(L2) learners - SAGE Journals

515671 research-article2014

SLR0010.1177/0267658313515671Second Language ResearchAlemán Bañón et al.

Article

Morphosyntactic processing in advanced second language (L2) learners: An event-related potential investigation of the effects of L1–L2 similarity and structural distance

second language research Second Language Research 2014, Vol. 30(3) 275–306 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0267658313515671 slr.sagepub.com

José Alemán Bañón University of Reading, UK

Robert Fiorentino University of Kansas, USA

Alison Gabriele University of Kansas, USA

Abstract Different theoretical accounts of second language (L2) acquisition differ with respect to whether or not advanced learners are predicted to show native-like processing for features not instantiated in the native language (L1). We examined how native speakers of English, a language with number but not gender agreement, process number and gender agreement in Spanish. We compare agreement within a determiner phrase (órgano muy complejo ‘[DP organ-MASC-SG very complex-MASC-SG]’) and across a verb phrase (cuadro es auténtico ‘painting-MASC-SG [VP is authentic-MASC-SG]’) in order to investigate whether native-like processing is limited to local domains (e.g. within the phrase), in line with Clahsen and Felser (2006). We also examine whether morphological differences in how the L1 and L2 realize a shared feature impact processing by comparing number agreement between nouns and adjectives, where only Spanish instantiates agreement, and between demonstratives and nouns, where English also instantiates agreement. Similar to Spanish natives, advanced learners showed a P600 for both number and gender violations overall, in line with the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), which predicts that learners can show native-like processing for novel features. Results also show that learners can establish syntactic Corresponding author: José Alemán Bañón, Department of Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Harry Pitt Building, Earley Gate, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK. Email: [email protected]

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dependencies outside of local domains, as suggested by the presence of a P600 for both within and across-phrase violations. Moreover, similar to native speakers, learners were impacted by the structural distance (number of intervening phrases) between the agreeing elements, as suggested by the more positive waveforms for within-phrase than across-phrase agreement overall. These results are consistent with the proposal that learners are sensitive to hierarchical structure.

Keywords agreement, event-related potentials, gender, L1 transfer, L2 processing, number, Spanish, structural distance

I Introduction The present study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the processing of number and gender agreement in second language (L2) Spanish by advanced late English-speaking learners. We focus on the extent to which L2 processing is impacted by the properties of the native language (L1) and by the structural distance (number of intervening phrases) between the agreeing elements. Number and gender present an interesting test case for several reasons. First, Spanish realizes both number and gender agreement on a variety of elements, including determiners and adjectives (e.g. la joya cara ‘the-FEM-SG jewel-FEM-SG expensive-FEM-SG’). English, in contrast, only realizes number agreement, for example, between demonstratives and nouns (this house versus these houses). This difference between English and Spanish allows us to investigate whether novel features (gender) can be processed to native-like levels in adult L2 acquisition, a central question to current SLA research. Examining agreement also carries the potential to shed light on the factors that impact the online establishment of syntactic dependencies in a late-acquired L2. In fact, it has recently been proposed that adult learners have a deficit at the level of the syntax and can only establish syntactic dependencies (e.g. agreement) online if the agreeing elements are in a ‘local’ relationship, such as within the same phrase (Clahsen and Felser, 2006; Clahsen et al., 2010). The present study directly addresses these questions using ERP, a method with excellent temporal resolution which allows for a fine-grained examination of the qualitative nature of L2 processing. In the following section, we introduce two theoretical models of L2 acquisition that make different predictions regarding L1 transfer. We then review previous ERP studies on the native processing of number and gender agreement and structural distance, including a study from our own lab that directly addresses these questions (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012). We then discuss the most relevant L2 studies which have addressed the role of L1 transfer and structural distance in L2 processing. Finally, we discuss the method and results of the present study and interpret our findings in light of current theories of L2 acquisition.

Using ERPs to examine the qualitative nature of L2 processing The present study attempts to adjudicate between two prominent models of L2 acquisition that make different claims regarding L1 transfer. The Failed Functional Features

Alemán Bañón et al.

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Hypothesis (e.g. Hawkins and Chan, 1997; Hawkins and Liszka, 2004) proposes that, in adult L2 acquisition, syntactic features not instantiated in the learners’ L1 cannot be acquired to native-like levels. For example, Franceschina (2005) found that only nearnative speakers of Spanish whose L1 instantiates gender performed at native-like levels with Spanish gender agreement. Moreover, the English-speaking learners in the study performed at native-like levels with number agreement (present in the L1), suggesting that the inventory of syntactic features in the L1 is deterministic with respect to native-like attainment in the L2. A more recent version of this proposal, the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007), makes different predictions for the acquisition of interpretable versus uninterpretable features. While interpretable features make a semantic contribution to the interpretation of a lexical item, uninterpretable features are purely syntactic in nature (Pesetsky and Torrego, 2007). For example, number and gender are argued to be interpretable on the noun, since they encode information regarding quantification (singular/plural) and word type (masculine/feminine), but uninterpretable on agreement targets, such as determiners and adjectives (Carstens, 2000). Due to their lack of semantic content, the Interpretability Hypothesis argues that uninterpretable features not instantiated in the L1 undergo critical period effects and become inaccessible in adult L2 acquisition. In contrast, the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996) posits that ultimate attainment in the L2 is not constrained by the properties of the L1. For example, White et al. (2004) found that advanced learners of Spanish whose L1 was French [+ gender] or English [–gender] performed at native-like levels with both features. Although White et al.’s (2004) results are interesting, it remains an open question whether the offline tasks that they used may have obscured underlying differences at the level of processing (Montrul et al., 2008; Mueller, 2005). In fact, proponents of the Interpretability Hypothesis claim that adult L2 learners may be highly accurate in tasks targeting novel features (Franceschina, 2005), but they argue that such ‘native-like’ performance is achieved through some qualitatively different mechanism, which is not made explicit. Since the Spanish gender system is very transparent (most masculine nouns end in -o and most feminine nouns end in -a), one possibility is that L1 English learners of Spanish rely on the lexical properties of the agreeing words (e.g. phonological similarity between word endings) to establish gender agreement. That is, learners might simply monitor the input and rely on a surface analysis of forms that tend to co-occur (Hawkins, 2001). The ERP methodology is particularly suitable for investigating the qualitative nature of L2 processing. This is because different ERP components have been found to be sensitive to different aspects of language processing in native speakers. For example, syntactic agreement violations, such as *The elected officials hopes …, consistently elicit a P600 in native speakers (Osterhout and Mobley, 1995). The P600 is a positive deflection between approximately 500–900 ms that typically peaks at 600 ms in centro-parietal electrodes and that has been argued to index a variety of morphosyntactic processes (Hagoort et al., 1993; Osterhout and Holcomb, 1992), such as integration (e.g. Kaan et al., 2000), reanalysis (e.g. Kaan and Swaab, 2003; Osterhout and Holcomb, 1992), or repair (e.g. Hagoort et al., 1993). Crucially, this is the only component consistently found for syntactic agreement violations in native speakers across languages, modalities, and

