Late L2ers can acquire grammatical features that do not occur in their L1: Evidence from the effect of animacy on verb agreement in L1 Chinese

Abstract

Second language (L2) learners often have persistent difficulty with agreement between the number of the subject and the number of the verb. This study tested whether deviant L2 verb number agreement reflects maturational constraints on acquiring new grammatical features or resource limitations that impede access to the representations of L2 grammatical features. L1-Chinese undergraduate students at three age of arrival (AoA) levels were tested for online verb agreement accuracy by completing preambles in three animacy combinations: animate-inanimate [AI; e.g., The officer(s) from the station(s)], inanimate-animate [IA; e.g., The letters from the lawyer(s)], and inanimate-inanimate [II; e.g., The poster(s) from the museum(s)]. AI should be less costly to process than IA or II sequences, because animacy supports the subject in AI but competes with the subject for control of agreement in IA sequences, and is neutralized in II. Agreement accuracy was greater overall for AI than for IA or II, and although an AoArelated increase in erroneous agreement after plural subjects occurred for IA and II, there were no AoA effects for AI. Higher scores on memory tasks were associated with greater agreement accuracy, and the memory tasks significantly predicted variance in erroneous agreement when AoA was partialed out. The fact that even late learners can do verb agreement in the case of AI demonstrates that they can acquire new grammatical features. The greater difficulty with agreement in the case of IA or II than of AI, in conjunction with the results for the memory tasks, supports the resource limitation hypothesis.

Negative Transfer Effects on L2 Word Order Processing

“…For instance, Alemán Bañon et al (2014) showed that L1 English speakers can display P600 effects when processing gender agreement violations in L2 Spanish. Similar results have been reported in studies with German–Italian bilinguals ( Rossi et al, 2006 ), Spanish–English bilinguals ( Kotz et al, 2008 ), and English–French bilinguals ( Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2012 ). In a recent MEG study, Bastarrika and Davidson (2017) showed that L1 Spanish speakers can learn syntactic rules of Basque which are not present in Spanish and process them like native speakers of Basque.…”

“…Some other studies observed a reduction or an absence of the P600 in non-native syntactic processing, suggesting that violations on L2 grammatical structures are not salient enough when those structures cannot been transferred from L1 ( Ojima et al, 2005 ; Chen et al, 2007 ; Sabourin and Stowe, 2008 ; Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2011 ; Zawiszewski et al, 2011 ). Interestingly, studies where different proficiencies of bilinguals are compared showed a change from N400 (for low proficient bilinguals) to P600 (for high proficient bilinguals), revealing the learning process of the L2 ( Osterhout et al, 2006 ; McLaughlin et al, 2010 ; Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2012 ; White et al, 2012 ).…”

Neural Correlates of Morphology Acquisition through a Statistical Learning Paradigm

“…Electrophysiologic evidence suggests naïve learners acquiring grammatical information in a statistical learning format can achieve high behavioral accuracy while still showing physiologic responses that differ from native language users (Mueller et al, 2009; Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2012). Consistent with the idea that the early neural network is not yet stable, transitional physiological responses have been reported in a study that involved gender class learning (Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2012). We propose that the dynamic shifts in level and location of activation in the learning network, as well as correlations with behavior, represent physiologic attempts (successful or otherwise) to optimize the learning network.…”

When the Second Language Takes the Lead: Neurocognitive Processing Changes in the First Language of Adult Attriters

“…Evidence of influence of the L1 during online L2 morphosyntactic processing has been demonstrated in eye-tracking (Frenck-Mestre and Pynte, 1997) and ERP studies (e.g., Sabourin, 2003; Ojima et al, 2005; Tokowicz and MacWhinney, 2005; Kasparian et al, 2010; Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2011, 2012; White et al, 2012). Research has also examined the factors at play in modulating the degree of L1–L2 influence – linguistic similarity, L2 proficiency and exposure levels have been shown to affect the extent of L1-transfer and the degree of native-like-ness in the L2 (see reviews by Kotz, 2009 and Caffarra et al, 2015).…”