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ESF Exploratory Workshop Language Processing in First and Second Language Learners Abstracts
The contribution of brain memory circuits to first and second language acquisition and processing Michael T. Ullman The structure of the brain and the nature of evolution suggest that, despite its uniqueness, language likely depends on brain systems that also subserve other functions. The Declarative/Procedural (DP) model claims that the mental lexicon of memorized word-specific knowledge depends on the largely temporal-lobe substrates of declarative memory, which underlies the storage and use of knowledge of facts and events. The mental grammar, which subserves the rule-governed combination of lexical items into complex representations, depends on a distinct neural system. This system, which is rooted in frontal/basal-ganglia structures, underlies procedural memory, which supports the learning and execution of motor and cognitive skills, especially those involving sequences. The functions of the two brain systems, together with their anatomical, physiological and biochemical substrates, lead to specific claims and predictions regarding their roles in language. These predictions are compared with those of other neurocognitive models of language. Empirical evidence is presented from neuroimaging studies of normal language processing, and from developmental and adult-onset disorders. It is argued that this evidence supports the DP model. It is additionally proposed that “language” disorders, such as Specific Language Impairment and non-fluent and fluent aphasia, may be profitably viewed as impairments primarily affecting one or the other brain system. Finally, the claims and predictions of the DP model are examined in second language acquisition and processing. Overall, the data suggest a new neurocognitive framework for the study of lexicon and grammar.
Brain responses to phrase structure violations in L1 and L2 learners Angela D. Friederici The processing of phrase structure violations is correlated with a biphasic pattern in the ERP, an early left anterior negativity (ELAN) followed by a late centro-parietal positivity (P600) in native adults. The ELAN is considered to reflect automatic processes of early structure building whereas the P600 is taken to reflect late controlled processes. L2 learners, in contrast to natives, show no ELAN, but only a P600 and an additional right frontal negativity when processing phrase structure violations in passive sentence constructions. The absence of the ELAN suggest that in L2 speakers automatic syntactic parsing is not available, at least for the processing of passive sentences. Children, similarly to L2 speakers, do not show an ELAN but only a P600 below the age of 7 years when phrase structure violations are realized within passive constructions. Children, however, do demonstrate an (E)LAN – P600 pattern already before they turn 3, when phrase structure violations are realized in short active sentences spoken in an infant directed manner. This suggests that the automation of early syntactic parsing interferes with structural complexity during development. Automatic parsing procedures appear to be established for simple syntactic structures by the age of 3 years, but need some more years to function in the same manner for complex syntactic constructions, such as passives.
Neural correlates of syntactic encoding and parsing in native speakers and second language learners Peter Indefrey Hemodynamic studies comparing L1 and L2 processing have shown different L2 brain activation patterns for proficient and less proficient L2 speakers, suggesting a cerebral reorganization during L2 acquisition. To investigate whether this general observation also holds for syntactic processing and to determine the time course of a possible reorganization, we designed a longitudinal fMRI experiment on Dutch L2 syntactic encoding and parsing based on a scene description paradigm originally developed for PET studies of German L1 syntactic processing (Indefrey et al., 2001, 2004). A pilot study with Dutch native speakers has been completed. The results showed enhanced activation of Broca's area and the anterior insulae for the processing of sentences as compared to word lists. A group of six native Mandarin speakers who started learning Dutch in February 2004 has been recruited for a longitudinal fMRI study using the same paradigm every two months. Preliminary results suggest activation patterns similar to native Dutch speakers for both sentences and word lists compared to a low level baseline but to date no enhanced activation for sentences relative to word lists. Existing electrophysiological research on multilingual sentence processing has shown that event-related responses to grammatical and semantic violations are delayed or absent in multilingual comprehenders, for violations that are presented in the comprehenders’ second language. This has been interpreted as a corresponding delay or absence in the ability to use syntactic and semantic information during real-time sentence processing. We investigated already-proficient second language users using EEG. 18 Dutch participants who were proficient speakers of English read sentences containing either grammatical or semantic violations, as well as control sentences. Preliminary analyses of the ERP responses following the critical words indicated an N400 effect to the semantic violations relative to their controls, as well as a (weaker) P600 effect for the grammatical violations.