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tasks. Therefore, it is the most reliable metric to examine whether adult L2 learners can process agreement dependencies in a native-like manner.1 In contrast, lexical semantic anomalies, such as He spread the warm bread with socks, typically elicit a different component in native speakers: the N400 (e.g. Kutas and Hillyard, 1980). The N400 is a negative-going wave that is evident between approximately 300–500 ms in centro-parietal electrodes and that has been argued to index the strength of lexical associations. N400 effects are not typically found for agreement violations in native speakers. However, in a study examining agreement in word pairs, Barber and Carreiras (2003, 2005) found an N400 for both number and gender violations in Spanish native speakers. Interestingly, in sentential contexts, the same violations elicited a P600. The authors argue that, in the absence of a sentential context, agreement is processed at the lexical level by establishing associations between forms that tend to cooccur. When these associations fail, the result is an N400. Importantly, this is similar to what the proponents of the Interpretability Hypothesis argue for the adult acquisition of novel features (Hawkins, 2001). Therefore, if adult English-speaking learners of Spanish rely on this type of mechanism to establish gender agreement, violations should yield an N400. N400 effects have also been reported in studies that examine the effects of phonological similarity in native processing. For example, words/letters that are phonologically dissimilar to a prime (e.g. toe-male; a-b) elicit a larger N400 than words/letters that rhyme with the prime (e.g. flower-hour; a-j) (Coch et al., 2008; McPherson et al., 1998). Crucially, no modulation of the P600 component is typically observed for this type of manipulation. Therefore, if adult L1 English learners of Spanish rely on the phonological similarity between agreement markers to establish gender agreement, as predicted by the Interpretability Hypothesis, violations should yield an N400. McLaughlin et al. (2010) also propose that lexically-based strategies lead to N400 effects for agreement violations. In a longitudinal study, the authors tested subject–verb agreement in beginning English-speaking learners of French, and found an N400 after one month of instruction. However, after four and eight months of instruction, the N400 shifted into a P600 (similar to the French controls). The authors suggest that, initially, learners might have memorized probabilistic dependencies between pronouns and verbal morphemes (e.g. tu adores ‘you-SG love-SG’). Therefore, the N400 for agreement violations (*tu adorez ‘you-SG love-PL’) indexed the learners’ sensitivity to the probability of occurrence of two specific morphemes. Later, at a higher level of proficiency, learners induced the syntactic rule of subject–verb agreement, and agreement violations yielded a P600, similar to the native controls (see also Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2012; MorganShort et al., 2010). The present study relies on the difference between the N400 and the P600 to adjudicate between the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis. It should be noted that the question of exactly what processes underlie these two components is still a matter of debate. For example, Kuperberg (2007) argues that the N400 reflects semantic memory-based mechanisms, while the P600 reflects combinatorial analysis. Brouwer et al. (2012) argue that the N400 reflects lexical access and the P600, semantic integration. Van de Meerendonk et al. (2010) suggest that the N400 reflects a plausibility heuristic, while the P600 is a response to unexpected stimuli (see also Coulson et al., 1998). Importantly for the purposes of the present study, the two


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components seem to be impacted by partially different factors (e.g. only the P600 is consistently found for agreement violations in native speakers; only the N400 is consistently modulated by lexical factors such as phonological similarity or the strength of lexical associations). Furthermore, we examine whether morphological differences in how the L1 and the L2 realize a shared feature (number) impact processing, by examining number agreement in a context where both languages instantiate number (demonstrative–noun) and a context where only the L2 does (noun–adjective). Finally, we investigate the extent to which L2 processing is constrained by the structural distance between the agreeing elements. We do so by comparing agreement realized within a determiner phrase (DP) (e.g. órgano muy complejo ‘[DP organ-MASC-SG very complex-MASC-SG]’) and agreement across a verb phrase (VP) (e.g. cuadro es auténtico ‘painting-MASC-SG [VP is authentic-MASC-SG]’).

II Native processing: Number versus gender and the role of distance Several studies have used ERPs to compare the processing of number and gender agreement in native speakers (Barber and Carreiras, 2005; Nevins et al., 2007). For the most part, these studies report largely similar ERP patterns for the two features. For example, Barber and Carreiras (2005) compared number and gender in two sentential contexts (within-phrase and across-phrase) and found a Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) and a P600 for both violation types. However, the late portion of the P600 showed greater amplitude for gender than number violations, revealing some late differences between the two features (cf. Gillon-Dowens et al., 2010). In contrast, Nevins et al. (2007) compared the processing of number and gender in Hindi and found a similar ERP pattern (a P600) for both agreement categories. A few studies have also examined how agreement is impacted by the distance between the agreeing elements (e.g. Barber and Carreiras, 2005; O’Rourke and Van Petten, 2011) or by structural complexity (e.g. Kaan and Swaab, 2003; Münte et al., 1997). The results of these studies suggest that distance modulates the processing of agreement, as shown by either an increase or a decrease in P600 amplitude for violations realized at greater distance. An increase in P600 amplitude for greater distance has been interpreted as an increase in processing burden (e.g. Barber and Carreiras, 2005). A reduction in P600 amplitude for greater distance has been interpreted as a decrease in sensitivity to the violations or disinclination to repair them (e.g. O’Rourke and Van Petten, 2011). In a previous study conducted in our lab (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012), we investigated the unique contribution of structural distance to the processing of number and gender agreement in native speakers of Spanish. Our design examined both within-phrase (edificio muy seguro ‘building-MASC-SG very safe-MASC-SG’) and across-phrase agreement (cuento es anónimo ‘story-MASC-SG is anonymous-MASC-SG’) but, unlike most previous investigations, we controlled for linear distance (one word across both levels of structural distance) and for the syntactic category of the agreeing elements (noun–adjective). Our results showed equally robust P600 effects for both number and gender violations, not preceded by a LAN (e.g. Nevins et al., 2007). Furthermore, our distance manipulation revealed more positive waveforms for within-phrase than across-phrase agreement between 400– 900 ms, an effect that was not limited to agreement violations, but that was also present in

