The role of crosslinguistic differences in second language anticipatory processing: An event-related potentials study.

The present study uses event-related potentials to investigate how crosslinguistic (dis)similarities modulate anticipatory processing in the second language (L2). Participants read predictive stories in English that made a genitive construction consisting of a third-person singular possessive pronoun and a kinship noun (e.g., his mother) likely in an upcoming continuation. The possessive pronoun's form depended on the antecedent's natural gender, which had been previously established in the stories. The continuation included either the expected genitive construction or an unexpected one with a possessive pronoun of the opposite gender. We manipulated crosslinguistic (dis)similarity by comparing advanced English learners with either Swedish or Spanish as their L1. While Swedish has equivalent possessive pronouns that mark the antecedent's natural gender (i.e., hans/hennes "his/her"), Spanish does not. In fact, Spanish possessive pronouns mark the syntactic features (number, gender) of the possessed noun (e.g., nosotros queremos a nuestra madre "we-MASC love our-FEM mother-FEM). Twenty-four native speakers of English elicited an N400 effect for prenominal possessives that were unexpected based on the possessor noun's natural gender, consistent with the possibility that they activated the pronoun's form or its semantic features (natural gender). Thirty-two Swedish-speaking learners yielded a qualitatively and quantitatively native-like N400 for unexpected prenominal possessives. In contrast, twenty-five Spanish-speaking learners showed a P600 effect for unexpected possessives, consistent with the possibility that they experienced difficulty integrating a pronoun that mismatched the expected gender. Results suggest that differences with respect to the features encoded in the activated representation result in different predictive mechanisms among adult L2 learners.

Examining variability in the processing of agreement in novice learners: Evidence from event-related potentials.

The present study examines both properties of the language and properties of the learner to better understand variability at the earliest stages of second language (L2) acquisition. We used event-related potentials, an oral production task, and a battery of individual differences measures to examine the processing of number and gender agreement in two groups of low-proficiency English-speaking learners of Spanish who were tested in multiple sessions. The results showed an advantage for number, the feature also instantiated in the native language, as both groups showed a native-like P600 response to subject-verb and noun-adjective number violations across sessions. The more advanced group showed larger effects for number and marginal sensitivity to gender violations. These results suggest that native-like processing of shared features is possible even for novice learners, contrary to proposals suggesting that all morphosyntactic dependencies are initially processed in a non-native manner. Working memory (WM) was a predictor of P600 effects for number and also for gender (where the effect was marginal), suggesting that similar abilities may capture variability in the processing of both shared and unique features despite differences in overall sensitivity. Furthermore, whereas WM predicted performance on online tasks (P600 effects/oral production), verbal aptitude predicted performance on tasks examining morphosyntactic accuracy (grammaticality judgment task/oral production). Our results show that the linguistic properties of the L2, the individual characteristics of the learner, and the nature of the task at hand all play an important role in capturing the variability often observed in the L2 processing of agreement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Processing of Spanish Article-Noun Gender Agreement by Monolingual and Bilingual Toddlers.

We assessed monolingual Spanish and bilingual Spanish-Basque toddlers' sensitivity to gender agreement in correct vs. incorrect Spanish noun phrases (definite article + noun), using a spontaneous preference listening paradigm. Monolingual Spanish-learning toddlers exhibited a tendency to listen longer to the grammatically correct phrases (e.g., la casa; "the house"), as opposed to the incorrect ones (e.g., *el casa). This listening preference toward correct phrases is in line with earlier results obtained from French monolingual 18-month-olds (van Heugten & Christophe, 2015). Bilingual toddlers in the current study, however, tended to listen longer to the incorrect phrases. Basque was not a source of interference in the bilingual toddler's input as Basque does not instantiate grammatical gender agreement. Overall, our results suggest that both monolingual and bilingual toddlers can distinguish between the correct and incorrect phrases by 18 months of age; however, monolinguals and bilinguals allocate their attention differently when processing grammatically incorrect forms.

Anticipating information structure: An event-related potentials study of focus assignment via the it-cleft.

