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Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master's Degree in TEFL

Torabi, Fariba | 2017

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: English
  3. Document No: 50619 (31)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Languages and Linguistics Center
  6. Advisor(s): Salehi, Mohammad
  7. Abstract:
  8. In the last decades, Reaction Time research has been extended to cognitive science and more specifically human information-processing research and has gained momentum (Shim, 1996). The present study examined the reaction time in processing marked and unmarked structures with regard to the four types of conditionals (considered as unmarked, less marked, marked and strongly markedness, respectively) and prepositions (preposition pied piping that is considered as unmarked and preposition stranding as marked). To this end, two softwares were developed for which the items relating to conditionals were chosen from the Bernet’s test (1985) and the ones pertinent to prepositions were taken from Rutherford’s (1982). The sample consisted of seven intact classes including sixty-four Iranian EFL male and female undergraduate students, who belonged to different engineering majors. A MANOVA was conducted and the results revealed that there was a significant difference between different types of conditionals and prepositional structures based on their levels of markedness (p<.05). For conditionals, less marked group (M=1789211.60) had the highest reaction time. This was followed by strongly marked group (M=1717012.36), unmarked (M=1586371.88) and marked group (M=1504046.46), respectively, indicating that participants took more time to process the less marked structures. With regards to prepositions, the unmarked group (M=4828866.54) had a longer reaction time than the marked group (M=4390436.17), indicating that participants spent more time to process the unmarked structure of prepositions
  9. Keywords:
  10. Reaction Time ; Prepositions ; Markedness Theory ; Conditionals ; MANOVA

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