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grammatical sentences. The results for our distance manipulation are similar to those by Vos et al. (2001), who examined Dutch subject–verb agreement at two levels of complexity: (1) across conjoined sentences, and (2) across an embedded clause, which the authors assume to be more complex in terms of working memory resources (Haarmann and Kolk, 1994; Kolk and Weijts, 1996). Similar to Alemán Bañón et al., (2012), the results of Vos et al.’s (2001) study showed equally robust P600 effects for agreement violations in the two complexity conditions and a main effect of complexity driven by the fact that agreement across conjoined sentences (‘simple’ condition) yielded more positive waveforms than agreement across an embedded clause (‘complex’ condition). Overall, the results of our study support the view that the processing of number and gender agreement – as measured with ERPs – is similar (e.g. Nevins et al., 2007). Furthermore, we interpret the distance effects in our study as evidence that structural distance impacts the establishment of agreement overall, not only the repair of agreement violations. This is consistent with previous studies that have shown that P600 effects emerge in the comparison of sentences with the same grammatical status that differ in syntactic complexity (e.g. Kaan et al, 2000).

III L2 morphosyntactic processing: Role of the L1 and structural distance Previous ERP studies on L2 processing have shown that, with increasing proficiency, adult L2 learners tend to show native-like ERP patterns for morphosyntactic violations, (e.g. Ojima et al., 2005; Rossi et al., 2006; Tanner et al., 2013; for reviews, see Kotz, 2009; Steinhauer et al., 2009). However, evidence has also been provided that the properties of the L1 (i.e. whether a given L2 feature is present in the L1; whether a feature shared by the L1 and the L2 is realized similarly at the morphological level) impact processing (e.g. Bond et al., 2011; Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2011; Gillon-Dowens et al., 2010, 2011; Osterhout et al., 2006; Sabourin and Stowe, 2008; Tokowicz and MacWhinney, 2005). For example, Osterhout et al. (2006) found that English-speaking learners of French became increasingly native-like with subject–verb agreement (similar in L1/L2) as a function of proficiency, but not with article–noun agreement (different in L1/L2). Likewise, Tokowicz and MacWhinney (2005) found that English-speaking learners of Spanish showed a P600 for both tense violations (similar in L1/L2) and gender violations (unique to the L2), but not for article–noun number agreement violations (different in L1/L2). In line with these results, Foucart and Frenck-Mestre (2011) found that advanced L1 German learners of French elicited a P600 for gender violations realized similarly in the L1 and the L2 (definite article–noun), but not for gender errors realized in novel contexts (noun–adjective). These results suggest that sharing a feature in the L1 and L2 does not guarantee native-like processing in the L2, since learners may still be affected by how that feature is morphologically realized in the two languages. Finally, Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010) compared number and gender agreement in Spanish by adult advanced English-speaking learners. Agreement was examined both within the phrase (el suelo ‘the-MASC-SG floor-MASC-SG’) and across the phrase (suelo es plano ‘floorMASC-SG is flat-MASC-SG’). In native speakers, number and gender violations elicited a similar ERP pattern (LAN-P600), which was unaffected by distance. The learners showed a


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P600 for both number and gender violations at both levels of structural distance, the effect being larger for number. Both violation types also yielded a LAN in the withinphrase context. Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010) conclude that adult learners can process novel features (gender) to native-like levels, and argue for positive transfer to account for the larger P600 for number (present in the L1) than gender (absent in the L1). In a subsequent study using the same experimental stimuli with advanced L1 Chinese learners of Spanish, Gillon-Dowens et al. (2011) found equally robust P600s for number and gender violations (and no LAN) at both levels of distance. As Chinese lacks both number and gender agreement, these results suggest that, in the absence of positive L1 transfer, number and gender are processed similarly. Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010) interpret the absence of a LAN for across-phrase violations in their L1 English group as evidence that the distance between the agreeing elements affects processing, due to a limitation in the cognitive resources required for more taxing dependencies (e.g. McDonald, 2006). Another study showing that distance impacts L2 processing is Foucart and Frenck-Mestre (2012), who examined the processing of gender agreement in French by advanced L1 English learners. In their study, agreement was examined both within the determiner phrase (chaises vertes ‘chairs-FEM green-FEM’) and across the verb phrase (pommes sont vertes ‘apples-FEM are green-FEM’). While the native controls showed a P600 (and no LAN) for violations in both contexts, the learners only showed a P600 for within-phrase violations. Across-phrase violations, in contrast, yielded no effects, suggesting that distance impacts L2 morphosyntactic processing even at an advanced level of proficiency. Crucially, the results of these two ERP studies are mostly consistent with previous L2 studies which have examined the effects of distance on L2 acquisition and processing (Foote, 2011; Keating, 2009, 2010; Myles, 1995). However, it is important to note that none of these studies teased linear and structural distance apart and, thus, the unique contribution of structural distance to the establishment of syntactic dependencies in an L2 remains an important open question. For example, in both Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010, 2011) and Foucart and Frenck-Mestre (2012), greater structural distance involved greater linear distance, a factor which has been shown to impact processing in native speakers (Hammer et al., 2008). In addition, the two conditions in Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010, 2011) involved elements of different syntactic categories (determiner–noun versus noun–adjective), which has also been shown to affect the processing of agreement in native speakers (O’Rourke and Van Petten, 2011). We address both issues in the present study.

IV The present study The present study examines how L2 morphosyntactic processing is impacted by the properties of the learners’ L1 and by the structural distance between the agreeing elements. Specific research questions and predictions are presented below in the next three sections.

