Syntactic Constraints and Individual Differences in Native and Non-Native Processing of Wh-Movement

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Second Language Acquisition
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Debate exists on whether second language (L2) learners process syntax like native speakers or face limitations.
• Research questions if L2 learners avoid gaps in 'islands' due to syntactic rules or processing difficulties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if L2 learners exhibit similar wh-dependency resolution patterns as native speakers.
• To explore the relationship between working memory capacity and processing of wh-dependencies in both island and non-island contexts.

Main Methods:

• A self-paced reading experiment was conducted with native English speakers and Korean learners of English.
• Working memory was assessed using counting span and reading span tasks.
• Regression analyses examined the link between working memory and wh-dependency processing.

Main Results:

• L2 learners demonstrated qualitatively similar syntactic processing to native speakers on the same timecourse.
• No significant relationship was found between working memory and processing wh-dependencies in islands.
• Working memory showed significant relationships with processing licit wh-dependencies, differing between native speakers and learners.

Conclusions:

• L2 learners appear to utilize syntactic information similarly to native speakers during online sentence processing.
• Individual differences in working memory may affect dependency resolution, but not uniformly across all syntactic contexts or learner groups.
• Further research is needed to understand individual differences in dependency resolution in L2 acquisition.