Native and non-native (L1-Mandarin) speakers of English differ in online use of verb-based cues about sentence structure

• Published in: Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) Vol. 22; no. 5; pp. 897 - 911
• Main Authors: QIAN, ZHIYING, LEE, EUN-KYUNG, LU, DORA HSIN-YI, GARNSEY, SUSAN M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.11.2019
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Bias; Clauses; Complementizers; Cues; English as a second language; Hypotheses; Mandarin; Native speakers; Second Language Learning; Sentence structure; Verbs; Word order; word order; second language acquisition; Mandarin; sentence processing; verb bias

This study examined whether L1-Mandarin learners of L2-English use verb bias and complementizer cues to process temporarily ambiguous English sentences the same way native speakers do. SVO word order places verbs early in sentences in both languages, allowing the use of verb-based knowledge to antic...