Research question 1: The processing of novel features Can adult L2 learners process novel features in a native-like manner? We address this question by comparing the processing of a feature that is present in the learners’ L1

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Table 1. Sample stimuli for the experimental conditions. Noun–adjective conditions: Within-phrase agreement: Grammatical 1. El cerebro es un órgano muy complejo y el cerebelo también. The brain is [DP an organ-MASC-SG very complex-MASC-SG] and the cerebellum too. Number violation 2. El cerebro es un órgano muy *complejos y el cerebelo también. The brain is [DP an organ-MASC-SG very complex-MASC-PL] and the cerebellum too Gender violation 3. El cerebro es un órgano muy *compleja y el cerebelo también. complex-FEM-SG] and the cerebellum too The brain is [DP an organ-MASC-SG very Noun–adjective conditions: Across-phrase agreement: Grammatical 4. El cuadro es auténtico y el grabado también. authentic-MASC-SG] and the engraving too. The painting-MASC-SG [VP is Number violation 5. El cuadro es *auténticos y el grabado también. The painting-MASC-SG [VP is authentic-MASC-PL] and the engraving too Gender violation 6. El cuadro es *auténtica y el grabado también. The painting-MASC-SG [VP is authentic-FEM-SG] and the engraving too Demonstrative–noun conditions: Grammatical 7. Mateo limpió este apartamento el sábado pasado. apartment-MASC-SG the Saturday last. Mateo cleaned this-MASC-SG Number violation 8. Mateo limpió estos *apartamento el sábado pasado. Mateo cleaned this-MASC-PL apartment-MASC-SG the Saturday last Gender violation 9. Mateo limpió esta *apartamento el sábado pasado. Mateo cleaned this-FEM-SG apartment-MASC-SG the Saturday last

(number) and a feature that is absent (gender) (Table 1 includes a sample of the experimental stimuli). Both Full Transfer / Full Access and the Interpretability Hypothesis predict a native-like ERP pattern for number violations overall (a P600 and, possibly, a LAN). With respect to gender, only Full Transfer / Full Access predicts that advanced learners can show a native-like ERP pattern for gender violations (a P600 and, possibly, a LAN). Under the Interpretability Hypothesis, learners might rely on alternative lexically-based mechanisms to establish gender agreement (e.g. phonological similarity between the agreeing words, co-occurrence frequencies), in which case violations are predicted to elicit an N400 (Barber and Carreiras, 2003, 2005; Osterhout et al., 2006).

Research question 2: L1–L2 similarity at the morphological level Do morphological differences in how the L1 and the L2 realize a shared feature impact L2 processing? We address this question by examining number agreement between


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demonstratives and nouns (Table 1, conditions 7–9), a syntactic context where both English and Spanish instantiate number agreement, and between nouns and adjectives (Table 1, conditions 1–3), which is a syntactic context where only Spanish realizes number agreement. Noun–adjective agreement was limited to within-phrase agreement because it is similar in terms of structural distance to demonstrative–noun agreement. Neither the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis nor the Interpretability Hypothesis predicts differences between the two contexts. However, previous studies have shown that L1–L2 differences at the morphological level impact processing (e.g. Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2011). If L2 processing is facilitated by L1–L2 similarity at the morphological level, we should observe an advantage (e.g. a larger P600) for demonstrative– noun number agreement over noun–adjective number agreement.

Research question 3: The role of structural distance Is the establishment of syntactic dependencies in the L2 limited to local domains, as suggested by the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (Clahsen and Felser, 2006; Clahsen et al., 2010)? We address this question by comparing within-phrase agreement (Table 1, conditions 1–3) and across-phrase agreement (Table 1, conditions 4–6). The Shallow Structure Hypothesis predicts that learners may elicit a native-like ERP pattern (a P600 and, possibly, a LAN) for within-phrase violations, but not for across-phrase violations. No differences between number and gender are predicted, since the Shallow Structure Hypothesis assumes that L1 transfer does not play a deterministic role in L2 syntactic processing (e.g. Clahsen and Felser, 2006; Clahsen et al., 2010; Marinis et al., 2005).

V Materials and methods 1 Participants Twenty-six L2 learners of Spanish (13 females) provided their informed consent to participate in the study. They were all native speakers of English with no significant exposure to Spanish or other languages before puberty (age of acquisition range: 11– 22). Their age range at the time of testing was 21 to 41 (mean: 27) and their proficiency level was advanced, as assessed by a combination of the MLA Cooperative Language Test (Spanish Embassy, Washington, DC, USA) and the Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera (Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, USA) (mean score: 44 out of 50; range: 40–50) (Montrul et al., 2008; White et al., 2004). Most of the learners were graduate students in a Spanish department, Spanish majors, or high-school Spanish teachers. On average, they reported having studied Spanish at the university level for approximately four years, and having lived in a Spanish-speaking country for approximately 1.2 years (range: zero to 2.5 years, with 16 learners having been immersed for a year or longer; only five learners were immersed for less than 6 months). They all reported using Spanish on a daily basis. Twenty-four native speakers of Spanish (13 females) from a similar age range (18– 38) served as the control group (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012). They all reported having being exposed to Spanish from birth, having been raised in a Spanish-speaking country

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(Spain, Bolivia, or Paraguay) until at least age 17, having being schooled in Spanish, and using Spanish on a daily basis. All participants were right-handed, as assessed by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971), had normal or corrected to normal vision, and indicated no history of neurological or linguistic disabilities. They were all tested in the USA and compensated for their time.

2 Stimuli Two separate sets of 120 triplets were designed to examine within-phrase and acrossphrase agreement. Each triplet included a grammatical sentence, a number violation, and a gender violation. In the within-phrase conditions (Table 1, conditions 1–3), the agreeing elements are located within a determiner phrase (DP). In the across-phrase conditions (Table 1, conditions 4–6), the agreeing elements are located across a verb phrase (VP). In both cases, agreement is established between a noun and an adjective, linear distance is one word, and violations become noticeable on the adjective, which is a syntactic context where English does not require agreement. Importantly, in the course of online processing, the agreement features of the adjective in the across-phrase conditions can only be checked against those of the noun after the parser has crossed the verb phrase. In the within-phrase conditions, in contrast, feature checking takes place within the same phrase. Another set of 120 triplets was designed to examine agreement between demonstratives and nouns, a syntactic context where English requires number agreement (this apartment versus these apartments) (Table 1, conditions 7–9). Finally, an additional 120 grammatical sentences were added to the study as fillers. Thus, the ratio of grammatical to ungrammatical sentences in the study was 1:1. Overall, each participant saw 40 sentences from each of the nine experimental conditions in Table 1 (120 grammatical sentences, 120 number violations, and 120 gender violations), randomly intermixed with the 120 grammatical fillers. Three presentation lists were created using a Latin Square design, such that only one version of each experimental triplet was seen per list.

