Processamento de orações relativas ambíguas com NPS complexos de substância em aprendizes de inglês como L2

Abstract

The main goal of this final paper, through the Experimental Psycholinguistics field, is to investigate the processing of relative clauses in Brazilians speakers of English as a foreign language in an advanced level of proficiency. The basis of the theory for this research goes on Frazier (1987), who launches the Garden Path theory, the Minimal Attachment and the Late Closure principle for better comprehension towards the human syntactical processor, the parser. For further understanding on relative clauses processing, Frazier & Clifton (1996, 1997), formulated the Construal Hypothesis, whereupon, Gilboy, Sopena, Clifton & Frazier (1995) bring up the Referentiality Principle, whereby restrictive relative clauses seek preferably cores that are referential, in other words, when it introduces a Determinant. This principle was formulated in order to explain the relative clauses interpretation through the parser. Under this assumption, this research attempts to better understand about the Referentiality Principle. In order to collect data, it was applied an off-line reading experiment in shape of questionnaire. In this experiment, the referentiality was manipulated emerging two experimental conditions: referential N2 and non-referential N2. For data analysis, it was used the chi-squared test. The experimental data showed that in N2NR condition, outcomes showed significant of the relative clause attachment to N1. Concerning the N2R condition it was found meaningful results related to the relative clause attachment to the N2. Observing through the Chi-Square Test of Homogeneity, the N2 demonstrated greater meaningful outcome on the N2R condition than on the N2NR condition. Therefore, it is clear that the referentiality of information has, in fact, a great potential to influence the preference for the relative clause attachment.