Processing of grammatical gender information in French as first and second language: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence C. Frenck-Mestre In a recent series of studies, we looked at how grammatical gender influences linguistic processing, in both native and non-native French speakers. The non-native speakers were all 'late bilinguals', whose native language either had grammatical gender (Portuguese and German) or did not (English). Proficiency in the second language, French, varied as a function of the study. Two distinct levels of processing were examined. The first level was lexical access, as examined by gender concord between a determiner and noun. This aspect was examined in some detail, across three populations and three tasks, and will be the main focus of the talk. The second level was syntactic, and looked at anaphoric interpretation between a gender-marked anaphoric pronoun and preceding noun. This line of research is only beginning in our lab, and will be presented only briefly. In line with various linguistic accounts of second language acquisition, (Caroll, 1989; Franceschina, 2001; Hawkins & Franceschina, 2004), adult L2 learners should acquire gender features as part of their L2 lexical entries or not, depending upon the properties of their native language. While the underlying theoretical models differ, the main thrust is that the gender feature (whether for the noun itself or as a syntactic property of the determiner) will be available, and thus attainable, in the second language for adult learners only insofar as the native language possesses this feature. Contrary to this claim, however, other scholars have provided evidence against the hypothesis of failed features in L2 acquisition (Bruhn de Garavito, 2003; White et al., 2004). The latter argue from their observational data that, on the one hand, speakers of languages with native gender (French) can fail to fully acquire gender concord in a second language learned as an adult (Spanish), and, on the other, that advanced L2 learners can indeed acquire gender concord (in Spanish) independent of whether their native language possesses this feature (French) or not (English). We examined this question in several experimental studies, by means of reaction time tasks and the recording of event-related cortical potentials. All experiments were conducted in French. Results from a first reaction time study show that providing gender information via a determiner facilitated the identification of spoken words (Frenck-Mestre & Jaloux, 2003). For example, the recognition of [stilo was significantly faster following oral presentation of the singular definite article [le], which must agree with the noun in gender, than following a plural definite article [les, which is neutral with respect to gender. This result was equally true for Portuguese-French late bilinguals and French controls. It was held for both French words which had opposite gender in Portuguese [stilo] as for words which had the same gender [siro]. Preliminary data for English-French late bilinguals in this task show no effect of facilitated identification due to gender. In a second reaction time task, we examined the performance of German-French and English-French bilinguals, compared to French controls in primed lexical decision for printed words (Foucart & Frenck-Mestre, 2004). The prime was either the correct singular definite article in relation to noun gender (eg. "la" prior to "clef"), the incorrect singular definite article,(eg. "le" prior to "clef") or a neutral string of two Xs. We find clear facilitation for correctly gender-primed nouns as well as clear inhibition for incorrectly gender-primed nouns, in the German-French group as well as the French control group. This result held both for words that had opposite gender across French and German and words that had identical gender in the two languages. No effect of the gender prime was found for English-French bilinguals. In a third experiment, where we recorded event-related cortical potentials, we looked at gender concord within sentential contexts. The same French nouns were used as in the German-French reaction time study. Again, we found that German-French late bilinguals showed sensitivity to gender concord, as illustrated by a large P600 effect on nouns preceded by incorrect gender in short sentences. The same P600 was found for native French subjects. Here, however, we found that 2 sub-populations of German subjects were revealed; while some of our bilinguals showed sensitivity to gender concord irrespective of whether the words had opposite gender in their L1 and L2, others showed no sensitivity to gender concord when the L2 word had opposite gender in the L1. No data was collected for English subjects, given their lack of sensitivity in the RT task. In sum, our German and Portuguese subjects, both of whom have a gender classification system of nouns in their L1, showed evidence of having acquired gender concord in French, whereas our English subjects were deficient in this aspect. Our results also suggest that either ERPs provide a more sensitive index than RT of gender concord, or that gender concord may produce a more robust effect in word level tasks. These results are in line with previous behavioral showing a clear effect of the bilingual's native language upon the acquisition of gender, which will be discussed. However, while our electrophysiological data provide evidence that native language gender concord may play a role in the acquisition of this feature in the L2, they do not allow us to argue for the 'failed feature' hypothesis, as no data were collected for English subjects. Last, we will discuss the data from a recent line of research looking at the interpretation of anaphoric pronouns in late bilinguals. Preliminary ERP data indicate that German-French bilinguals are sensitive to gender mismatch between the anaphoric pronoun and its antecedent, as shown by a P600. We are also investigating English-French bilinguals.
