Grammaticality judgments in a second language: Influences of age of acquisition and native language

Abstract

Native Spanish early and late acquirers of English as well as native Vietnamese early and child acquirers of English made grammaticality judgments of sentences in their second language. Native Spanish early acquirers were not distinguishable from native English speakers, whereas native Spanish late acquirers had difficulty with all aspects of the grammar tested except word order. Native Vietnamese early acquirers had difficulty with those aspects of English that differ markedly from Vietnamese. Native Vietnamese child acquirers had more generalized problems, similar to those of native Spanish late acquirers. Thus, native language appeared to make a difference for early acquirers, whereas a later age of acquisition caused a more general problem. A processing-based model focusing on the difficulty non-native language learners have in rapidly decoding surface form is offered as a possible explanation for both effects.

ERPs reveal comparable syntactic sentence processing in native and non-native readers of English

“…This point is quite relevant in tasks that include a delayed response as the response is moved outside the realm of languagespecific processing. Lastly, some authors have argued that the grammaticality judgment task may not be a good measure of L2 linguistic knowledge (McDonald, 2000) or may over-/ underestimate L2 syntactic knowledge (Juffs, 2004). In particular, McDonald (2000) pointed out that variables such as syntactic rule types or interpretation of ungrammatical constructions may alter the results of a grammaticality judgment task and renders the task unreliable.…”

Effect of Age in Second Language Acquisition: A Critical Review from the Perspective of Critical Period Hypothesis and Ultimate Attainment

“…According to Flege (2002), even though individuals are exposed to an L2, in an L2 environment, young children often end up speaking the L2 with a non-native accent. The above-mentioned notion was well backed by a study by McDonald (2000), in which it was found that early exposure of English from a Spanish-speaking background had clear advantages on the grammatical judgment test and were able to perform to native levels.…”

Yabancı Dilde Duygusal Dil Algısı, İfade Edilmesi ve Dil Eğitimindeki Önemi

“…Son yıllarda hız kazanan beyindilbilimi ve psikodilbilim çalışmaları iki dili beyinde bilgi işlemleme olarak ele alarak bu olgunun açıklanmasında önemli veriler sağlamıştır (McDonald, 2000;Hahne, 2001;Wartenburger vd., 2003;Felser ve Roberts, 2007;Jiang, 2007;Weber ve Lavric, 2008;Saur vd., 2009;Guo vd., 2009;Mergen, 2010). Ancak dilin dilbilgisi, sesbilgisi, sözcükbilgisi gibi özellikleri açısından olduğu kadar duygusal içeriği açısından da ele alınması bu çalışmalara ayrı bir bakış açısı sağlamıştır.…”

“…Beyindilbilimi ve psikodilbilim alanında yapılan çalışmalara bakıldığında, anadilinin ediniminden sonra formal olarak öğrenilen dilin anadili konuşucularından farklı işlemlendiği görülmektedir (McDonald, 2000;Hahne, 2001;Wartenburger vd., 2003;Felser ve Roberts, 2007;Jiang, 2007;Weber ve Lavric, 2008;Saur vd., 2009;Guo vd., 2009;Mergen, 2010). İkinci dilini anadilinden sonra ve formal eğitimle öğrenen bireylerde duygu içerikli dilin algılanması ve üretimi yukarıda sözü edilen farklılıklardan nasıl etkilenmektedir ?…”