Attachment Preferences of L2 Learners in a Production Task

Abstract

This study investigated whether L2 learners of English process sentences semantically or syntactically when they areengaged in production rather than comprehension. Thirty-four Persian speaking second language learners of Englishacross two proficiency levels participated in a production task which involved completing sentences such as Andyshot the man with… with a determiner phrase (DP) of their own choice. In majority of cases, the participants acrossboth proficiency levels supplied DPs that were semantically related to the verb (i.e., semantic-based processing). Thefindings are argued to support the constraint-based theories and shallow structure hypothesis.