39 .64 .64 .69 .03 .14 .08
.28 .19 .11 .14 .14 .19 .47 .36 .42
.25 .31 .25 .61 .56 .06
.25 .19 .25 .11 .18 .06 .44
.17
.33
.08
.42
.68
X = .27 sd = .15 r = -.60
Japanese
con.
con.
% NVN AA/1 AA/2 AA/No AI/1 AI/2 AI/No IA/1 IA/2 IA/No NNV AA/1 AA/2 AA/No AI/1 AI/2 AI/No IA/1 IA/2 IA/No VNN AA/1 AA/2 AA/No AI/1 AI/2 AI/No IA/1 IA/2 IA/No
Interlanguage
.97
.13
.37 X = .29 sd = .13 r = — .59
con.
time
.61 .89 .86 .97 .97 1.00 .00 .00 .03
.11 .39 .36 .47 .47 .50 .50 .50 .47
1.88 2.16 1.79 1.27 1.36 1.23 1.36 1.34 1.31
2.52 2.36 2.37 1.89 1.81 2.13 1.78 1.85 2.51
.64 .64 .75 1.00 1.00 1.00 .03 .00 .03
.14 .14 .25 .50 .50 .50 .47 .50 .47
1.87 2.05 1.89 1.15 1.28 1.26 1.50 1.46 1.47
2.11 2.29 2.64 2.01 1.69 2.02 2.01 1.69 1.75 1.95 0.43
.50 .53 .80 1.00 1.00 .83 .00
.00 .03 .30 .50
1.84 1.72 1.85 1.33 1.27 1.38 1.35 1.27 1.15 1.51
.50 .33
.50
.33 .47 X = .37 sd = .16 r = -.73
.17
.03
.29
% = % of first noun choices. con. = consistency measure (% of first noun choices — 50, disregarding direction). AA/1 = Anim-Anim/lst noun stress. AA/2 = Anim-Anim/2nd noun stress. AA/No = Anim-Anim/No stress. AI = Anim-Inam; IA = Inam-Anim.
that the consistency measure will be inversely related to the mean response time, that is, the more consistent responses will be faster. The consistency measures will be used below to examine basic processing claims made by the Competition Model.
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JAPANESE AND ENGLISH L1 PROCESSING STRATEGIES L1 Word order cue effects
Hypothesis 1.1 predicted that word order cues would have the greatest effect on the interpretations of the English subjects and this proved to be the case. For the Choice responses, the first noun was chosen 81% of the time in the canonical NVN (SVO) order and only 35% and 33% for the NNV and VNN orders, summed across all animacy conditions. The selection of the second noun in the nonstandard orders indicates OSV and VOS interpretations, respectively, and is consistent with the second noun strategy found in Bates et al. 1982. The English subjects' bias toward the NVN order is also evident in the Latency results. The NVN orders elicited quicker responses than the nonstandard NNV and VNN orders. The mean response time for the English group (Given in brackets in seconds): VNN [2.28] > NNV [2.20] > NVN [1.77]. The Japanese group, in contrast, was expected to show little bias toward word order cue variation (Hypothesis 1.2). This was the case in both the canonical NNV and the alternative orders. The Japanese choice responses, while exhibiting a slight overall tendency to select the first noun as subject, were nearly level across orders: NVN = 59%; NNV = 56%; VNN = 54%. No bias toward the putative canonical word order NNV (=SOV) was evident. The Japanese latency responses as well indicate no bias toward a canonical NNV order. The response means for the Japanese subjects (in seconds): NNV [1.55] > NVN [1.53] > VNN [1.46]. L1 animacy cue effects
Animacy cues were predicted to have a relatively greater effect on the sentence interpretations of the Japanese subjects (Hypothesis 1.3) and this was clearly supported by the results. Summing across all word order conditions, the first noun in the Animate-Inanimate combination was selected 98% of the time, while the inanimate noun in the reverse Inanimate-Animate order was almost never selected, In/An = .03%. While this sharp contrast in the reversible orders strongly suggests the primacy of the animacy cues for the Japanese subjects, evidence for word order effects is not entirely absent. In the orders where the animacy cue is neutralized, i.e., the animate-animate combinations, the Japanese showed some bias toward selecting the first noun. Across all word orders the first noun was selected 69% of the time, and in the NVN order the first noun was chosen 79% of the time. (A breakdown of responses for all cue combinations is provided in Table 3.) Animacy also played a role in the English interpretations: the first noun was selected 75% of the time in the animate-inanimate pairs and 23% of the time in the reversed inanimate-animate order, with first noun selection in the ambiguous animate-animate combination right at chance (50%). The Language X Animacy interaction for latency was not significant, though both groups were slowest on the ambiguous animate-animate (An/An) order. The effect of animacy cues on the interpretations of the English group in the
