Syntactic features and reanalysis in near-native processing

• Published in: Second language research Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 369 - 397
• Main Author: Hopp, Holger
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Thousand Oaks, CA Arnold 01.07.2006; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Acceptability; Ambiguity; Brain research; Criminal sentencing; Dutch; Dutch language; English; Experiments; French as a second language; German; German as a Second Language Learning; German language; Grammar; Grammatical clauses; Handbooks; Indo European Languages; Language acquisition; Language comprehension; Language Processing; Language Proficiency; Language Research; Language Skills; Linguistics; Morphology; Native language; Native languages; Native Speakers; Parsing; Phrase Structure; Phrases; Pragmatics; Preferences; Psycholinguistics; Reading Accuracy; Reading comprehension; Response Time; Romance Languages; Second Language Learning; Semantics; Semiotics; Sentences; Skill Development; Studies; Syntactic ambiguity; Syntactic features; Syntactic Processing; Syntactics; Syntax; Task Analysis; Verbs; Social Sciences & Humanities
• ISSN: 0267-6583; 1477-0326
• DOI: 10.1191/0267658306sr272oa

In order to investigate second language (L2) processing at ultimate attainment, 20 first language (LI) English and 20 LI Dutch advanced to near-native speakers of German as well as 20 native Germans were tested in two experiments on subject-object ambiguities in German. The results from a self-paced reading task and a speeded acceptability judgement task show that the lowerproficient advanced learners in this study display the same processing preferences as natives in reading accuracy yet fail to demonstrate differential response latencies associated with native syntactic reanalysis. By contrast, near-native speakers of either LI converge on incremental native reanalysis patterns. Together, the findings highlight the role of proficiency for processing the target language since it is only at near-native levels of proficiency that non-natives converge on native-like parsing. The results support the view that endstate non-native processing and native processing are qualitatively identical.