The present dissertation has delivered evidence how advanced learners as compared to native speakers of German process discourse in real time. To fulfil this goal, the empirical data provided by L2 learners was contrasted with the data provided by native speakers during reading or listening to coherent texts. I have to acknowledge at this point that current research contains some caveats.
One of the caveats associated with the current research concerns the nature of the stimuli used in both experiments. Even though every endeavour was made to produce most naturalistic discourse context possible, the texts constructed for the experimental purposes were not always licensed from the pragmatic point of view. Indeed, the communicative goals of the used texts were partially surpassed by the necessity of strong control of several variables. In particular, the scenarios were matched by the amount of sentences, the position of the target word and the frequency of prime and target repetitions. Moreover, the vocabulary was strictly controlled for in terms of familiarity and frequency in order to correspond to the
proficiency level of L2 participants3. Therefore, the used textoids4 strongly differed from naturalistic non-manipulated texts.
Since natural discourse is supposed to fulfil not only certain form-related requirements, i.e. be coherent and cohesive, but also specific communicative purposes, e.g.
give a most appropriate description of the situation, be not over- or under-informative, the investigation of more naturalistic discourse might yield somewhat different processing. In the EEG experiment the reading situation differed from habitual reading conditions. In a normal reading situation, readers can return to the segments of the text which were unclear and re-process them. In the reading study, the sentences were presented divided into segments and could not be back-traced and re-processed. Also, the reading pace was pre-determined and could not be adjusted depending on the individual reading speed.
Another caveat concerns the population of bilinguals tested in both studies. All L2 learners were adult late bilinguals who already lived in Germany when the studies were conducted and used their L2 in everyday communication. The L2 proficiency level was controlled for and was homogeneous throughout the L2 sample, however, the influence of the heterogeneous cultural origin of the participants on the obtained results could not be excluded.
The current research could be, therefore, extended in many ways along this line and, for instance, investigate whether the age of L2 initial exposure has an impact on the processing of words in increasing discourse context in L2 as compared to L1 (cf. Weber-Fox & Neville, 1996). Moreover, comparing the results gained from advanced L2 learners in and out of immersion context would allow to make conclusions whether the frequency of L2 usage (apart from proficiency level) also influences the processing of discourse. This direction of research would, moreover, provide empirical evidence whether language processing in German as a foreign language (DaF) differs from language processing in German as a second language (DaZ), provided a strict control of both populations under investigation. Also, it would be useful to conduct a similar study by using a different language to find out whether the reported findings are bound to the domain of German or whether they are language-non-specific.
After the current research has provided empirical evidence for the facilitatory function of semantic cues as part of increased biasing context for the comprehension of novel
3 In spite of the described restrictions, all the scenarios were evaluated as well-formed and plausible by five independent native speakers of German.
4 Highly controlled and matched discourse segments are known as textoids (Hunt, 1993; Graesser, Mills, &
Zwaan, 1997), since they are not as naturalistic and informative as fully valid texts.
bound words, it would be a no less important for the L2 didactics to test the main hypothesis out forward by Röhr (1993) in his theory of premises. He assumed that comprehender’s awareness of the existence of premises and the possibility to use them for inducing the meaning of an upcoming unknown word leads to higher comprehension abilities. Specifically, he suggested that those students who have been taught how to recognize the premises and trained to use them as contextual cues facilitating the comprehension of unknown concepts, are in practice better comprehenders than those students who are not aware of the existence of premises (Röhr 1993, 2000). This hypothesis could be tested by investigation of word processing in two groups of L2 students, those who were institutionally taught and trained to search for and use semantic cues (see Röhr, 1993, for numerous examples of tasks aimed at sensitization of language students towards premises) and a control group who do not possess explicit knowledge of the predictive potential of discourse context (for explicit vs. implicit knowledge, see Paradis, 2005). The results would also clarify whether such strategies of discourse processing as the recognition of the supportive function of contextual details, conscious search for semantic cues and associations and the construction of semantic networks, can and should be institutionally taught, learnt and trained.
In present dissertation, the focus was set on the associative prime-target relationship without semantic similarity, e.g., baker – cake leaving aside the possible categorical relatedness of prime and target without associative connection, e.g. baker – teacher – doctor.
In fact, not all researchers consider this classification unequivocal, hence, there is no common agreement as to whether the priming relationship within such prime-target pairs as baker – cake is in fact pure associative or semantic (Hutchison, 2003; McRae & Boisvert, 1998;, for review see Ferrand & New 2000). However, the majority of existing priming studies (e.g.
Ferrand & New, 2000; Kotz, 2001; Kotz & Elston-Guettler, 2004; Phillips et al., 2004) do report differences between associative and categorical priming effects. Since only associative type of semantic relatedness was investigated in the current research, the obtained results are limited and it is worth extending them to more distantly (e.g. categorically) related concepts.
To conclude, the present dissertation has provided an insight into the on-line approach to the empirical research of bilingual discourse processing. Based on the experimental findings, it could be evidenced that both context type and context size have an impact on the processing of discourse-bound known and novel words in late proficient learners of German.
The comparative discussion of L1 and L2 results has also shown that conclusions drawn from L1 data cannot be directly extended to bilingual populations. By providing empirical data on cognitive discourse processing in L2 which could be practically applied in the domain of second language didactics the current research work also makes an attempt to narrow the gap between psycholinguistics and second language didactics.
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