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Table 4. English ' 'word order " versus "animacy" subgroups English subgroups Japanese
Animacy («=5)
Animacy (summed across all word orders) An-An .69 -[.66] .67 1.00 An-In .98 [.95] .02 .03 In-An [.18]
Word order (»=7) .32 .55 .38
'4-38} {•53} {•31}
English total
.50 .75
.23
English subgroups Animacy Japanese
(II=5)
Word order (summed across all animacy orders) NVN .59 -[.71] .62 .53 NNV .56 [.47] .54 .50 VNN 1.60]
Word order («=7)
English total
.95 .17 .17
.81 .35 .33
'"{.92} {.15} {•15}
"I ] = Figures for Italian adult monolinguals. b { } = Figures for English adult monolinguals. Source: From Bates et al. 1982:277.
present study was relatively greater than for the English subjects in both Bates et al. (1982.) and MacWhinney et al. (1984), due to the presence of two subgroups using sharply contrasting strategies. English animacy versus word order subgroups
A closer examination of the animacy responses reveals two distinct cue response patterns for the English subjects. A post hoc breakdown shows that the overall effect for animacy is attributable to the presence of a clearly definable "animacy" subgroup, a group of English subjects (n = 5), who were nearly identical to the Japanese group in their use of animacy cues (see Table 4). The animate noun was chosen in nearly all animacy contrasts across the three word orders. This "animacy" subgroup contrasts to the "word order" subgroup (n = 7), which displayed the strong word order bias evident in the monolingual English subjects in earlier studies. Included in Table 4 for comparison are the results for the Italian and English monolingual subjects in Bates et al. (1982). The information in Table 4 is given a graphic representation in Figures 1 and 2. It is apparent that the monolingual Italian group, the Japanese group, and the English "animacy" subgroup display strikingly similar response patterns, which in turn are similar to the Spanish-English bilingual Group 2 in Wulfeck et al. (1986:19). The group similarities evident in the animacy data obtain for the word order responses in Figure 2 as well. The implications of these cross-linguistic similarities for the Competition Model approach will be discussed below.
366
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100 90 80 70 60 00
3 e
50 40 30 20 10
0 NVN ^
=
=
NNV =
VNN
= Japanese LI = Italian adults (from Bates et al. 1982:277)
^^^^~"^~
= English "animacy" subgroup (n = 5)
— = English "word order" subgroup (« = 7) --
-
= English adults (from Bates et al., 1982:277)
Figure 1. English word order versus animacy subgroups: language x word order in relation to the percentage of first noun choice. (See Table 4 for figures.)
L1 stress cue effects
Stress cues had a minor effect on the English and Japanese responses as predicted in Hypotheses 1.4. The different stress conditions yielded the following first noun choice rates for the two groups. Stress condition (Choice) English Japanese
1st stress 46% 53%
2nd stress 51% 53%
No stress 50% 57%
Although stress enters into several interactions, Animacy x Stress, Animacy x Word Order X Stress, its effect is difficult to characterize with precision. The
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100 90 80 70 60 00
50 40 30 20 10 AN/AN
AN/IN
IN/AN
= Japanese LI = Italian adults (from Bates et al., 1982:277) = English "animacy" subgroup (n = 5) = English "word order" subgroup (n = 7) = English adults (from Bates et al., 1982:277) Figure 2. English word order versus animacy subgroups: language x animacy in relation to the percentage of first noun choice. (See Table 4 for figures.)
figures across all stress conditions and languages are nearly the same, although there is a slight overall tendency by the English group to avoid selecting the first noun when it is stressed. This is consistent with the interpretation of contrastive stress as a marker of the object or new information (Bates et al., 1982:281). INTERLANGUAGE PROCESSING STRATEGIES IL word order cue effects
It was predicted that the Interlanguage subjects would be more sensitive to word order cues than the Japanese LI speakers (Hypothesis II. 1), though this bias
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100 90 80 70 60 c u
I
50 40 30 20 10 0
NNV
NVN
VNN
= Japanese = Interlanguage = English Figure 3.
