• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.27-40
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• 2020

In this paper, we investigate the correlation between the amount of English sentences that Korean English learners (L2ers) are exposed to and their sentence processing patterns by examining what Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) language models (LMs) can learn about implicit syntactic relationship: that is, the filler-gap dependency. The filler-gap dependency refers to a relationship between a (wh-)filler, which is a wh-phrase like 'what' or 'who' overtly in clause-peripheral position, and its gap in clause-internal position, which is an invisible, empty syntactic position to be filled by the (wh-)filler for proper interpretation. Here to implement L2ers' English learning, we build LSTM LMs that in turn learn a subset of the known restrictions on the filler-gap dependency from English sentences in the L2 corpus that L2ers can potentially encounter in their English learning. Examining LSTM LMs' behaviors on controlled sentences designed with the filler-gap dependency, we show the characteristics of L2ers' sentence processing using the information-theoretic metric of surprisal that quantifies violations of the filler-gap dependency or wh-licensing interaction effects. Furthermore, comparing L2ers' LMs with native speakers' LM in light of processing the filler-gap dependency, we not only note that in their sentence processing both L2ers' LM and native speakers' LM can track abstract syntactic structures involved in the filler-gap dependency, but also show using linear mixed-effects regression models that there exist significant differences between them in processing such a dependency.