The Influence Of Working Memory Capacity,Animacy And Verb Type On The Processing Of English Relative Clauses

In the literature,there is still no consensus on the factors of influencing relative clauses.Some scholars believe that animacy has an impact on the processing of relative clauses(Weckerly & Kutas,1999;Traxler et al.,2002;Huang,2013;De De,2015;Hu& Zhao,2017;Mac Donald et al.,2020;Cai,2020).However,Bao’(2013)research indicates that animacy has no significant effect on the acquisition of relative clauses.Some scholars show that working memory capacity affects the processing of English object-relative clauses(Andrews et al.,2006;Dai,2011;Suda,2015;Rakhlin et al.,2016;Stanford&Delage,2020),but other researchers think that working memory capacity has no significant effect on the processing of relative clauses(Traxler et al.,2005;Traxler,2007).There are also studies that demonstrate that the processing of relative clauses is affected by verb type(Huang &Wen,2012;Yao,2013).In the literature,we found that only Traxler et al.(2005)is similar to our study.However,Traxler et al.(2005)tested the processing of relative clauses by English native speakers through three eye tracker experiments,and the working memory capacity by reading span test.In order to compare the difference in the processing of relative clauses between native speakers and L2 learners,our study takes the L2 learners,who are 89 students from two classes of a high school in Zhangzhou as the research subjects,whose language proficiency was tested,working memory span was measured and reading time and accuracy rate in processing relative clauses was collected and whose experimental data was dealt with double and three factor analysis of variance.This study intends to answer the following questions:(1)Compared with native speakers,does working memory capacity have any influence on processing relative clauses in high school students? If so,is it subject preference or object preference?(2)Compared with native speakers,do working memory capacity and animacy have any effect on processing relative clauses in high school students?(3)Compared with native speakers,do animacy and verb type affect processing relative clauses in high school students?The major results of the study are as follows:In Experiment 1,working memory capacity and clause type were used as independent variables to collect the accuracy rate and response time of subjects when reading subject-object relative clauses.2x2 two-factor analysis of variance was used to analyze the data to explore whether there was any difference in response time between subject-object relative clauses and subject-object relative clauses in different working memory capacity groups.In terms of the accuracy of grammatical judgment,only the main effect of clause type reached a significant level with F(1,1007)=4.039 and p=0.045,which indicated that the accuracy of grammatical judgment was related to clause type.At the same time,the average accuracy of subject-relative clauses in high and low capacity groups was higher than that of object-relative clauses(75.44% > 71.49%;77.54% > 70.29%),indicating that there were significant differences in the processing of subject-object relative clauses among L2 learners.In the response time of Critical Region,the main effect of working memory capacity reached a significant level with F(1,1007)=13.711 and p=0.000,and the main effect of clause type reached a significant level with F(1,1007)=455.788 and p=0.000.In addition,there was a significant interaction between working memory capacity and clause type with F(1,1007)=3.884 and p=0.000.The average response time of object-relative clause of high and low working memory groups in Critical Region was longer than that of subject-relative clause(1513.57 ms > 1168.46 ms,1614.62 ms > 1199.31ms),and in object relative clauses,the response time of the high-capacity group was shorter than that of the low-capacity group(1168.46 ms < 1199.31 ms and 1575.57 ms < 1614.62 ms).This indicated that the response time in Critical Region was affected by clause type and working memory capacity,and the response time of Critical Region in processing object-relative clauses was greater than subject-relative clauses,indicating that there was difficulty in processing object relative clauses.In experiment 2,working memory capacity,animacy and clause type were used independent variables,to test the accuracy rate and response time of subjects when reading subject-object relative clauses.2x2 two-factor analysis of variance was used to analyze the data to explore the difference in the response time of processing subject-object relative clauses by different working memory capacity and animacy.In the accuracy of grammatical judgment,the main effect of clause type reached a significant level with F(1,1175)=5.063 and p=0.025.In the response time of Critical Region,the main effects of working memory capacity,animacy and clause type on the response time of relative clauses all reached significant level with F(1,1175)=6.651 and p=0.010,F(1,1175)=13.545 and p=0.000,F(1,1175)=10.465 and p=0.001.In terms of interaction,there was significant interaction between animacy and clause type with F(1,1175)=8.385 and p=0.004.In addition,there was significant interaction between working memory capacity,animacy and clause type with F(1,1175)=4.534 and p=0.033.When the antecedent