published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

This study focused on the comprehension and cognitive processing of texts in biology by 36 graduate science students for whom Chinese was their first (L1) and English their second language (L2). The students in the study were from two disciplines: one in biology, and the other in engineering. These groups were subdivided into less proficient L2 (i.e., low-intermediate to intermediate) and more proficient L2 group (i.e., high-intermediate to high). From the perspective of a stratified model, the study examined L1 and L2 comprehension of general biology texts. Specifically, it investigated the effects of readers' domain-specific knowledge and language proficiency on various levels of discourse processing. It also examined two methodological issues: the effects of language of recall on processing of semantic and syntactic information from the L2 texts and the validity of using self-rating of text difficulty or content familiarity to index background knowledge. / Domain-specific knowledge was found to affect every aspect of comprehension of semantic information that was assessed in the study for both the L1 and the L2 texts. It also affected efficiency of processing for the L2 texts. Language proficiency, on the other hand, consistently affected lower-level processing. However, it appeared to have few concomitant effects on processing of semantic information. These results were consistent with predictions from stratified models of discourse comprehension in which processing of syntactic and semantic information are viewed as being both multilevel and modular. The results of the study also suggest the importance of investigating background knowledge in content-specific terms. Although the science students generally were comparable both in their knowledge of science text structures and in their patterns of comprehension of different types of semantic information, this comparability did not result in comparable comprehension. Rather, comprehension depended heavily on domain-specific knowledge. / With reference to linguistic distance, the results of this study suggest that caution is needed in applying conclusions drawn from studies of speakers of languages of the same Indo-European family to speakers of languages of greater linguistic distance such as Chinese and English. The lack of production effects observed in this study may be due to differential processing of syntactic information as well as differential processing strategies that many readers reported to have used with different language conditions. Finally, the general discrepancy between perceived text difficulty vs. comprehension and efficiency of processing as assessed by the objective measures suggests caution in using self-rating of text difficulty or content familiarity to index background knowledge.

“Hey can you help me move? I warn you I have a lot of books, though.” When we interpret such sentences we might assume that our friend is implying that there will be some heavy lifting, because she own “a lot of books”. If you’re opposed to heavy lifting, you probably want to know how many books your friend wants you to help her move. While it is easy to determine the quantities picked out by numerals, discovering the meaning of quantifiers, such as “a lot”, is less clear. For example, in a survey people gave different quantities for “a few” and “a lot” depending on the context they were asked about, choosing to give quantities as high as 76 for “a few friends on Facebook” and as low as 4 for “a lot of houses”. I ask what role context plays in these interpretations, and propose two possible hypotheses: the Fixed Quantities Hypothesis, and the Relative Quantities Hypothesis. The Fixed Quantities Hypothesis assumes that these terms pick out an exact range of quantities (e.g., 3-5 for “a few”) and that the effect of context is due to people being pragmatically generous in their interpretations (Leech, 1983; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Lasersohn, 1999). The Relative Quantities Hypothesis instead argues that the ranges picked out by each of the terms is relative to the context, and therefore these terms might be similar to relative gradable adjectives (e.g., the meaning of the word “tall” is dependent on the reference set, e.g., what counts as “tall” is different for a mug versus a building; Kennedy, 2007; Syrett, Kennedy, & Lidz, 2010). I attempt to tease apart these two theories by looking at whether people find certain quantities implausible for some contexts leading them to think a speaker is being sloppy (Experiment 1), whether the context effect persists even under light-to-no pragmatic pressure (Experiment 2), and whether we find the effect of context even with minimal knowledge of novel contexts (Experiment 3). The results favour the Relative Quantities Hypothesis, and I discuss potential future work investigating the role of distributional knowledge on quantifier mappings.

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This thesis has attempted to determine psycholinguistic differences between inner-city retarded children and suburban retarded children. The instruments used in this study are: The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities and The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The subjects used in this study are forty eight-year-old educable mentally retarded children attending special classes in the Indianapolis Public Schools: twenty children from the inner-city and twenty children from suburban schools. Language differences between the two groups are demonstrated.In addition, there is a description of language differences of four subgroups: girls, boys, black children, white children.