Grammatical gender processing in L2Electrophysiological evidence of the effect of L1–L2 syntactic similarity

  1. Alice Foucart 1
  2. Cheryl Frenck-Mestre 2
  1. 1 University of Edinburgh
    info

    University of Edinburgh

    Edimburgo, Reino Unido

    ROR https://ror.org/01nrxwf90

  2. 2 CNRS, Université de Provence
Revue:
Bilingualism: Language and cognition

ISSN: 1366-7289

Année de publication: 2011

Volumen: 14

Número: 3

Pages: 379-399

Type: Article

DOI: 10.1017/S1366728911000137 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

D'autres publications dans: Bilingualism: Language and cognition

Objectifs de Développement Durable

Résumé

This study examines the effect of proficiency and similarity between the first and the second language on grammatical gender processing in L2. In three experiments, we manipulated gender agreement violations within the determiner phrase (DP), between the determiner and the noun (Experiment 1), the postposed adjective and the noun (Experiment 2) and the preposed adjective and the noun (Experiment 3). We compared the performance of German advanced learners of French to that of French native controls. The results showed a similar P600 effect for native and non-native speakers for agreement violations when agreement rules where similar in L1 and L2 (Experiment 1, depending on proficiency), whereas no effect was found for L2 learners when agreement rules varied across languages. These results suggest that syntactic processing in L2 is affected by the similarity of syntactic rules in L1 and L2.