ERP signatures of subject–verb agreement in L2 learning

• Published in: Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 161 - 174
• Main Authors: CHEN, LANG, SHU, HUA, LIU, YOUYI, ZHAO, JINGJING, LI, PING
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.07.2007
• Subjects: Agreement; Behavior Patterns; Bilingual Students; Bilingualism; Brain research; Chinese; Chinese languages; Cognition & reasoning; Dyslexia; English (Second Language); English as a Second Language Learning; English Language Learners; Event-related potentials; Evoked Responses; Foreign Countries; Form Classes (Languages); Grammar; Grammatical agreement; Grammatical subject; Grammaticality; Indo European Languages; Language; Language Processing; Linguistic Interference; Listening comprehension; Monolingualism; Morphological Processing; Morphology; Morphology (Languages); Morphosyntax; Native Speakers; Natural Sciences; Neurosciences; Phrase Structure; Psychological Patterns; Resistance (Psychology); Romance Languages; Second language learning; Semantics; Semiotics; Sentences; Studies; Syntactic features; Syntactic Processing; Verbs; Violations
• ISSN: 1366-7289; 1469-1841
• DOI: 10.1017/S136672890700291X

In this study we examined ERP (event-related-potential) responses in the morphosyntactic processing of subject–verb agreements by L2 Chinese learners of English. Fifteen proficient L2 learners and fifteen native English speakers were presented with English sentences that varied in the grammaticality of the sentence with respect to subject–verb agreement. Our results indicate that late L2 learners show distinct ERP responses from native speakers in the processing of syntactic features that are absent in their L1, even when their behavioral patterns are similar to those of native speakers. The results are taken to support the proposal that language-specific experiences with L1 shape the neural structure of processing in L2.