O n f e r e n c e

Input Processing: first noun bias 
Finally, VanPatten also proposes principles of input processing based on learners' bias 
toward interpreting the first noun as subject. Research suggests that this bias is not 
dependent on L1 (Ervin-Tripp, 1974). 
8.
The First Noun Principle:
Learners tend to process the first noun or pronoun they 
encounter in a sentence as the subject or agent. 
Automatic assessment of this principle is dependent on the availability of a reliable 
syntactic parser.
11
Given a syntactic parse of a given sentence, one need merely check 
whether the first noun or pronoun is the subject. This measure is most useful for target 
languages with variable word order, such as many Slavic languages. For example, learners 
would sometimes interpret the Russian sentence 
Mariju.
ACC
videl Boris.
NOM
“Boris saw 
Maria” as “Maria saw Boris” because 
Marija
is the first word, ignoring the nominative and 
accusative case marking. 
Depending on the target grammatical structure, this tendency may or may not be seen as 
beneficial. For instance, if the learner is working on past tense marking, then the possible 
misinterpretation of this sentence would distract from the learner’s goal. On the other 
hand, if the learner is working on case marking, then an exercise based on this sentence 
would highlight the importance of case marking 
–
as opposed to word order 
–
to the 
learner. In this case, the possibility of misinterpretation could arguably be an important 
pedagogical tool. 
It should be noted that research has shown that the First Noun Principle does not always 
hold. Principles (9)-(11) are given by VanPatten to outline some major exceptions. 
11
Some languages with overt case-marking can effectively identify a subject with only part-of-speech tags
. 

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-297- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be 
9.
The Lexical Semantics Principle:
Learners may rely on lexical semantics, where 
possible, instead of on word order to interpret sentences. 
10.
The Event Probabilities Principle:
Learners may rely on event probabilities, where 
possible, instead of word order to interpret sentences. 
11.
The Contextual Constraint Principle:
Learners may rely less on the First Noun Principle 
if preceding context constrains the possible interpretation of a clause or sentence. 
These principles suggest that learners are able to self-correct their own misinterpretations 
resulting from the First Noun Principle only when it results in infelicitous meanings. 
Although principles (9)-(11) can collectively help identify sentences that resist the First 
Noun Principle, it is not obvious what is gained by knowing this information, e.g. with what 
kind of target language structure this is pedagogically useful information. Furthermore, 
since automatic analysis of principles (9)-(11) would require high-level NLP tasks for which 
state-of-the-art results are not reliable, it is unlikely that their implementation could 
improve OTI performance.