3 Item controls We used the LEXESP database to compute the mean log frequency of the nouns and adjectives where agreement was tested (via BuscaPalabras; Davis and Perea, 2005). Across conditions, the nouns were controlled for frequency and length (frequency: F(2, 357) = .52, p = .59; length: F(2, 357) = .16, p = .84). In addition, the adjectives in the within-phrase conditions were matched in frequency and length with the adjectives in the across-phrase conditions (frequency: t(238) = –.678, p = .45; length: t(238) = –.414, p = .68). All of the nouns in the study were singular and they all referred to inanimate entities, which prevented learners from using biological gender cues to perform agreement. All of the nouns and adjectives in the study, including those in the fillers, formed the plural with a final -s, as in casa/casas, ‘house/houses’. Similar to previous studies (e.g. GillonDowens et al., 2010, 2011), all nouns and adjectives exhibited canonical gender marking (masculine -o and feminine -a). This was also true of the demonstratives in the


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demonstrative–noun conditions, the masculine singular demonstrative (este) being the sole exception in the study. The use of canonical number and gender marking ensured that participants received overt cues to perform agreement, a factor which has been argued to affect L1 processing (Molinaro et al., 2011a, 2011b). The study included an equal number of masculine and feminine nouns. Lexical gender was held constant within a given sentence and there were no intervening nouns between the agreeing elements in any of the experimental conditions.2 All critical nouns and adjectives were used twice, and so were the lexical verbs in the demonstrative–noun conditions. A total of 80 additional adjectives were used in the fillers, also canonically marked for number and gender. Since the testing was carried out in two separate sessions (see Procedure below), stimulus lists were designed such that, in a given session, participants would only see one version of each critical word (the adjective in the noun–adjective conditions; the noun in the demonstrative–noun conditions).3 Moreover, the same number of experimental items per condition were assigned to each electroencephalogram (EEG) recording (20 items per condition at each recording). Therefore, if priming effects were to emerge at the second EEG recording due to the repetition of the critical words, they would affect each experimental condition similarly.

4 Procedure a EEG recording and Grammaticality Judgment Task. The testing was conducted in two sessions (e.g. O’Rourke and Van Petten, 2011), in order to avoid data loss due to an excessive number of artifacts (see Tokowicz and MacWhinney, 2005). The sessions were separated by a minimum of two days and a maximum of two weeks. Participants were comfortably seated in a dimly lit room facing a computer monitor. They were instructed to silently read a series of Spanish sentences and judge their grammaticality (e.g. Gillon-Dowens et al., 2010, 2011; Morgan-Short et al., 2010; Sabourin and Stowe, 2008; Tokowicz and MacWhinney, 2005). The Grammaticality Judgment Task was chosen in order to be able to compare the learners’ accuracy on the judgment task with their brain responses to the agreement violations. Each session began with nine practice sentences, none of which included agreement errors. None of the nouns and adjectives in the practice sentences appeared in the experimental stimuli. Feedback was provided for the first three practice trials. The experiment began immediately after the practice session. Each experimental session encompassed six blocks of 40 sentences separated by five short breaks. Sentences were visually presented one word at a time using the RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) method and in random order. Within each block, sentences from both the noun–adjective and the demonstrative–noun conditions were intermixed. The presentation of the stimuli was carried out using Paradigm by Perception Research Systems, Inc (Tagliaferri, 2005). The trial structure was as follows: a fixation cross remained in the middle of the screen for 500 ms. Immediately after, the first word of the sentence was presented. Each word was shown for 450 ms, followed by a 300 ms pause, similar to the average stimulus onset asynchrony reported for native speakers (611 ms, according to Molinaro et al., 2011a). At the end of each sentence, there was a 1000 ms pause followed by the prompts for the Grammaticality Judgment, the word Bien ‘good’ for correct sentences (on the left

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of the screen) and the word Mal ‘bad’ for ungrammatical sentences (on the right). Responses to correct and incorrect sentences were made with the middle and index fingers of the left hand, respectively. The prompts remained on the screen until the participant pressed one of two buttons on the response pad. Following the behavioral response, there was an interval between trials ranging from 500–1000 ms, pseudorandomly varied at 50 ms increments. Immediately after this interval, the next trial began. b Gender Assignment Task and Vocabulary Task. After the second EEG recording, learners were tested on their knowledge of lexical gender and vocabulary. Both tasks focused on the vocabulary used in the experimental materials. Learners performed above 99% in both tasks, suggesting that they had no problems with gender assignment and that they were familiar with the vocabulary of the stimuli.

5 EEG recording and analysis The EEG was continuously recorded from 32 sintered Ag/AgCl scalp electrodes mounted on an elastic cap (Electro-Cap International, Inc) and placed in a modified 10–20 layout (midline: FPZ, FZ, FCZ, CZ, CPZ, PZ, OZ; lateral: FP1/2, F7/8, F3/4, FT7/8, FC3/4, T3/4, C3/4, TP7/6, CP3/4, T5/6, P3/4, O1/2). All electrodes were referenced online to the physically linked mastoids. Electrode AFZ served as ground. The horizontal and vertical electro-oculograms were measured with an additional six electrodes placed on the left and right outer canthi, and above and below each eye. Impedance was maintained below 5 kΩ. The recordings were amplified by a Neuroscan Synamps2 amplifier (Compumedics Neuroscan, Inc) with a bandpass filter of 0.1 to 200 Hz, and digitized continuously with a sampling rate of 1 kHz. We analysed the EEG data using the Neuroscan Edit software (Compumedics Neuroscan, Inc). All experimental trials were included in the analysis, regardless of accuracy in the Grammaticality Judgment Task. Additional analyses were conducted using only trials associated to correct responses, but due to the overall high accuracy rates, the results were qualitatively similar. Trials with artifacts were eliminated. Approximately the same number of trials was kept per condition (range for native speakers: 36 to 37 out of 40 across conditions; range for L2 learners: 37 to 38 out of 40 across conditions). The continuous EEG was then segmented into epochs in the interval between –300 and +1200 ms relative to the critical word. Epochs were then averaged per condition and baseline-corrected relative to the 300 ms pre-stimulus interval. Finally, a 30 Hz low-pass digital filter was applied to the averaged waveform before analysis. Upon visual inspection of the grand-averaged waveforms, ERPs were quantified via mean amplitudes within two time windows: 250–400 ms, which includes the LAN (Friederici, 2002) and the N400 (Kutas et al., 2006), and 400–900 ms, which includes the P600 (Friederici, 2002; Hagoort et al., 1993; Osterhout and Holcomb, 1992). Six regions of interest were computed for statistical analysis: Left Anterior (FP1, F7, F3, FT7, and FC3), Right Anterior (FP2, F8, F4, FT8, and FC4), Left Posterior (TP7, CP3, T5, P3, and O1), Right Posterior (TP6, CP4, T6, P4, and O2), Midline Anterior (FPZ, FZ, and FCZ), and Midline Posterior (CPZ, PZ, and OZ). To ensure that the signal to noise ratio was similar in the regions being compared, analyses were conducted separately for the two


