Does Dutch L1 Influence occur in the Interpretation of L2 English Sentences?
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2016-07-01
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en
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The English language has several universal quantifiers, for example any and all. In ambiguous sentences such as Every girl rides a horse these quantifiers can be hard to interpret. For native speakers, it is not clear whether the every girl rides on her own horse or whether they all share a horse, without any context. The Dutch counterpart (Elk meisje rijdt op een paard) is less hard to interpret for native speakers. Many native speakers of Dutch will interpret this sentence as meaning that each girl rides a different horse. This difference most likely comes from the contrast between scope- rigid and word-order-rigid languages. What does this difference mean for second language learners? Previous research showed that ESL learners are often influenced by their native language, so does this also happen with quantifier ambiguity? The two languages seem to differ in their degree of scope rigidness. This difference is tested first. Secondly, a group of Dutch ESL learners’ data is analysed to see whether they show L1 influence by comparing their data with data of native speakers of English.
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