Exploring Relationship of Animacy and Syntactic Cues in Processing Strategies of Second Language Learners

Abstract

This study examines the relationship of animacy andsyntactic cues within language processing strategies of second language learners. Animacyis deeply rooted in the cognitive machinery of language and the syntactic organization is sensitive to the animacy of theentities involved. Thus, the aims of the study are to explore how second language learners weight and integrate the syntactic information during a task where they are processing language, and to investigate the interaction between animacy andsyntactic cues during their syntactic processing. This study has a descriptive and exploratorynature. It is a competition model, Macwhinney, thatis used for the theoretical support, that is a cognitive model, and explains how 2 languagelearners move through their linguistic possibilities in real-time language processing. A total of fifty childrem (25, Girls and 25 boys) had been selected for thisstudy and it was found that convenient random sampling techniques was used to collect the data and data was analyzed with thehelp of SPSS IBM version 22. The dominant behavior of using animacy for processing in the study also highlights the enduring and somewhat invariant tendencies of participants to incorporate animacy information intotheir cognitive processing of language.