Transfer in Vietnamese-English bilingualism : prosody effects in the interpretation of relative clauses

Abstract

This thesis examined the interpretation of ambiguous sentences with relative clauses (RCs) in English as a second language (L2). In <i>Jimmy met the brother of the engineer who has a smart dog</i>, the RC <i>who has a smart dog</i> can refer to either the first noun phrase (NP1; <i>the brother</i>) or the second one (NP2; <i>the engineer</i>). Previous research has shown that, although L2 learners of English often transfer their interpretation for these sentences from their first language (L1), they can use prosodic cues, such as pauses, to infer their intended meaning. However, most of the previous studies focused on L1-L2 pairings with different default interpretation preferences. It is unclear what learners’ interpretations are when L1 and L2 have the same default interpretation preference. This thesis addresses this gap by examining how Vietnamese learners of English interpret RCs, using a sentence interpretation task with auditory stimuli. In both Vietnamese and English, the default interpretation is the one where the RC refers to NP2. In the task, participants (16 English native speakers, 15 Vietnamese learners of English) were presented with ambiguous sentences containing RCs recorded in three ways: with no pauses, with a pause after NP1, or with a pause after NP2. While a pause after NP1 is more likely to yield the interpretation that the RC attaches to NP2, a pause after NP2 is more likely to yield the interpretation that the RC attaches to NP1. The results indicate that English native speakers and advanced learners, but not intermediate learners, showed sensitivity to the use of pauses for disambiguation. For sentences with no pauses, both native speakers and learners preferred the interpretation where the RC refers to NP2, consistent with the literature.