Idiosyncratic grammars: syntactic processing in second language comprehension uses subjective feature...

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Second Language Acquisition
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Second language (L2) syntax processing research often focuses on objective violations.
• Less is known about how L2 learners process phrases deviating from their subjective, potentially incorrect, representations.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate how L2 learners with less than near-native proficiency process subjective syntactic representations.
• Examine the role of subjective syntactic representations in sentence comprehension for L2 learners.

Main Methods:

• German learners of Dutch and native Dutch speakers read Dutch sentences with correct/incorrect gender agreement.
• Event-related potentials (ERPs) measured to detect syntactic violation effects (P600).
• Items analyzed based on objective correctness and L2 speakers' subjective correctness.

Main Results:

• Native speakers showed a P600 effect for objective gender agreement violations.
• Non-native speakers did not show a P600 effect for objective violations.
• A P600 effect emerged for L2 speakers when items were re-sorted by subjective correctness.

Conclusions:

• L2 learners are sensitive to gender agreement violations, similar to native speakers.
• Sensitivity is based on subjective, idiosyncratic representations rather than solely objective correctness.
• L2 syntactic processing relies on internal, potentially flawed, representations.