Processing Japanese adnominal structures: An empirical study of native and non-native speakers' strategies

In Japanese, noun phrases (NP) can be modified by preceding clauses (CL). In this study, four types of noun modifying constructions (NMC) are recognized. In the Regular Relative (RR), the NP is a part of the proposition that the CL expresses. In the Gapless Relative (GR), the NP is a part of the proposition of which an unexpressed verb is also a part. In the Complement (COMP), the NP is the name of what the CL denotes. In the Clause and Noun Host Type (CN), the NP is a name of a participant in the proposition expressed by the CL. Compared to English, the Japanese RR is equivalent to a relative clause and the COMP to a complement with a nominal head. A markedness relation, in terms of the resources required for processing, is proposed to characterize the distinction among the four types. In the absence of prior empirical studies investigating how speakers of Japanese comprehend NMCs, a series of experiments was designed to determine what kinds of cues are used by Japanese native speakers and English speaking learners of Japanese to comprehend NMCs. The experiments involved 23 Japanese native speakers and 11 English Japanese as a second language learners (English JSLs) who were given sets of sentences containing the four types of NMC and were asked to rate them in terms of naturalness and ease of understanding. In addition, English JSLs did a translation task under a time constraint, and finally, both groups carried out a task in which reading speed and probe recognition times were measured. Native speakers use different processing resource domains as a cue, making distinction among the four types as follows: GR involves the largest resource domain and COMP the least, while CN and RR make intermediate demands on processing resources. The same cue is used by English JSLs; additional cues used by English JSLs are the elements involved in forming cohesion between the CL and the NP, such as a gap, semantics of the NP, the NP's status in the proposition, and the number of roles the NP plays. Transfer also plays a role.