A Study of Filler-gap Dependencies and Extractions of English WH-Questions by Chinese English Learners

Abstract

The study aims to investigate and discuss behavioral responses of Chinese English learners to dependencies and WH-extractions in processing of English WH-questions. Special attention is paid to subject extraction and object extraction. Meanwhile, all the target sentences were characterized into those with one clause and those with double clauses due to different dependencies. Using E-Prime, the present study examines whether second language speakers of English with advanced levels turn to working memory in the on-line comprehension of WH-extractions, and to what degree working memory gets involved. Performance was recorded and analyzed related to reaction time (RT) and accuracy to probe into other strategies when participants read. RT, as well as accuracy, is taken as dependent variable. They reflect the difficulty of various aspects in language processing. The findings showed that long-dependency WH-questions with object-extraction are the most memory-costing and time-consuming for Chinese English-majors to process. Male participants, as well as those who have done a better job in test for English major (TEM8), got a higher accuracy. Therefore, the results suggest that not only dependency and type of extraction in WH-questions, but also gender and level of language ability have an influence on the processing