Planning to speak in L1 and L2

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics

Background:

• Sentence planning theories, Hierarchical and Linear Incrementality, propose different coordination mechanisms for preverbal information and language.
• Previous research indicates native (L1) speakers' coordination varies with message and sentence-level process ease.
• Linguistic experience is a key factor in sentence planning, yet its systematic impact on L1 and L2 speakers is underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how linguistic experience influences sentence planning in native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers.
• To compare the coordination of message-level and sentence-level encoding processes between L1 and L2 sentence production.
• To test predictions of Hierarchical and Linear Incrementality theories regarding L2 sentence planning.

Main Methods:

• Participants spontaneously described simple events in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English).
• Eye-movement analyses tracked early (pre-400ms) and late (post-400ms) encoding processes.
• Experiments manipulated factors like event familiarity, agent encoding, and verb encoding to probe planning strategies.

Main Results:

• Non-native (L2) speakers showed more extensive message-level encoding and delayed sentence-level encoding compared to native (L1) speakers.
• Familiarity with events eliminated the delay in L2 linguistic encoding onset.
• The delay in L2 linguistic encoding onset was attributed to prioritizing relational information for verb selection, not agent encoding.

Conclusions:

• Non-native speakers tend to temporally separate message-level and sentence-level encoding in L2 production.
• L2 sentence planning shows a preference for prioritizing relational information crucial for verb selection.
• Findings support the Hierarchical Incrementality model, suggesting L2 speakers adopt a more separated planning strategy.