Language by word order: choice.
would only be evident in the canonical NVN order, that is, the IL speakers would not use an English second-noun strategy in interpreting the NNV and VNN orders (Hypothesis II.2). In overall terms these predications were borne out: the IL subjects were almost identical to the Japanese in the NNV and VNN orders, 59% and 56%, while showing a greater effect for the NVN order 68%, or about mid-way between the Japanese and English subjects' responses. The word order results for the three subject groups are compared in Figure 3. The NVN orders were also processed slightly faster by the IL subjects (sees): VNN [2.13] > NNV [2.03] > VNN [1.97]. While the IL subjects do show a relatively greater bias than the Japanese toward choosing the first noun in the NVN orders, we will see below that this is mainly due to their selection of inanimate nouns as subjects in the InanimateVerb-Animate combination. The clearest evidence for an IL canonical word order strategy should appear in the responses to the Animate-Verb-Animate orders, where the animacy contrast is neutralized. In this combination the IL
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100 90 80 70 60 oo
I
50 40 30 20 10 0 AN/AN
AN/IN
IN/AN
= Japanese = Interlanguage = English Figure 4.
Language by animacy: choice.
choice responses were nearly identical to the Japanese, 77% and 79%, respectively, in contrast to the English 93% (see Table 3). Accordingly, the IL word order strategy, while evident, is only of limited strength. The "second-noun" hypothesis (II.2) was clearly supported as the IL subjects selected the first noun in the nonstandard AAV and VAA orders over 60% of the time, a rate nearly identical to the Japanese. IL animacy cue effects
As is evident from the foregoing, animacy cues played a primary role in the IL responses, consistent with Hypothesis II.3. The IL subjects chose the first noun in the An/An and An/In combinations at a rate indistinguishable from the Japanese group (An/An = 67%, An/In = 93%) (see Figure 4). The IL subjects selected an inanimate noun as subject as often as the English group (In/An = 23%). This was unexpected, as it was predicted that the begin-
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ning ESL learners in the study would resist choosing an inanimate noun as the subject of the sentence under the influence of LI knowledge. Although the IL group selected inanimate nouns as subjects at the same overall rate as the English group, they selected them at slightly different rates for the different word orders. The English subjects selected inanimate nouns almost exclusively in the NVN (IVA) combination. The IL group also favored the NVN order, but also allowed inanimate nouns to serve as the subject in the alternate NNV and VNN orders, as a comparison of the inanimate noun choice responses for the three groups indicates. Of particular interest are the responses in the IVA cell, where the English canonical word order and animacy cues compete. It is in this position that evidence for a clear word order strategy could be expected to emerge and it is here that the IL subjects chose the inanimate noun most often. Percentage of inanimate noun subject choices Word order/animacy cue AVI VAI English .01 .39 Interlanguage .03 .14 Japanese .02 .06
AIV .35 .07
IVA .50 .31
VIA .10 .17
IAV
.00
.01
.06
.02
.08 .21
IL stress cue effects
Stress cues had little effect on IL responses, consistent with Hypothesis II.5. Choice responses to the stress cues were almost even across word and animacy order: 1st noun stress = .58%; 2nd noun stress = 59%; and No stress = 59%. COMPETITION MODEL: COMPETING AND CONVERGING ORDERS
The significant three- and four-way interactions are difficult to interpret and no attempt to do so will be made here. However, choice results at the three-way Language x Word Order x Animacy level (see Table 2) allow us to examine two fundamental predictions the Competition Model makes relative to cue orders and processing outcomes. The claims are central to the tenability of the model and thus deserve attention. Convergence
The model predicts that cue combinations in which several cues converge to yield a particular interpretation will be processed more efficiently than in those instances where a lesser number of cues are available (Bates et al., 1982:277). In the present study orders where both animacy and word cues converge will be contrasted with orders where the animacy contrast is neutralized. It is assumed that processing efficiency is reflected in the consistency of the interpretation and the mean response time. Based on the assumption that the cue orders containing converging word order and animacy cues will be processed more efficiently than the orders containing only the word order cues (summing across stress conditions), the following predictions can be made ( > = more efficiently processed).
