How Native Japanese Speakers Solve Ambiguous Relative Clauses in Their L1 and L2: Evidence from the Self-paced Reading of Japanese and English

The present study combined offand on-line tasks to demonstrate how L1 Japanese late intermediate learners of L2 English specify an antecedent of a relative clause (RC) in L1 Japanese and L2 English. When an RC has two candidate antecedents, it is reported that native English speakers prefer attaching an RC to a closer noun phrase (CNP) to itself (recency preference, RP), whereas native Japanese speakers prefer attaching an RC to the most distant noun phrase (DNP) from itself (predicate proximity, PP). Responses to a questionnaire that was administered as part of this study showed a similar preference with regard to RC attachment in L1 Japanese and L2 English. However, in the self-paced reading task, the reading time of RCs semantically biased to DNPs was longer than that of neutral RCs in L2 English, indicating a conflict between RP and PP during the processing of L2 English. The results suggest that native Japanese speakers learning English may unconsciously transfer their attachment principle in L1 Japanese to L2 English.