Child L1 and adult L2 processing of wh-movement Claudia Felser & Harald Clahsen Filler-gap dependencies present a particular challenge for the human sentence processor because a dislocated constituent cannot be integrated into the emerging sentence representation until a corresponding 'gap' has been identified, whose presence can only be inferred indirectly. There is evidence that adult monolingual comprehenders reactivate dislocated constituents at structurally-defined gap sites, independently of the position of the lexical subcategoriser (see e.g. Clahsen & Featherston 1999; Fiebach, Schlesewsky, & Friederici, 2002; Gibson & Warren 2004; Nakano, Felser & Clahsen 2002). Here we report the results from two studies investigating whether or not this is also the case for child first language (L1) and adult second language (L2) learners. Using a cross-modal picture priming task (McKee, Nicol, & McDaniel 1993; Love & Swinney, 1997), we examined whether 5-7 year-old English-speaking children and adults reactivate a fronted constituent at its gap position in object-relative clauses. The participants also underwent a standardized working memory test (children: Gaulin & Campbell 1994; adults: Daneman & Carpenter 1980). While both high-span children and high-span adults showed evidence of antecedent reactivation at the gap site, no antecedent priming effect was observed in the low-span participants. The reactivation effect found for the high-span participants supports a structure-driven account of gap-filling. The absence of an antecedent priming effect in the low-span participants is in line with previous findings indicating that working memory capacity affects the on-line processing of filler-gap dependencies in native speakers (see e.g. Nakano et al. 2002). In the L2 study, four groups of adult learners of English from different language backgrounds (Chinese, Japanese, German, and Greek) and a group of native speaker controls participated in a reading-time experiment with sentences involving long distance wh-dependencies. While the native speakers showed evidence of making use of intermediate syntactic gaps during processing (compare also Gibson & Warren 2004), the L2 learners appeared to associate the fronted wh-phrase directly with its lexical subcategoriser, regardless of whether or not the subjacency constraint was operative in their native language. We argue that the results from child study support the continuity view of L1 acquisition and processing. Adult learners, on the other hand, seem to be guided more by lexical-semantic than by syntactic information during parsing. We suggest that the observed L1/L2 differences can be explained by assuming that the syntactic representations that adult L2 learners compute during comprehension are shallower and less detailed than those of native speakers.
The perception of speech sounds in the human brain as indicated by the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) Risto Näätänen In this talk, I will outline the contribution of the mismatch negativity (MMN) to our understanding of the perception of speech sounds in the human brain. MMN data indicate that each sound, both speech and non-speech, develops its neural representation (corresponding to the percept of this sound) in the neurophysiological substrate of auditory sensory memory. The accuracy of this representation, determining how accurately this sound can be discriminated from other sounds, can be probed with the MMN separately for any auditory feature (such as frequency or duration). Furthermore, the accuracy of discriminating between complex sounds such as phonemes can also be evaluated by means of the MMN. These data further show that the perception of the phonemes, and probably also of larger linguistic units (syllables and words), is based on permanent language-specific phonetic traces developed in the posterior part of the left-hemisphere auditory cortex. These traces appear to serve as recognition models for the corresponding speech sounds in speech perception. MMN studies further suggest that these language-specific traces for the mother tongue develop during the first few months of life. Moreover, the MMN can also index the development of such traces for a foreign language learned later in life. MMN data have also revealed the existence of such neuronal populations in the human brain that can encode acoustic invariances specific to each phoneme, which could explain the correct speech perception irrespective of the acoustic variation between different speakers and word context.