was animate,the response time of the object-relative clauses in the high and low capacity groups was longer than that of the subject-relative clauses(1500.29 ms >1386.66ms;1510.29 ms > 1425.07ms),in the high capacity group,when the antecedent is inanimate,the response time of the object relative clauses is greatly reduced,which was shorter than the subject-relative clauses(1341.49 ms VS1390.85ms),while the low capacity group still embodied the object-relative penalty(1455.80 ms VS 1395.43ms).As the interaction was significant,the author conducted a simple effect analysis on it.The results showed that the working memory capacity has a significant effect on the relative clauses with inanimate antecedents(p=0.019),which was embodied in the object relative clauses(p=0.003).Animacy had a significant effect on object-relative clauses(p=0.000).It can be concluded that high working memory capacity has a greater effect on the inanimate object-relative clauses.At the same time,the influence of animacy(p=0.000)and clause type(p=0.002)extended to the response time in the Critical Region of the main verb,and there was a significant interaction between the two variables with F(1,1175)=12.294 and p =0.000.In experiment 3,firstly,animacy and clause types were used independent variables,to test the response time of subjects when reading subject-object relative clauses.2x2 two-factor analysis of variance was used to analyze the data to explore the difference in the response time of processing subject-object relative clauses by animacy.In response time,the main effect of animacy was significant with F(1,1847)=5.382 and p =0.020;The main effect of clause type also reached a significant level with F(1,1847)=35.157 and p=0.000;There was a interaction between animacy and clause type with F(1,1847)=22.950 and p=0.000.In order to explore whether the previous experimental results came from the lexical attributes of verb in relative clauses,the author used 2x2x2 two-factor ANOVA to sort out and analyze the data from Experiment 2 and Experiment 3,and analyzed the influence of animacy and different verb types on the response time of Critical Region of subject-object relative clauses.In the comparative analysis of Experiment 2 and Experiment 3,there was no significant effect of verb type with F(1,3023)=2.945 and p=0.086;but animacy and clause type reached a significant level with F(1,3023)=6.340 and p=0.012,F(1,3023)=20.467 and p=0.000;In terms of interactions,the interaction effect between verb type and clause type was significant with F(1,3023)=4.215 and p=0.040;The interaction effect between animacy and clause type was also significant with F(1,3023)=14.132 and p=0.000.As the interaction was significant,the author had carried out a simple effect analysis on it.The results showed that the verb type had a significant influence on the object-relative clause(p=0.048),and the clause type had a significant difference on both types of verb.The theme-experiencer verb(p=0.000)was affected greatly compared with the concrete action verb(p=0.048).Animacy had a significant effect on object-relative clauses(p=0.000).The research shows:(1)Compared with native speakers,the high capacity group and the low capacity group of second language learners have significant effect on processing subject-object relative clauses.Specifically,the high capacity group is faster than the low capacity group in processing subject-object relative clauses.There was no significant difference in the working memory capacity of native speakers in the processing of object-relative clauses.However,both native speakers and second language learners have advantages in processing subject relative clauses,that is,they both process subject-relative clauses faster than object-relative clauses and have higher accuracy.(2)Like native speakers,the high capacity group in the second language learners process easier in the inanimate object-relative clauses than the low capacity group,but the high capacity group still had difficulty in processing object-relative clauses under the animate condition,indicating that the working memory capacity and animacy had a significant effect on processing subject-object relative clauses.(3)Compared with native speakers,animacy has a significant influence on the processing of relative clauses under specific action verb in second language learners;Similarly,verb type and animacy have significant effects on object-relative clauses,respectively,and clause type has significant effects on theme-experiencer verb and concrete action verb.Therefore,the verb type did not have the main effect,but affects the relative clause processing together with the clause type.Animacy,on the other hand,had a major effect on the processing of relative clauses together with clause type.Therefore,educators should train students’ memory ability by using operation span and improve their working memory capacity effectively.Guide the students to use the superficial information such as animacy to analyze the relative clauses,and pay attention to the phenomenon of object-relative penalty;At the same time,educators should carry out targeted training on the verb type of the relative clauses,avoid forming the phenomenon of verb preference in learning,and master the relative clauses comprehensively,so as to develop students’ ability in processing subject and object relative clauses.