The present study uses event-related potentials to investigate the role of prediction in the processing of information structure, a domain of language that belongs to the level of the discourse. Twenty-three native speakers of English read short contexts including three Noun Phrases (NPs) (e.g., Either an adviser or an agent can be helpful to a banker), followed by a wh-question that established the discourse role of each referent (In your opinion, which of the two should a banker hire?). The NP that the question was about (banker) was the Topic, and the two NPs that could fill the slot opened by the wh-question (adviser, agent) were the Focus NPs. The participants' brain activity was recorded with EEG while they read the responses to the wh-questions, which differed along two dimensions: (1) the availability of the it-cleft construction (In my opinion, [it is] an agent…), a Focus-devoted device that makes Focus assignment predictable in the response; and (2) the discourse role of the target noun (Focus, Topic), which corresponds to the first referent in the response (In my opinion, [it is] an agent/a banker…). Crucially, we manipulated the phonological properties of the Focus and Topic nouns such that, if the Topic noun began with a consonant (e.g., a banker), both nouns that could fill the slot opened by the wh-question began with a vowel (e.g., an agent, an adviser) (counterbalanced in the overall design). This allowed us to measure effects of prediction at the prenominal article, before the integration of semantic and discourse information took place. The analyses on prenominal articles revealed an N400 effect for articles that were unexpected based on the phonological properties of the Focus nouns, but only in the conditions with the it-cleft. This effect emerged between 250 and 400 ms, with a frontal bias. The analyses on the noun revealed that violations of information structure (i.e., cases where the it-cleft was followed by the Topic noun) yielded a broadly distributed P600 effect, relative to appropriately clefted (i.e., focused) nouns. A similar (but numerically less robust) effect emerged for Topic relative to Focus NPs in the conditions without the it-cleft, suggesting that, in the absence of a constraining cue, comprehenders still assigned Focus to the first referent in the response. Overall, these results suggest that, when reading answers to wh-questions, comprehenders use information structure constraints (i.e., prior context + the it-cleft) to anticipate the form that the response should take (i.e., how information should be packaged).

Being a Participant Matters: Event-Related Potentials Show That Markedness Modulates Person Agreement in Spanish.

The present study uses event-related potentials to examine subject-verb person agreement in Spanish, with a focus on how markedness with respect to the speech participant status of the subject modulates processing. Morphological theory proposes a markedness distinction between first and second person, on the one hand, and third person on the other. The claim is that both the first and second persons are participants in the speech act, since they play the speaker and addressee roles, respectively. In contrast, third person refers to whomever is neither the speaker nor the addressee (i.e., it is unmarked for person). We manipulated speech participant by probing person agreement with both first-person singular subjects (e.g., yo…lloro "I…cry-1ST PERSON-SG") and third-person singular ones (e.g., la viuda…llora "the widow…cry-3RD PERSON-SG"). We also manipulated agreement by crossing first-person singular subjects with third-person singular verbs (e.g., yo…∗llora "I…cry-3RD PERSON-SG") and vice versa (e.g., la viuda…∗lloro "the widow…cry-1ST PERSON-SG"). Results from 28 native speakers of Spanish revealed robust positivities for both types of person violations, relative to their grammatical counterparts between 500 and 1000 ms, an effect that shows a central-posterior distribution, with a right hemisphere bias. This positivity is consistent with the P600, a component associated with a number of morphosyntactic operations (and reanalysis processes more generally). No negativities emerged before the P600 (between 250 and 450 ms), although both error types yielded an anterior negativity in the P600 time window, an effect that has been argued to reflect the memory costs associated with keeping the errors in working memory to provide a sentence-final judgment. Crucially, person violations with a marked subject (e.g., yo…∗llora "I…cry-3RD PERSON-SG") yielded a larger P600 than the opposite error type between 700 and 900 ms. This effect is consistent with the possibility that, upon encountering a subject with marked features, feature activation allows the parser to generate a stronger prediction regarding the upcoming verb. The larger P600 for person violations with a marked subject might index the reanalysis process that the parser initiates when there is a conflict between a highly expected verbal form (i.e., more so than in the conditions with an unmarked subject) and the form that is actually encountered.

Using event-related potentials to track morphosyntactic development in second language learners: The processing of number and gender agreement in Spanish.