Neurophysiological evidence of language acquisition and word-learning Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells Little is known about the brain mechanisms involved in word learning and how new-words learned during infancy (or in L2 learning) are integrated in the brain representations that sustain language processing (e.g., the mental lexicon). Evidences will be provided, using the human simulation paradigm1 and neuroimaging techniques (ERPs/fMRI) of how different brain signatures related to speech segmentation and lexical and semantic processing are created when discovering and integrating the meaning of new-words. In the speech segmentation studies, an ERP design was created in order to observe on-line segmentation of words embedded in sound streams which varied depending on their internal structure (random ordering of syllables vs. language streams which could be segmented using statistical cues). An enhanced N3-N5 component was observed during this process (being its maximum between two and four minutes of exposition) of isolating words using transitional probabilities. In the corresponding block fMRI study, two areas were shown to be underlying this process: posterior temporal gyrus (BA 22) and ventral premotor cortex (BA 6). In the second series of studies, subjects engaged in a simple word-learning task and were required to discover the meaning of a new-word during silent reading (contextual learning). New-words in meaningful contexts developed a N400 component across time which was not observed for new-words embedded in non-meaningful contexts. In a second ERP study and using the same type of design, a clear delayed N4 semantic priming effect (app. 160 ms) was demonstrated for recently learned new-words compared to the real-word condition. The corresponding fMRI study showed different areas sustaining this word learning process, specially middle temporal gyrus (BA 21), anterior inferior prefrontal gyrus (BA45) and subcortical areas (specially caudate and putamen nuclei). Implications of these studies in L2 learning will be discussed as well as the utilization of the human simulation paradigm in the study of infant and second language learning.
From phonological to lexical processing in non-native listening
Anne Cutler
Phonological confusions in non-native listening have far-reaching consequences for lexical processing. The non-native listener is beset by at least three separate types of problem which the native listener is spared: pseudo-homophony, spurious word activation, temporary ambguity. Laboratory evidence for all three of these effects will be presented. A further complication is that the lexical representations of proficient non-native listeners may encode distinctions which require distinctions in the input which their perceptual processing is unable to satisfy.
Janet Dean Fodor There is growing evidence that syntactic parsing can be influenced by prosody, in reading as well as listening (Fodor 2002). Plausibly, this is the cause of observed cross-language differences in ambiguity resolution preferences in L1 reading, first noted by Cuetos &Mitchell (1988). For L2 learners, recent studies indicate that these preferences are either absent or follow the L1 bias (Dussias 2001; Frenck-Mestre 2002; Fernández 2003; Papadopoulou & Clahsen 2003). A natural explanation for this would be lack of knowledge of the L2 prosodic patterns, and/or transfer of the L1 prosody in reading L2. Evaluating the prosodic explanation of cross-language parsing contrasts is of considerable importance to psycholinguistic theory, since it attributes the differences to the rules or principles of the competence grammar, in contrast to statistical learning of corpus frequencies (Mitchell et al. 1995). To substantiate the prosodic explanation for L2 syntactic parsing requires cross-language research on L2 prosody for the relevant constructions. In many cases, the L1 prosody also needs to be documented; acoustic data and phonological analyses of sentence-level prosody are available for all too few languages at present. Students and faculty at CUNY have been making a small start on this huge undertaking. Empirical studies are planned or underway on: English L1 / French L2 prosodic phrasing of relative clauses; Spanish L1 / English L2 and vice versa, relative clause prosody; English L1 / Mandarin L2 and vice versa, illocutionary intonation (questions vs statements); multi-language L1 / English L2 question intonation; Russian, Hebrew L1 / English L2 contours for PP-attachment disambiguation. The research that will be reported was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, and represents work by Eva Fernández, Yana Pugach, Christine Susskind, Tanya Viger and Ronit Webman. References: Cuetos, F. and Mitchell, D. C. (1988) Cross-linguistic differences in parsing: Restrictions on the use of the Late Closure strategy in Spanish. Cognition 30, 73-105. Dussias, P. E. (2001) Sentence parsing in fluent Spanish-English bilinguals. In J. L. Nicol (ed.) One Mind, Two Languages: Bilingual Language Processing. Oxford: Blackwell. Fernández, E. M. (2003) Bilingual Sentence Processing: Relative Clause Attachment in English and Spanish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (CUNY Ph.D. dissertation, 2000) Fodor, J. D. (2002) Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 32, M. Hirotani (ed.), GSLA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Frenck-Mestre, C. (2002) An on-line look at sentence processing in the second language. In R. Herrida and J. Altarriba (eds.) Bilingual Sentence Processing. North Holland. Mitchell, D. C., Cuetos, F., Corley, M. M. B. and Brysbaert, M. (1995) Exposure-based models of human parsing: Evidence for the use of coarse-grained (non-lexical) statistical records. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 24, 469-488. Papadopoulou, D. and Clahsen, H. (2003) Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 25, 501-528.