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English AVI > AVA IAV > AAV VIA > VAA
371
Japanese AIV > AAV AVI > AVA VAI > VAA
Interlanguage AVI > AVA AIV > AAV VAI > VAA VIA > VAA
As is evident from the Choice responses in Table 3, the converging word order and animacy cue combinations were more consistent and processed faster than the word orders in which the animacy cue was absent, i.e., the reversible Animate-Animate pairs. The slowest response means across all word orders was the reversible Animate-Animate contrast, the mean An/An response time for all groups being much slower than the overall group mean (in seconds): English An/An x = 2.36 [2.09]; Interlanguage An/An x = 2.31 [2.04]; Japanese An/An JC = 1.89 [1.51]. Competition
The second major prediction made by the model is that cue combinations containing converging cue information will be processed more efficiently than combinations with competing cues, as is the case of the inanimate noun-verb-animate noun order for the English subjects (Bates et al., 1982:278). In this order the animacy contrast favors the second noun as the subject and the word order favors the first. Again, predictions can be made for the three groups. English AVI > IVA IAV > AIV VIA > VAI
Japanese AIV > IAV AVI > IVA VAI > VIA
Interlanguage AVI > IVA AIV > IAV VAI > VIA
The predictions are borne out by the Choice data in Table 3. Converging word order and animacy cues were more consistent and faster than in the orders where the cues were in competition. In addition to supporting the two processing claims made by the model, the assumption that consistency and response time were related was supported at the three-way level and to a lesser degree at the four-way level (see Table 3). The three-way choice and latency measures were inversely correlated: English, r = - . 6 4 ; Interlanguage, r = —.91; and Japanese, r = - . 8 7 .
DISCUSSION
The five LI hypotheses made at the outset were all supported. Word order cues had the greatest overall effect on the English interpretations. The choice consistency and latency responses indicate that subjects were the most sensitive to the NVN order. The "second-noun" strategy noted in Xia-Chun (1981) and Bates et al. (1982) was also evident, as the English subjects chose the second noun in the VNN and NNV orders (corresponding to VOS and OSV interpretations) over 65% of the time. However, it was also noted that, despite the overall sensitivity to word order cues, a subgroup of five English subjects were strongly
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influenced by animacy cues. The source of this animacy effect may stem from L2 or nonstandard English influence on the English subjects, a plausible consideration given that the study was carried out in Hawaii. However, ten of the twelve subjects were from the mainland and were speakers of a standard American English (the two subjects in the study from Hawaii were part of the word order group). Also, none of the subjects were fluent in Japanese. As expected, word order had a lesser effect on the Japanese group. No bias toward the canonical SOV order was evident for the Japanese, with responses on AIV sentences identical to those on the AVI. In fact, the Japanese LI group exhibited some tendency toward an SVO interpretation, as indicated by the fact that there was a slight preference to choose the first noun in the NVN order (NVN 59% versus NNV 56%), and in the orders where the animacy contrast is neutralized (the animate/animate orders), the Japanese subjects showed a bias toward selecting the first noun more often in the AVA order than in the AAV order (AVA 79% versus AAV 68%). Assuming a Japanese canonical SOV word strategy, the Competition Model would predict the reverse outcome. It is clear that this outcome, as well as the pattern of the Japanese responses generally, is affected by the absence of grammatical case markers. Hakuta (1982:69) found that Japanese children, when presented with sentences similar to the type used in this study, i.e., without the case markings, showed a tendency toward an SVO interpretation over the SOV. While an explanation of the AAV/AVA results remains problematic, the tendency to choose the first noun in the VAA 60% of the time indicates that a more localized first-noun strategy is being used. Whether this proclivity can be characterized as a syntactic word order strategy, or whether it is more properly a pragmatic strategy is unclear. Given the lack of corroborating evidence for strong Japanese word order strategies elsewhere however, a pragmatic interpretation seems preferable. Also, the fact that aphasics performing similar tasks often show a tendency to choose the first noun while having lost most other syntactic ability suggests a more pragmatic strategy (Ansel & Flowers, 1982:62). A further possibility remains that, as all the Japanese subjects were studying at a U.S. university at the time of the study, their English L2 knowledge was in some way influencing the Japanese interpretations, though this certainly was not evident in the animacy responses. Animacy cues, as predicted, had a very strong effect on the Japanese interpretations. It is tempting in this regard to characterize Japanese as an "animacy" language and English as a "word order" language, similar to the approach in Bates et al. (1982) and Bates et al. (1984). However, the presence of an English subgroup exhibiting response patterns nearly indistinguishable from the Japanese LI group suggests limits to the usefulness of such processing strategy generalizations. The English LI findings in the present study, when considered in light of the results of the Wulfeck et al. (1986) study of SpanishEnglish bilinguals, demonstrate that patterns evident in grouped data can conceal differing, sometimes contradictory, response patterns. While the contrast between the Japanese and English processing strategies is attenuated by the presence of the English animacy subgroup, the respective processing patterns will serve as points on a continuum along which we will attempt to locate the IL results.
