Volume 9, Issue 4, December 2014, Pages 1830–1856
Marwa Mekni Toujani1
1 Higher Institute of Languages, Tunis, Tunisia
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Three experiments based on the text-change paradigm examined the effect of sentential load, semantic relatedness/unrelatedness, and sex on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that there is no significant effect of sentential load on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. On the other hand, they confirmed the existence of a significant effect of semantic relatedness/unrelatedness on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. Experiment 3 consolidated the results obtained from experiment 1 and 2 and revealed that load is neither localized at the embedded verb nor at the adverb phrase positions. Finally, sex proved not to have an effect on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. The present study showed that all embedded relative clauses and not just object-extracted relative clauses decrease deep processing.
Author Keywords: Depth of lexical-semantic processing, shallow, deep, underspecification, sentential load, syntactic complexity, referential load, semantic relatedness/unrelatedness.
Marwa Mekni Toujani1
1 Higher Institute of Languages, Tunis, Tunisia
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Three experiments based on the text-change paradigm examined the effect of sentential load, semantic relatedness/unrelatedness, and sex on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that there is no significant effect of sentential load on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. On the other hand, they confirmed the existence of a significant effect of semantic relatedness/unrelatedness on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. Experiment 3 consolidated the results obtained from experiment 1 and 2 and revealed that load is neither localized at the embedded verb nor at the adverb phrase positions. Finally, sex proved not to have an effect on depth of lexical-semantic processing in L1 and L2 reading. The present study showed that all embedded relative clauses and not just object-extracted relative clauses decrease deep processing.
Author Keywords: Depth of lexical-semantic processing, shallow, deep, underspecification, sentential load, syntactic complexity, referential load, semantic relatedness/unrelatedness.
How to Cite this Article
Marwa Mekni Toujani, “The Effect of Sentential Load, Semantic Relatedness/Unrelatedness, and Sex on Depth of Lexical-Semantic Processing in L1 and L2 reading,” International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 1830–1856, December 2014.