Do proficient second language learners agree like natives? Manuel Carreiras, Margaret Gillon-Dowens, Horacio Barber & Moises Betancort Two of the most influential factors in determining the nature and characteristics of second-language processing are age of acquisition and level of proficiency. Another open question is whether similarities between L1 and the L2 influence bilingual processing. In that sense, one interesting question is whether the presence of a particular syntactic feature in the L1 allows late learners to more easily acquire this in the L2 and so be able to process this feature in a similar way to that of their first language. We examined both of these questions by selecting a group of late English-speaking bilinguals who were first exposed to their L2 (Spanish) after puberty but who have been immersed in a Spanish-speaking environment for an average of 20 years and are thus highly proficient in the L2. We investigated how these late but highly competent bilinguals process morphosyntactic features of Spanish that coincide or not with features of their L1 (English). Morphosyntactic agreement is computed for grammatical as well as for conceptual gender in Spanish, which is not the case in English, where only conceptual gender is considered. However, in both Spanish and English, number is an important feature of agreement computation. Sentences containing grammatical gender and number violations were presented to competent late bilinguals and monolinguals while ERPs were recorded to contrast their performance in overlapping (number agreement) and non-overlapping (grammatical gender agreement) morphosyntactic features. Results included a Left Anterior Negativity effect –generally taken to indicate automatic processing -for both conditions. This would seem to indicate that early agreement processes can become automatic in proficient bilinguals, even for features that are not present in the L1.
S-V Agreement and Case cues in processing subject/object ambiguities: Evidence from native and non-native speakers of Greek Despina Papadopoulou In this paper, we will present two self-paced reading experiments with adult and child native speakers and second language learners of Greek. We will examine the role of overt morphology (S-V agreement and case) in sentence processing, and we will compare L1 and L2 sentence processing in terms of the cues that affect parsing decisions.
Syntax-discourse coordination in child and adult bilinguals Antonella Sorace Recent research in different areas of bilingual language development (i.e. bilingual first language acquisition, near-native second language acquisition, and first language attrition) has identified the syntax-discourse interface as a locus of vulnerability to crosslinguistic influence. It is far from clear, however, what exactly causes permeability at interfaces. This paper looks at phenomena of apparent ‘leakage’ in the domain of pronominal reference in child and adult Italian-English and Italian-Spanish bilingual speakers. It is argued that it is an interaction of structural complexity and processing requirements that favors the emergence of more ‘economical’ forms, rather than a deficit or underspecification at the representational level. In both early and late bilinguals, insufficient processing resources, and especially sub-optimal automaticity of syntactic access, may affect the bilingual speaker’s ability to coordinate different domains and lead to a preference for syntactically unmarked constructions.
