Слюсарь Наталия Анатольевна

Text reading in English as a second language: evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

2023 · ARTICLE · en

Research into bilingual reading and second language (L2) reading acquisition is an exponentially growing field. Yet, it still suffers from a relatively short supply of comparable, ecologically valid data from readers representing a variety of first languages (L1). This data scarcity, coupled with high heterogeneity of methods, tasks and populations in the present literature, hinders building of general theories. The present paper addresses this need while pursuing a central question for the research field: what factors determine reading proficiency in L2? We present a new data resource called MECO L2 (Multilingual Eye Movements Corpus), a rich behavioral eye-tracking record of text reading in English as L2 among 485 university student speakers of 11 different L1s. Additionally, MECO L2 includes a test battery of component skills of reading and allows for a comparison of the participants’ reading performance in their L1 and L2. This data resource enabled a new large-scale cross-sample analysis of the predictors of L2 reading fluency and comprehension. We quantified the contributions to L2 reading behavior stemming from four key proposed sources of variance: individual L1 reading behavior, proficiency in L2 component skills of reading, extralinguistic factors, and the L1 of the readers. Among major findings was (i) a fundamental contrast between the determinants of L2 reading fluency versus comprehension accuracy, (ii) high within-participant consistency in the real-time strategy of reading in L1 and L2, and (iii) an unexpectedly small role played by the L1 versus L2 distinction in explaining variance in L2 reading behavior. We conclude by reviewing the implications of these findings to theories of L2 acquisition and discussing how the new data resource and the analyses it makes possible may support the progress in studies of L2 reading.

Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

2023 · ARTICLE · en

Research into bilingual reading and second language (L2) reading acquisition is an exponentially growing field. Yet, it still suffers from a relatively short supply of comparable, ecologically valid data from readers representing a variety of first languages (L1). This data scarcity, coupled with high heterogeneity of methods, tasks and populations in the present literature, hinders building of general theories. The present paper addresses this need while pursuing a central question for the research field: what factors determine reading proficiency in L2? We present a new data resource called MECO L2 (Multilingual Eye Movements Corpus), a rich behavioral eye-tracking record of text reading in English as L2 among 485 university student speakers of 11 different L1s. Additionally, MECO L2 includes a test battery of component skills of reading and allows for a comparison of the participants’ reading performance in their L1 and L2. This data resource enabled a new large-scale cross-sample analysis of the predictors of L2 reading fluency and comprehension. We quantified the contributions to L2 reading behavior stemming from four key proposed sources of variance: individual L1 reading behavior, proficiency in L2 component skills of reading, extralinguistic factors, and the L1 of the readers. Among major findings was (i) a fundamental contrast between the determinants of L2 reading fluency versus comprehension accuracy, (ii) high within-participant consistency in the real-time strategy of reading in L1 and L2, and (iii) an unexpectedly small role played by the L1 versus L2 distinction in explaining variance in L2 reading behavior. We conclude by reviewing the implications of these findings to theories of L2 acquisition and discussing how the new data resource and the analyses it makes possible may support the progress in studies of L2 reading.

The many facets of agreement

2023 · BOOK · en

Agreement is a phenomenon that spans multiple areas of linguistic theorizing. On the one hand, agreement has been regarded as purely syntactic/morphological phenomenon because it has no clear contribution to meaning. However, this clashes with the observation that agreement may also influence interpretation in subtle ways, allowing languages to express nuances in meaning that would otherwise get lost. The book addresses the phenomenon of agreement and its place in the grammar from multiple linguistic perspectives. The individual chapters in this book investigate the question what we can learn about the general process of agreement based on the detailed study of its syntax, semantics and morphology, including its production/processing by the human brain.

Gender variation and gender markedness in Russian nouns

2023 · ARTICLE · en

In this paper, we analyze different factors affecting gender assignment in Russian nouns. We conducted two studies combining experimental, dictionary, and corpus data (relying both on traditional corpora and on the web-as-a-corpus approach). The first study is dedicated to gender assignment to expressive nouns in a situation when the gender of the base noun and the expressive suffix give contradictory cues. We demonstrated extensive gender variation in these cases and estimated the role of different factors affecting it. The gender of the base noun and the inflection associated with the expressive suffix appeared to be most important. Animacy is also relevant (certain options are possible only for nouns denoting people), but statistically insignificant. The second study is on gender assignment to nouns that have a zero inflection in nominative singular and a palatalized or alveolo-palatal stem-final consonant. In the previous studies, it was noted that the phonological properties of this consonant affect the gender distribution in these nouns. Our data confirmed this generalization and provided several new insights. We also demonstrated that native Russian speakers are sensitive to it. We discuss the implications of our results for different approaches in theoretical morphology and focus on gender markedness analyzing a special status of masculine gender.