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Interlanguage processing strategies
The results supported three of the four Interlanguage hypotheses. The exception was Hypothesis II.4, which predicted that the IL subjects would not choose inanimate nouns as subjects. As stress played a very minor role for all three groups in comparison to the animacy and word order cues, the focus here will be on how the IL outcomes compare with the LI results for the latter two cue types. Word order strategies. The IL subjects selected the first noun in the NVN order (summing across animacy contrasts) more often than the Japanese, but without the regularity of the English group (see Figure 3). The difference between the IL and Japanese responses was due almost entirely to the selection of inanimate nouns as subjects in the IVA orders by the IL group. There was no evidence of the IL subjects using a second noun strategy. The English subjects chose the second noun 69% of the time in the AAV order and 73% of the time in the VAA order, compared to the IL group's 37% and 39%, and the Japanese 32% and 39%, respectively. The absence of a second noun strategy by the lower proficency subjects in the present study was consistent with the findings of Bates and MacWhinney (1981), in which the second noun strategy was not found in the English sentence interpretations of highly proficent Germans and Italians with considerable length of residence in the United States (p. 206). The animacy response results for the three groups are presented in Figure 4. The IL responses are nearly identical to the English group on the inanimateanimate combinations, though with the differences noted above. This is noteworthy considering constraints on inanimate nouns as subjects (agents) in Japanese, a constraint strictly observed by the Japanese participants in the present study. The IL subjects chose inanimate nouns in the IV A combination, where the canonical, i.e., strongest, English word order cue, competes with the animacy cue contrast. It is not clear the extent to which this tendency is a function of the relatively greater strength of the English word order cues vis-a-vis animacy cues - and thus an indication of an increasing sensitivity to English word order effects by the IL subjects. As has been noted, other evidence for substantial IL word order strategies has been weak, particularly in the AVA order, where animacy cue information is neutralized: the IL subjects selected the first noun at the same rate as the LI Japanese (77% and 79%, respectively, versus English 93%). Evidence for L1 influence on processing. The concern here has been to characterize in quantitative terms the processing strategies of lower proficiency Japanese ESL learners (the IL group) in relation to LI Japanese and English processing strategies. Transfer was assumed to be, using Selinker's formulation (quoted in Gass, 1983:71-2), (a) process occurring from the native to the foreign language if frequency analysis shows that a statistically significant trend in the speaker's native language . . . is then paralleled by a significant trend toward the "same" alternatives in the speaker's attempted production of the foreign language. . . . While the focus in the present study has been on comprehension aspects, the reasoning is the same, with similarities between Japanese and IL sentence in-
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terpretations assumed to provide evidence of LI influence. The results, however, suggest the situation is far more complex, and it is evident that identity alone is not sufficient for establishing processing strategy transfer. The IL animacy results provide the strongest case for LI transfer effects, though this is weakened by the presence of similar animacy effects noted in the English group. Identifying what has been transferred depends, of course on establishing the relationship between specific underlying cues and their surface manifestation, a task complicated by the fact that a number of cue and cue combinations can be realized by the same surface form. This difficulty was apparent in the present study, e.g., the first noun bias evident in both the IL and Japanese data, and is a particular problem when only a small number of factors are controlled for, as is typically done in studies in this area (Bates et al., 1982, 1984; Wulfeck et al., 1986). It is evident that the manipulation of only three very basic cues results in an extremely complex study and, as such, future research along these lines attempting to investigate more sophisticated phenomena will be increasingly faced with the trade-off between the number of factors controlled for and the manageability of the experimental design. In the present study very little transfer has been "proved" in the sense of unequivocally accounting for IL outcomes in terms of LI strategies. This, however, does not invalidate the approach, as the results indicate the model can uncover processing differences between the IL subjects and the LI English subjects. Of interest in future research will be to see how such differences are affected by increasing proficiency, e.g., the lack of a second-noun strategy by the IL subjects. There is a growing recognition in the SLA literature of the need to separate production/processing concerns from underlying rule/knowledge aspects in studying IL data (see, especially, Kellerman & Smith, 1986). The functionalist Competition Model is a highly suitable approach for addressing these processing concerns as it attempts to provide a real-time account of how the individual simultaneously processes information from a number of pragmatic and linguistic levels, features crucial for the development of a psycholinguistically tenable model of L2 language processing (Sajavaara, 1986). CONCLUSION
