First and second language speaker understanding of implausible English passives in discourse contexts

We examined how first (L1) and second language (L2) English speakers interpret thematic roles when semantic cues conflict with syntactic cues in discourse contexts. We tested three groups: monolingual English speakers, Taiwanese Mandarin-speaking and Japanese-speaking L2 learners of English. Participants read written vignettes containing target sentences with by -phrases (e.g., Jerry was robbed by the thief). In these sentences, the embedded by -phrase noun was either semantically congruent or incongruent with the previous and subsequent discourse context. An offline comprehension task measured interpretations of the agent. Following predictions from the Competition Model and the Shallow Structure Hypothesis, we tested whether L2 speakers would rely more heavily on semantic cues as a general rule, or whether differences in how L1–L2 structures differ within and between participants would influence comprehension of the agents. Results from Bayesian multilevel regression models indicated that L2 speakers were more likely to choose agents based on semantic cues when compared to L1 speakers. No strong effects of L1–L2 cue similarity were obtained. Our results lend new support to the view that L2 speakers rely more heavily on discourse-level semantic cues than L1 speakers, highlighting the need for further research on cue competition in discourse contexts.