Sentence Matching and the competence paradox: how to outperform native speakers Nigel Duffield & A. Matsuo TThe Competence
Paradox (see Duffield, 2003) refers to instances where L2 appear to out-perform
native-speakers relative to some theoretically-determined set of grammaticality
judgments; for example, where L2 learners ‘correctly’ categorically reject
ungrammatical sentences that native-speakers are inclined to accept some or all
of the time. The Competence Paradox is particularly interesting where the task
involved is an implicit one, as is the case with Sentence Matching (Freedman and
Forster, 1985), as well as with the timed-anomaly Sentence Completion Task (Tanenhaus
and Carlson, 1990). Omissions of functional categories in child speech and newspaper headlines: a cross-linguistic comparison Sergey Avrutin Children acquiring Dutch omit determiners more often, and for a longer period of time, than Italian children of the same age (e.g. Guasti, Gavarro, De Lange e al. 2003). Various existing accounts suggest that the difference is based on differences in the morphosyntactic system (Roeper and de Villiers, 1995) or on the semantic properties of the nominal system (Chierchia,1998). At the same time, Stowell (1999), Schutze (1997), and Avrutin (1999) all pointed out that such omissions are allowed in special registers, such as Headlines: Kamer verlengt fiscale regeling voor film met een jaar [Dutch] Government extends tax arrangement for film with a year (3determiners omitted) · Do Dutch and Italian headlines exhibit the same differences as observed in child Dutch and Italian? · What are the language specific properties that are reflected in the cross-linguistic differences both in child speech and the headlines? · Why does it take longer for a Dutch child to reach the adult stage w.r.t. determiner use? Method: Investigation Child data based on the speech of 3 Italian (Diana, Martina, Raffaello) and 3 Dutch speaking children (Abel, Peter, Thomas), all data being available through CHILDES. (MacWhinney and Snow, 1985). Investigation Newspapers based on data of 3 different Dutch, 2 different Italian newspapers, number of headlines 2000 for each language Results:
Analyses: 1. It is argued that in both languages children, at an early age, possess grammatical knowledge of the determiner system, which is reflected in their correct use, whenever a determiner is produced (e.g. correct structural position, presence of a nominal complement). 2. A processing theory of complexity is proposed that is based on the recent work on the application of the information theory to lexical access (Baayen et al. 2004, Kostic 2003, Moscoso del Prado Martin, 2003). It is argued that the rich morphosyntacic paradigm of Italian determiners increases their information load compared to Dutch (in the technical sense proposed in Shannon and Weaver, 1948, Baayeen et al (2004), see also Caramazza, 2003, among others). As the child processing system takes some time to mature, elements with a higher information load become available before less informative elements. Hence the difference between Dutch and Italian child speech production. 3. The same explanation holds for special registers, such as headlines, where the amount of information determines which elements are more likely to be omitted in order to facilitate processing of the entire utterance (e.g. a headline, see Kostic et al, 2003) 4. I also discuss the role of the structural position (e.g. subject vs. object, the role of the left periphery (Rizzi 1997, Cinque 1990) for the possibility of omissions, both for child language and headlines, as also observed in Stowell 1999. References: Avrutin, S. (1999) Development of the syntax-discourse interface. Kluwer. Baayen, R.H., Levelt W.J.M., Haverman A., Desserjer G., Producing singular and plural nouns: evidence for morphological paradigms, ms. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. Caramazza A., Schiller N.O., (2003) Grammatical Feature Selection in Noun Phrase production’, Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 169-194 Cinque, Guiglielmo, (1990), Types of Ā -dependencies, MIT-Press Cambridge, Massachussetts, London. Guasti M.T., de lange, J. and Gavarro A., (2003), Article Omission across Child Languages and across Special Registers, Proceedings GALA 2003. Kostic, A., (2003), The effects of the amount of information on processing of inflected morphology, manuscript submitted for publication, University of Belgrade Rizzi, L., (1997), ‘ The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery’ in L.Haegeman (ed.), Elements of Grammar, Kluwer, Dordrecht. Schütze, C.T., (1997) INFL in Child and Adult Language: Agreement, case and licensing," MIT Ph.D-dissertation, MIT-working papers in Linguistics, Shannon, C.E., Weaver W., (1948) , The mathematical theory of communication, Bell System Technical Journal 27, 379-423 Stowell T., (1999), Words lost and Syntax Found in Headlines, talk presented at York University November 24, 1999.
Plausibility effects on L2 sentence processing A vast amount of L1 research has established that L1 sentence processing is highly incremental - syntactic structures and semantic interpretations are constructed on a word-by-word basis, as shown by syntactic garden-path and plausibility effects. There is now considerable evidence that L2 syntactic structure building is incremental as well, but less research has examined plausibility effects. Here I report two experiments that investigate plausibility effects on processing filler-gap dependencies. Specifically, in a sentence such as Which machine did the mechanic fix the very noisy motorbike with two weeks ago? the “Filler-Driven” parsing strategy (Clifton & Frazier, 1989) predicts that readers should experience processing difficulty immediately after the verb because they initially interpret the filler as direct object. However, processing should be easier when the filler is implausible as the direct object, as in Which customer did the mechanic fix the very noisy motorbike for two weeks ago? because readers commit less strongly to an initial analysis that is implausible (Pickering & Traxler, 1998). In this study I used this effect as a diagnostic of incremental interpretation and of interactions between syntactic and semantic processing. Experiment 1 employed an on-line stop making sense task. Both Spanish & Chinese advanced learners of English showed the predicted plausibility effect in the immediate post-verbal region indicating that syntactic reanalysis was influenced by plausibility. In Experiment 2 the task only required reading for comprehension and memory. The plausibility effect in the critical region persisted in the natives, but disappeared in the non-natives, even though other aspects of the non-natives’ reading pattern suggested that they had been processing meaning on-line. The results suggest that the degree of co-ordination between syntactic and semantic processing may be particularly task-dependent in non-native readers.
