Schedule of Events | Symposia

Examining sensitivity to subject-verb agreement in a second language (L2): An event-related potential (ERP) investigation

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Xuan Wang¹ (xuan.wang@ku.edu), Alison Gabriele¹, Robert Fiorentino¹; ¹University of Kansas

We used ERPs to investigate sensitivity to subject-verb agreement in Chinese-speaking learners of English. The Morphological Congruency Hypothesis (Jiang et al., 2011) posits that subject-verb agreement presents a challenge for L2 learners whose native language (L1) does not instantiate agreement (e.g., Chinese), particularly when learners are tested using tasks that minimize the use of metalinguistic knowledge. Since previous L2 ERP studies have largely utilized grammaticality judgment tasks, the extent to which L2 learners can potentially show nativelike responses in the absence of metalinguistic tasks remains unclear. Participants (N=25 upper-intermediate L1-Chinese/L2-English learners and N=26 L1-English speakers) read 80 target sentences and 160 fillers word-by-word, with a comprehension question rather than a grammaticality judgment after each sentence, to avoid drawing attention to metalinguistic information. Target sentences included 40 grammatical sentences and 40 sentences with subject-verb agreement violations (e.g., The librarians at the desk sometimes nap/*naps on the job). ERPs time-locked to the onset of the verb were analyzed in the 300-500ms (N400) and 500-900ms (P600) time-windows. L1-English speakers showed a significant positivity (P600) in the 500-900ms time window for subject-verb agreement violations. L2 learners exhibited a positivity that was evident in the 300–500ms and 500–900ms time-windows, and which was modulated by proficiency such that higher proficiency scores (English LexTALE) were associated with a larger positivity. These findings provide neural evidence that adult L2 learners can demonstrate sensitivity to agreement violations for grammatical features not instantiated in the L1 even when the task does not require the use of metalinguistic knowledge.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Syntax