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hemispheres and the midline regions, which encompass different numbers of electrodes (five versus three). For the noun–adjective conditions, a mixed-design ANOVA was conducted with Agreement (grammatical, number violation, gender violation) and Distance (within-phrase, across-phrase) as within-participants factors, and Group (native speaker, L2 learner) as the between-participants factor. For the hemispheres, the ANOVA also included Hemisphere (left, right) and Anterior–Posterior (anterior, posterior) as withinparticipants factors. For the midline regions, Anterior–Posterior was the only topographical factor in the ANOVA. For the demonstrative–noun conditions, a similar ANOVA was conducted, but without the factor Distance. The Geisser and Greenhouse correction was applied for violations of the sphericity assumption. Degrees of freedom are reported after correction (Field, 2005). A Bonferroni correction was applied for follow-up tests to control for Type I error. All p values are reported after applying the Bonferroni correction.

VI Results Native speakers’ results for noun–adjective agreement (Table 1, conditions 1–6) are discussed in detail in Alemán Bañón et al., (2012) and, thus, will only be summarized here as a point of comparison to the learners. Native speakers’ results for demonstrative–noun agreement (Table 1, conditions 7–9) will be discussed in the present article. The learners’ results for both noun–adjective and demonstrative–noun agreement (Table 1, conditions 1–9) will be discussed herein. Only significant results and marginal results that are relevant to the theoretical discussion are reported. We consider results where p is between .05 and .1 as marginal and results where p is less than .05 as significant. All significant effects are reported. However, in the presence of a significant higher-level interaction, lower-level interactions and main effects are not interpreted.

1 Noun–adjective conditions a Behavioral results. L2 learners performed at 94% or above in every condition (range across conditions: 94% to 97.4%). A mixed-design ANOVA with Agreement (grammatical, number violation, gender violation) and Distance (within-phrase, across-phrase) as within-participants factors and Group (native speaker, L2 learner) as the betweenparticipants factor revealed a significant main effect of Group, F(1, 47) = 5.62, p < .05, driven by the fact that native speakers were more accurate than L2 learners overall. Since the main effect of Group marginally interacted with Agreement, F(2, 94) = 2.42, p < .1, further analyses were conducted within each group separately. These analyses revealed no effects of Distance or Agreement on accuracy and no interaction in either group. This suggests that, while native speakers were more accurate than L2 learners overall, within each group, all sentence types were rated equally accurately. b EEG results. Upon visual inspection, the grand-averaged waveforms for the grammatical, number violation and gender violation conditions in the L2 learner group reveal clear differences between grammatical sentences and both violation conditions, and also between number and gender violations (for within-phrase agreement, see Figure 1; for across-phrase agreement, see Figure 2).

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Figure 1. Grand average event-related potentials (ERPs) for the within-phrase agreement conditions in the L2 learner group: grammatical, number violation, and gender violation.

Notes. ERPs are plotted for a representative electrode within each region of interest. The black rectangle highlights the P600 time window (400–900 ms).

Similar to the native controls in Alemán Bañón et al., (2012), number and gender violations across both levels of structural distance were more positive than their grammatical counterparts. This positivity emerged at approximately 400 ms, peaked at roughly 600 ms, and was evident until approximately 900 ms. Unlike the native controls in Alemán Bañón et al., (2012), the positivity appears greater for number than gender violations. The timing and topography (mainly posterior) of this positivity are consistent with the P600. Similar to the native speakers (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012; see also Vos et al., 2001), within-phrase agreement elicited more positive waveforms than across-phrase agreement, both for grammatical and ungrammatical sentences (see Figure 3). Results of the omnibus ANOVA are provided in Table 2 below.

2 LAN: 250–400 ms a Hemispheres. As shown in Table 2, analyses revealed a significant Agreement by Hemisphere by Anterior–Posterior by Group interaction. Due to the interaction with Group, follow-up analyses were conducted separately for native speakers and learners. In the native speakers, analyses revealed an Agreement by Hemisphere interaction, F(2, 46) = 6.73, p < .01, driven by the fact that agreement violations tended to yield more negative waveforms than grammatical sentences in the left hemisphere. Follow-up tests failed to reveal significant effects of Agreement in either hemisphere. In the learners, analyses yielded an Agreement by Hemisphere by Anterior–Posterior interaction, F(2,


Figure 2. Grand average event-related potentials (ERPs) for the across-phrase agreement conditions in the L2 learner group: grammatical, number violation, and gender violation.

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Notes. ERPs are plotted for a representative electrode within each region of interest. The black rectangle highlights the P600 time window (400–900 ms).

Figure 3. Average event-related potentials (ERPs) of the within-phrase and across-phrase conditions.

Notes. Each distance condition was computed by averaging across the three levels of agreement (grammatical, number violation, et al., gender violation). The black rectangle highlights the P600 time window (400–900 ms).

Hemispheres: Effects: Distance × agreement × hemisphere × anterior × group Distance × agreement × hemisphere × anterior Agreement × hemisphere × anterior × group Agreement × hemisphere × anterior Distance × hemisphere × anterior × group Distance × hemisphere × anterior Distance × agreement × anterior × group Distance × agreement × anterior Agreement × anterior × group Agreement × anterior Distance × anterior × group Distance × anterior Distance × agreement × hemisphere × group Distance × agreement × hemisphere Agreement × hemisphere × group Agreement × hemisphere Distance × hemisphere × group Distance × hemisphere Distance × agreement × group Distance × agreement Agreement × group Agreement Distance × group Distance – – F(2, 94) = 4.83, MSE: .11, p = .01 F(2, 94) = 3.01, MSE: .11, p < .1 – – – – – – F(1, 47) = 3.28, MSE: 3.88, p < .1 – – F(2, 94) = 2.61, MSE: .59, p < .1 F(2, 94) = 3.86, MSE: .65, p < .05 F(2, 94) = 6.43, MSE: .65, p < .01 – – – – – – – –

250–400 ms

Table 2. Results of the omnibus ANOVA conducted for the noun–adjective conditions.