The acquisition of non-local dependencies: Insight from behavioural and ERP investigations. Heather K. J. van der Lely
According to the Computational Grammatical
Complexity (CGC) hypothesis the core syntactic deficit in children with
Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) is in structural non-local
dependencies [1]. A classic example of such non-local dependencies is found in
Wh-questions between the wh-word and the gap. I will present data from a series
of studies using different techniques (e.g., off-line, on-line cross modal
priming, ERP) to elucidate the use of lexical-semantic information during
processing syntactic, structural non-local dependencies in wh-questions. I will
argue that the data from normally developing children from 5 years to 18 years,
adults, and children with G-SLI (aged 9-20), reveal a dissociation between the
integration of lexical-semantic information and building structural non-local
dependencies (and the mechanisms underlying these two processes) in processing
Wh-questions. In particular, ERP investigations reveal that syntax-related ERP
effects (ELAN/P600f), normally associated with a structural local violation[2],
were elicited by a structural non-local violation involving manipulation of
lexical-semantic (animacy) properties. Thus, our findings indicate that
lexical-semantic (animacy) properties of the wh-word and the noun influences
early syntactic structure building in processing non-local dependencies. The
relative specificity of the system underlying structural non-local dependencies
is supported by the data from G-SLI children further indicating that this system
can be selectively impaired.
2 Friederici, A.D. (2002) Toward a neural basis of auditory sentence processing.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6 (2), 78-84 Pronoun Resolution in the L2: An Eye-tracking Study with Turkish-Dutch Bilinguals Leah Roberts I will report the results of an investigation into Turkish-Dutch bilinguals' L2 pronoun resolution processing in comparison to Dutch monolingual controls which was designed to address the question of whether the bilinguals’ processing would be influenced by their first language, even at the highest end of the proficiency continuum. Unlike Dutch, Turkish is a null-subject language where null and overt subject pronouns have different distributional properties. The use of overt subject pronouns in Turkish is governed by discourse and pragmatic factors and they can only have a disjoint reading (Erguvanly-Taylan, 1986; Gürel, 2002) whereas null subjects are unconstrained in their binding properties like subject pronouns in Dutch. The experimental materials (below) exploited this syntactic contrast. The critical segment contained a verb and a subject pronoun, either in the singular or the plural [eet hij/eten zij]. A local antecedent is offered for this pronoun [Peter], and the preceding context sentence offers a distant antecedent, either a plural NP [De werknemers] or (one of) two singular NPs [Peter en Hans]: (1) De werknemers/Peter en Hans zitten in het kantoor. Terwijl Peter aan het werk is, eet hij/eten zij een boterham. Het is een rustige dag. (The workers/Peter and Hans are sitting in the office. While Peter is working, he is/they are eating a sandwich. It's a quiet day.) The results revealed that the bilinguals were indistiguishable from monolinguals in their acceptability judgements. However, unlike the Dutch, the bilinguals’ first pass fixation times showed an on-line advantage for the conditions where only one possible referent for the pronoun was grammatically available, whether this lead to a local or a disjoint interpretation. Therefore, the functional bilinguals in this study have acquired the binding possibilities of Dutch pronouns, but where the grammar allows for it, their earliest stages of processing may be under the influence of their L1. References: Erguvanly-Taylan, E. (1986) `Pronominal versus zero representation of anaphora in Turkish', in D. Slobin & K. Zimmer (Eds.) Studies in Turkish Linguistics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 209-231. Gürel, A. (2003) `Is the Overt Pronoun Constraint universal? Evidence from L2 Turkish'. In J. M. Liceras, H. Zobl & H. Goodluck (Eds.) Proceedings of the 6th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA, 2002), 130-139.
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