2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Depth of semantic processing by Japanese EFL learners focusing on anaphora resolution

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23720293
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Foreign language education
Research Institution	Tokyo University of Science
Principal Investigator	HIJIKATA Yuko 東京理科大学, 経営学部, 講師 (10548390)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2013
Keywords	読解 / 照応理解 / 動詞
Research Abstract	When we identify what the pronouns refer to in "Roy questioned Anthony because he ..." or "Susan praised Diane because she ...," our processing is affected by the verbs' implicit causality information (Stewart et al., 2000). The verb "question" makes the pronoun "he" refer to Roy (NP1-biased), while "praise" tends to make "she" refer to Diane (NP2-biased). This study examined the influence of implicit causality information on L2 anaphor resolution. The results indicat that Japanese learners of English could not use the verbs' implicit causality information.

(1 results)