– – – F(2, 94) = 7.63, MSE: .18, p = .001 – – – – – F(2, 94) = 54.68, MSE: 1.42, p < .001 F(1, 47) = 8.38, MSE: 4.67, p < .01 – – – – F(2, 94) = 22.41, MSE: .74, p < .001 – F(1, 47) = 11.38, MSE: 1.13, p = .001 – – – F(2, 94) = 48.71, MSE: 3.83, p < .001 – F(1, 47) = 21.99, MSE: 11.47, p < .001

400–900 ms

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– – – – – – – – – – – – –

F(1, 47) = 3.47, MSE: 93.05, p < .1

250–400 ms

– – – – F(1.72, 81.1) = 48.56, MSE: 1.35, p < .001 F(1, 47) = 8.02, MSE: 3.11, p < .01 – – – – F(2, 94) = 64.73, MSE: 3.43, p < .001 – F(1, 47) = 33.58, MSE: 8.65, p < .001 –

400–900 ms

Notes. Results are reported for the two time windows of interest (250–400 ms and 400–900 ms). Only significant results are reported. Where applicable, degrees of freedom were adjusted using the Greenhouse–Geisser correction.

Group Midline regions: Effects: Distance × agreement × anterior × group Distance × agreement × anterior Agreement × anterior × group Agreement × anterior Distance × anterior × group Distance × anterior Distance × agreement × group Distance × agreement Agreement × group Agreement Distance × group Distance Group

Table 2. (Continued)

Alemán Bañón et al. 291

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48) = 9.36, p < .001. Post-hoc tests confirmed that the Agreement by Hemisphere interaction was only significant in anterior regions, F(2, 48) = 6.84, p < .01. Follow-ups revealed a main effect of Agreement in the left hemisphere only, F(2, 48) = 6.78, p < .05, driven by the fact that number violations were more negative than gender violations, F(1, 24) = 10.93, p < .05. As shown in Table 2, the omnibus ANOVA also yielded a marginal Distance by Anterior–Posterior by Group interaction. The interaction plots showed that, in native speakers, within-phrase agreement tended to be more positive than across-phrase agreement in posterior regions. In contrast, the opposite pattern emerged in the learner group (within-phrase agreement was more negative in the posterior regions). Follow-up tests were conducted separately for the two groups, but the Distance by Anterior–Posterior interaction did not reach significance in either group. Finally, the omnibus ANOVA also revealed a marginal Distance by Agreement by Hemisphere interaction. The interaction plots showed that number violations were more negative than grammatical sentences in the left hemisphere, and only in the withinphrase configuration. Follow-up tests were conducted within each level of Distance to evaluate the interaction. Analyses revealed that the Agreement by Hemisphere interaction was only significant in the within-phrase configuration, F(2, 94) = 8.21, p < .01. Follow-up tests confirmed that number violations yielded more negative waveforms than grammatical sentences in the left hemisphere, F(1, 47) = 12.00, p < .01. b Midline regions. As shown in Table 2, the omnibus ANOVA for the midline electrode regions revealed no effects in the 250–400 ms time window.

3 P600: 400–900 ms As shown in Table 2, analyses revealed a three-way interaction between Agreement, Hemisphere, and Anterior–Posterior. Group did not interact with Agreement. Post-hoc tests were conducted within each level of Anterior–Posterior to examine the nature of the Agreement by Hemisphere by Anterior–Posterior interaction. In the anterior regions, analyses yielded an Agreement by Hemisphere interaction, F(2, 94) = 21.03, p < .001, and a main effect of Agreement, F(2, 94) = 4.67, p < .05. The follow-up tests for the Agreement by Hemisphere interaction revealed a main effect of Agreement in Right Anterior, F(1.77, 83.17) = 17.41, p < .001, driven by the fact that both number and gender violations yielded more positive waveforms than grammatical sentences (number, F(1, 47) = 23.77, p < .001; gender, F(1, 47) = 19.96, p < .001). In the posterior electrodes, analyses revealed an Agreement by Hemisphere interaction, F(2, 94) = 16.25, p < .001, and a main effect of Agreement, F(2, 94) = 91.98, p < .001. Post-hoc tests for the interaction revealed robust main effects of Agreement in both posterior regions (Left Posterior, F(1.73, 81.74) = 64.15, p < .001; Right Posterior, F(2, 94) = 104.64, p < .001), although the effect was larger in Right Posterior. Given that the Agreement effect was significant in both posterior regions, post-hoc tests were conducted for both regions combined. These analyses revealed that both number and gender violations yielded more positive waveforms than grammatical sentences (number, F(1, 47) = 124.66, p < .001; gender,


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F(1, 47) = 105.91, p < .001). In addition, number violations were more positive than gender violations, F(1, 47) = 14.03, p < .001. As shown in Table 2, the omnibus ANOVA also revealed a significant Distance by Hemisphere interaction and a main effect of Distance. Follow-up tests for the interaction revealed that within-phrase agreement yielded more positive waveforms than acrossphrase agreement in both hemispheres (left hemisphere: F(1, 47) = 26.86, p < .001; right hemisphere: F(1, 47) = 13.59, p < .01), the effect being larger in the left hemisphere. The omnibus ANOVA also revealed a Distance by Anterior–Posterior by Group interaction. Therefore, we examined the Distance by Anterior–Posterior interaction separately for native speakers and L2 learners. The Distance by Anterior–Posterior interaction was only significant in the native speaker group (F(1, 23) = 8.36, p < .01, driven by the fact that the Distance effect only emerged in the posterior regions, F(1, 23) = 32.36, p < .001. The analyses carried out in the midline regions yielded similar results to the hemispheres and, therefore, will not be reported here (see Table 2).