The present study has attempted to find evidence for processing transfer using the Competition Model framework. Test sentences with competing and converging cue orders have attempted to elicit (1) characteristic processing strategies for the native Japanese and English subjects, and (2) evidence of transfer of the identified Japanese processing strategies to the IL subjects' English. Both objectives were met in a limited sense. LI processing biases were clearly evident. The Japanese subjects made greater use of animacy cues, while the English group was much more sensitive to word order manipulation, a finding consistent with a number of earlier studies (Xia-Chun, 1981; Bates et al., 1982; Bates et al., 1984). The IL group exhibited both Japanese LI animacy biases and English L2 word order effects: they were more sensitive to the NVN order than the Japanese subjects, but showed no second noun bias, and they were strongly
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effected by animacy cues though chose inanimate nouns as subjects at the same rate as the English group, though in somewhat different contexts. An important finding in the present study is the split evident within the English group as to the type of strategy used. One subgroup showed a clear preference for Japanese-style animacy-based interpretations, while the other group used strong word order strategies. This within-group variation suggests care must be taken in attempting to identify language-specific processing strategies on the basis of probabilistic tendencies drawn from grouped data. Such reservations notwithstanding, the present study provides evidence that the Competition Model approach can contribute to our understanding of the complexities of LI influence on L2 processing, and that further work in this area is clearly warranted. Further research needs to expand the range of processing tasks investigated beyond the interpretation of actor-agent case relations, taking into account production as well as comprehension aspects of processing. The type of sentence interpretation tasks used here and in similar studies are limited as to the kind of experimental variables that can be manipulated. Grammaticality judgments, elicited imitation tests, and other techniques are all of potential use. Finally, and of particular importance for Interlanguage processing studies, stricter controls for the level of proficiency or degree of bilingualism of the subjects is necessary. In the studies discussed here subject proficiency levels have been controlled for in only general terms, the present study not excepted. Until better assessments of proficiency, either cross-linguistic or bilingual, are available, limits on intrepretability and generalizability will remain. Given the individual processing variation evident, the investigation of bilingual speech processing takes on greater importance (e.g., Wulfeck et al., 1986), as it is this type of data which allows individual processing strategies to be disambiguated from broader cross-language processing strategies. It is toward these bilingual populations that researchers interested in applying the Competition Model framework to L2 processing concerns would do well to turn their attention. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Yoshinori Sasaki for his assistance in collecting and preparing the Japanese data. I would also like to thank Craig Chaudron for his guidance and Tom Grigg for his comments and suggestions. The comments of two anonymous reviewers have improved this paper substantially, and any remaining errors are my own.
NOTES 1. The issue whether "transfer" and "influence" should be distinguished is beyond the scope of the present study. The terms are used interchangeably here. For more on this issue, see Corder (1983) or Kellerman and Smith (1986). 2. A potential source of confusion is S. Felix's use of the term Competition Model to denote his cognitive account of language acquisition (Felix, 1985). The Felix model differs substantially from the model under consideration here. 3. There: were some response "misses" due to technical reasons or the subject's failure
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to respond. Of the total corpus, misses for each group were as follows: English 0.6%; Interlanguage 3.3%; Japanese 0.2%.
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