This study examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by focus processing among first language (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners of French. Participants read wh-questions containing explicit focus marking, followed by responses instantiating contrastive and informational focus. We hypothesized that L2 proficiency would modulate nativelikeness in L2 processing. For the L1 and L2 groups, widespread word-long positive shifts reflected the processing of nouns receiving informational and contrastive focus. Nouns receiving contrastive focus showed an increased anterior negativity compared to informational focus for both groups. Second language proficiency modulated the amplitude of this negativity effect, and subgroup analyses of low- and high-proficiency L2 learners showed no significant effect of focus condition among low-proficiency learners. This modulatory relationship between L2 proficiency and nativelikeness of processing is consistent with the dynamic sequence of L2 ERPs observed for morphosyntactic processing and extends those findings to the syntax-pragmatics interface phenomenon of focus processing.

Previous studies using judgments of morphosyntactic errors have shown mixed evidence for a critical period for L2 acquisition (e.g., Birdsong & Molis 2001, Johnson & Newport 1989

In this paper, we review the current state of the second language (L2) processing literature and report data suggesting that this subfield should now turn its attention to working memory capacity as an important factor modulating the possibility of (near)-native-like L2 processing. We first review three major overarching accounts of L2 processing (Clahsen et al. 2006a Performance similarities between non-native and native speakers. Lingua 120. 901-931) and frame their predictions in terms of the qualitative and quantitative differences in processing expected between native speakers and L2 learners. We next review event-related potential (ERP) research on L2 processing and argue that the field's current understanding of qualitative and quantitative differences in ERPs warrants an additional focus on variables other than L2 proficiency that can also predict individual differences in L2 processing. Recent L2 research (relying on ERPs, self-paced reading, and other online measures) suggests that the most promising such variable is working memory (WM) capacity. We summarize results from our recent L2 WM studies -and report new ERP findings -that point to the possibility of a modulatory effect of WM capacity on the nativelikeness of L2 processing. We conclude that the study of WM capacity is the logical next step for this L2 processing subfield.

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Lambrecht posits the existence of language-specific constraints on focus marking, and the constraints specific to French are predicted to accord a privileged focus marking role to subject clefts. I hypothesised that a higher occurrence of subject clefts compared to object clefts, as well as a corresponding processing advantage for subject clefts, would support Lambrecht's account. Results are presented from a self-paced reading task indicating that French subject clefts are processed online more easily than object clefts, and that infelicitous clefts impede performance on an offline comprehension task, much as has been previously found for English. Moreover, corpus data are presented suggesting a correspondence between subject clefts' frequency in spoken French and their processing advantage compared to object clefts. This account is in line with Lambrecht's description of the constraints on focus structure, and it suggests that cleft type has more influence on processing than does felicity of focus structure, whereas felicity is more important with respect to ultimate comprehension.