Kim, Eunah. 2019. Integration of Verb Subcategorization Information in L2 English Sentence Processing by Korean Learners: An Eye-Tracking Study. Language Information 29. 05-25. The present study tested whether adult Korean learners of English are able to immediately integrate verb-specific structural information (i.e. subcategorization restrictions imposed by individual verbs) as they read sentences in English. Seventeen native speakers of English and 22 Korean learners of English participated in an eye-tracking experiment, in which they read English sentences that contained a wh-dependency between the head NP and the verb of a relative clause. The relative clause verbs consisted of three types that varied in terms of subcategorization properties: transitive verbs that take an NP complement more often than a PP complement, transitive verbs that take a PP complement more often than an NP complement, and unaccusative verbs that are strictly intransitive. The results suggest that whereas native speakers use verb subcategorization information in making initial parsing decisions regarding wh-dependency formation, Korean learners are only able to integrate the information in later stages of sentence processing. Possible accounts of this discrepancy in the time course of verb information integration are discussed.
Key words: L2 sentence processing, verb subcategorization information,
wh-dependency, Korean learners of English, eye-tracking