We used event-related potentials to investigate morphosyntactic development in 78 adult English-speaking learners of Spanish as a second language (L2) across the proficiency spectrum. We examined how development is modulated by the similarity between the native language (L1) and the L2, by comparing number (a feature present in English) and gender agreement (novel feature). We also investigated how development is impacted by structural distance, manipulating the distance between the agreeing elements by probing both within-phrase (fruta muy jugosa "fruit-FEM-SG very juicy-FEM-SG") and across-phrase agreement (fresa es ácida "strawberry-FEM-SG is tart-FEM-SG"). Regression analyses revealed that the learners' overall proficiency, as measured by a standardized test, predicted their accuracy with the target properties in the grammaticality judgment task (GJT), but did not predict P600 magnitude to the violations. However, a relationship emerged between immersion in Spanish-speaking countries and P600 magnitude for gender. Our results also revealed a correlation between accuracy in the GJT and P600 magnitude, suggesting that behavioral sensitivity to the target property predicts neurophysiological sensitivity. Subsequent group analyses revealed that the highest-proficiency learners showed equally robust P600 effects for number and gender. This group also elicited more positive waveforms for within- than across-phrase agreement overall, similar to the native controls. The lowest-proficiency learners showed a P600 for number overall, but no effects for gender. Unlike the highest-proficiency learners, they also showed no sensitivity to structural distance, suggesting that sensitivity to such linguistic factors develops over time. Overall, these results suggest an important role for proficiency in morphosyntactic development, although differences emerged between behavioral and electrophysiological measures. While L2 proficiency predicted behavioral sensitivity to agreement, development with respect to the neurocognitive mechanisms recruited in processing only emerged when comparing the two extremes of the proficiency spectrum. Importantly, while both L1-L2 similarity and hierarchical structure impact development, they do not constrain it.

Morphological variability in second language learners: An examination of electrophysiological and production data.

We examined sources of morphological variability in second language (L2) learners of Spanish whose native language (L1) is English, with a focus on L1-L2 similarity, morphological markedness, and knowledge type (receptive vs. expressive). Experiment 1 uses event-related potentials to examine noun-adjective number (present in L1) and gender agreement (absent in L1) in online sentence comprehension (receptive knowledge). For each feature, markedness was manipulated, such that half of the critical noun-adjective combinations were feminine (marked) and the other half were masculine; half were used in the plural (marked) and the other half were used in the singular. With this setup, we examined learners' potential overreliance on unmarked forms or "defaults" (singular/masculine). Experiment 2 examines similar dependencies in spoken sentence production (expressive knowledge). Learners (n = 22) performed better with number than gender overall, but their brain responses to both features were qualitatively native-like (i.e., P600), even though gender was probed with nouns that do not provide strong distributional cues to gender. In addition, variability with gender agreement was better accounted for by lexical (as opposed to syntactic) aspects. Learners showed no advantage for comprehension over production, and no systematic evidence of reliance on morphological defaults, although their online processing was sensitive to markedness in a native-like manner. Overall, these results suggest that there is facilitation for L2 properties that exist in the L1 and that markedness impacts L2 processing, but in a native-like manner. These results also speak against proposals arguing that adult L2ers have deficits at the level of the morphology or the syntax. (PsycINFO Database Record

Neurolinguistic measures of typological effects in multilingual transfer: introducing an ERP methodology.

This article has two main objectives. First, we offer an introduction to the subfield of generative third language (L3) acquisition. Concerned primarily with modeling initial stages transfer of morphosyntax, one goal of this program is to show how initial stages L3 data make significant contributions toward a better understanding of how the mind represents language and how (cognitive) economy constrains acquisition processes more generally. Our second objective is to argue for and demonstrate how this subfield will benefit from a neuro/psycholinguistic methodological approach, such as event-related potential experiments, to complement the claims currently made on the basis of exclusively behavioral experiments.

The processing of number and gender agreement in Spanish: an event-related potential investigation of the effects of structural distance.

Previous research suggests that the processing of agreement is affected by the distance between the agreeing elements. However, the unique contribution of structural distance (number of intervening syntactic phrases) to the processing of agreement remains an open question, since previous investigations do not tease apart structural and linear distance (number of intervening words). We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the extent to which structural distance impacts the processing of Spanish number and gender agreement. Violations were realized both within the phrase and across the phrase. Across both levels of structural distance, linear distance was kept constant, as was the syntactic category of the agreeing elements. Number and gender agreement violations elicited a robust P600 between 400 and 900 ms, a component associated with morphosyntactic processing. No amplitude differences were observed between number and gender violations, suggesting that the two features are processed similarly at the brain level. Within-phrase agreement yielded more positive waveforms than across-phrase agreement, both for agreement violations and for grammatical sentences (no agreement by distance interaction). These effects can be interpreted as evidence that structural distance impacts the establishment of agreement overall, consistent with sentence processing models which predict that hierarchical structure impacts the processing of syntactic dependencies. However, due to the lack of an agreement by distance interaction, the possibility cannot be ruled out that these effects are driven by differences in syntactic predictability between the within-phrase and across-phrase configurations, notably the fact that the syntactic category of the critical word was more predictable in the within-phrase conditions.