Measuring Affective Responses to Russian Words: Sliding Scale for Valence Scores

2023 в печати · ARTICLE · en

The affective meanings of words are largely used by researchers in studying emotions, moods, word recognition, and memory. In traditional psychology and psycholinguistics, emotional meanings are classified as valence (pleasantness), arousal (intensity), and dominance (degree of control). Speakers’ reactions to stimuli against these dimensions are most often described with the help of standardized scales (Davitz 1964; Osgood et al. 1957; Mehrabian, Russell, 1974; Green, Cliff 1997). Those scales have been vastly applied to English words, however, no such standardized scales have yet been developed for describing affective meaning for Russian. The aim of this study is to investigate the emotional ratings of 280 Russian nouns, identify the factors influencing them, and to evaluate their linguistic specificity/universality, as compared with the data available for the English language.

The role of case syncretism in sentence processing

2023 · CHAPTER · en

In many languages that have morphological case, syncretism is found: some affixes are used for different cases inside one paradigm (intra-paradigmatic syncretism) or across paradigms (trans-paradigmatic syncretism). Intra-paradigmatic syncretism results in morphologically ambiguous, or syncretic, forms: e.g. the form stoly from the noun stol ‘table’ is used both in nominative and in accusative plural. The affix -y is used in nominative and accusative plural, as well as in genitive singular in the nouns from other inflectional classes (e.g. rozy from roza ‘rose’), which gives us an example of trans-paradigmatic syncretism. This chapter focuses on the role of syncretism in processing, synthesizing the data from several experimental studies on Russian that I conducted with my coauthors. Many effects discussed below have been observed in Russian for the first time and are interesting and unexpected both for theoretical morphology and for psycholinguistic models. In section 1.1, I discuss the relevant features of the Russian nominal and adjectival inflection. In section 1.2, I introduce the previous experimental studies in which case syncretism played a role. In section 1.3, our experimental studies are briefly outlined, highlighting the main questions addressed in this chapter.

Sentence comprehension test for Russian: A tool to assess syntactic competence

2023 · ARTICLE · en

Although all healthy adults have advanced syntactic processing abilities in their native language, psycholinguistic studies report extensive variation among them. However, very few tests were developed to assess this variation, presumably, because when adult native speakers focus on syntactic processing, not being distracted by other tasks, they usually reach ceiling performance. We developed a Sentence Comprehension Test for the Russian language aimed to fill this gap. The test captures variation among participants and does not show ceiling effects. The Sentence Comprehension Test includes 60 unambiguous grammatically complex sentences and 40 control sentences that are of the same length, but are syntactically simpler. Every sentence is accompanied by a comprehension question targeting potential syntactic processing problems and interpretation errors associated with them. Grammatically complex sentences were selected on the basis of the previous literature and then tested in a pilot study. As a result, six constructions that trigger the largest number of errors were identified. For these constructions, we also analyzed which ones are associated with the longest word-by-word reading times, question answering times and the highest error rates. These differences point to different sources of syntactic processing difficulties and can be relied upon in subsequent studies. We conducted two experiments to validate the final version of the test. Getting similar results in two independent experiments, as well as in two presentation modes (reading and listening modes are compared in Experiment 2) confirms its reliability. In Experiment 1, we also showed that the results of the test correlate with the scores in the verbal working memory span test.

Gender variation in indeclinable inanimate nouns and gender markedness in modern Russian

2023 · ARTICLE · en

In this paper, the results of a large web-corpus study on gender of Russian inanimate indeclinable common nouns are presented. In most cases, neuter is assigned to indeclinables as a default. However, morphophonological and semantic analogy may lead to feminine and masculine gender assignment. An extensive variation is observed in the whole group of indeclinables and for particular words, which is much larger than anything that can be found in indeclinable nouns. These data support the idea that both masculine and neuter genders have a special status in the Russian gender system (Magomedova & Slioussar 2023). Masculine tends to be chosen in case of conflicting gender cues. When there are no strong cues pointing to any gender, neuter is assigned as the default option. The results of the study are hardly compatible with various structural approaches to gender assignment, but can be accounted for in competition-based models.

Expanding horizons of cross-linguistic research on reading: The Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus (MECO)

2022 · ARTICLE · en

Trans-paradigmatic syncretism in case form processing in Russian

2022 · ARTICLE · en