4 Noun adjective conditions: Summary of ERP results Similar to the native controls in Alemán Bañón et al., (2012), the L2 learners showed a P600 for both number and gender violations across both levels of structural distance. Number violations yielded a larger P600 than gender violations in both groups, an effect that did not emerge for native speakers when they were analysed separately (see Alemán Bañón et al., 2012). In both groups, within-phrase number violations yielded more negative waveforms than grammatical sentences in the left hemisphere in the 250-400 ms time window. This effect did not show an anterior bias and did not consistently emerge across agreement types and contexts in native speakers. Finally, the L2 learners showed more positive waveforms for within-phrase agreement than across-phrase agreement overall, similar to the Spanish controls, although with a more restricted topographical distribution (broadly distributed in the learners, posteriorly distributed in the natives).

5 Demonstrative–noun conditions a Behavioral results. Native speakers performed above 96% in every condition of the Grammaticality Judgment Task targeting demonstrative–noun agreement (Table 1, conditions 7–9; range across conditions: 96.9% to 97.9%). L2 learners performed at 97.4% and 95.8% with grammatical sentences and number violations, respectively, and at 83.1% with gender violations. A mixed-design ANOVA with Agreement (grammatical, number violation, gender violation) as the within-participants factor and Group (native speaker, L2 learner) as the between-participants factor revealed a significant main effect of Agreement, F(1.49, 70.15) = 19.15, p < .001, a significant main effect of Group, F(1, 47) = 14.51, p < .001, and a significant Agreement by Group interaction, F(2, 94) = 17.14, p < .001. Follow-up tests were conducted within each group separately, in order to evaluate the nature of the Agreement by Group interaction. In the native speaker group, analyses revealed no differences across conditions. In contrast, in the learner group, grammatical sentences were judged more accurately than gender violations (t(24) = 5.09; p < .001), and so were number violations (t(24) = 4.78; p < .001).

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Figure 4. Grand average event-related potentials (ERPs) for the determiner–noun agreement conditions in native speakers and L2 learners: grammatical, number violation, and gender violation. Notes. ERPs are plotted for a representative electrode within each region of interest. The black rectangle highlights the P600 time window (400–900 ms).

b EEG results. Visual inspection of the grand-averaged waveforms (see Figure 4) reveals that, in both native speakers and L2 learners, number and gender violations yielded more positive waveforms than grammatical sentences in the 400–900 ms time window. This positivity emerged at around 400 ms, peaked at roughly 600 ms, and lasted until approximately 900 ms. While it appeared equally robust for number and gender

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Table 3. Results of the omnibus ANOVA conducted for the demonstrative noun conditions. Results are reported for the 400 900ms time window. Only significant results are reported. Where applicable, degrees of freedom were adjusted using the Greenhouse Geisser correction. 400–900 ms Hemispheres: Effects: Agreement × Hemisphere × Anterior × Group Agreement × Hemisphere × Anterior Agreement × Anterior × Group Agreement × Anterior Agreement × Hemisphere × Group Agreement × Hemisphere Agreement × Group Agreement Group

– F(1.76, 83.11) = 2.69, MSE: .13, p < .1 F(2, 94) = 3.04, MSE: 1.65, p < .1 F(2, 94) = 19.48, MSE: 1.65, p < .001 – F(2, 94) = 12.27, MSE: .52, p < .001 – F(2, 94) = 8.78, MSE: 4.21, p < .001 F(1, 47) = 3.14, MSE: 37.07, p < .1

Midline: Effects: Agreement × Anterior × Group Agreement × Anterior Agreement × Group Agreement Group

F(2, 94) = 2.62, MSE: 1.27, p < .1 F(2, 94) = 23.14, MSE: 1.27, p < .001 F(2, 94) = 2.92, MSE: 3.74, p < .1 F(2, 94) = 14.81, MSE: 3.74, p < .001 F(1, 47) = 5.68, MSE: 27.16, p < .05

Notes. Results are reported for the 400–900 ms time window. Only significant results are reported. Where applicable, degrees of freedom were adjusted using the Greenhouse–Geisser correction.

violations in native speakers, it appeared greater for gender than number in the learner group.

6 LAN: 250–400 ms The only effect revealed by the omnibus ANOVA in this time window was a marginal Agreement by Group interaction, both in the hemispheres, F(2, 94) = 2.53, p < .1, and in the midline, F(2, 94) = 2.53, p < .1. The interaction was driven by the fact that, in native speakers, gender violations yielded more negative waveforms than grammatical sentences and number violations. In contrast, in the learner group, number violations were more negative than gender violations and, to a lesser extent, grammatical sentences. Due to the presence of the interaction, we examined native speakers and L2 learners separately, but follow-up tests revealed no significant effects of Agreement in either group.

7 P600: 400–900 ms As shown in Table 3, the omnibus ANOVA revealed an Agreement by Hemisphere interaction and a main effect of Agreement. Analyses also revealed an Agreement by Anterior–Posterior interaction, which marginally interacted with Group. Follow-up tests for the Agreement by Hemisphere interaction showed a robust effect of Agreement in the right hemisphere, F(2, 94) = 14.22, p < .001, driven by the fact that both number

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and gender violations yielded more positive waveforms than grammatical sentences (number: F(1, 47) = 14.99, p < .001; gender: F(1, 47) = 26.04, p < .001. In the left hemisphere, the effect of agreement was only marginal, F(2, 94) = 3.45, p = .07 (follow-up tests revealed no significant effects of Agreement for either number or gender). Since the Agreement by Anterior–Posterior interaction marginally interacted with Group, we examined the interaction separately for native speakers and L2 learners. In native speakers, the Agreement by Anterior–Posterior interaction was significant, F(2, 46) = 20.97, p < .001, and it was driven by the fact that the main effect of Agreement only emerged in the posterior portion of the scalp, F(2, 46) = 39.29, p < .001. Follow-up tests revealed that both number and gender violations yielded more positive waveforms than grammatical sentences (number: F(1, 23) = 44.72, p < .001; gender: F(1, 23) = 65.22, p < .001). In the L2 learner group, the Agreement by Anterior–Posterior interaction also reached significance, F(2, 48) = 4.27, p < .05, although it was less robust than in native speakers. Similar to native speakers, post hoc-tests revealed no effects of Agreement in the anterior regions. In the posterior regions, analyses yielded a main effect of Agreement, F(2, 46) = 39.29, p < .001, driven by the fact that gender violations yielded more positive waveforms than grammatical sentences, F(1, 24) = 20.38, p < .001. The effect for number was significant before correcting for Type I error, F(1, 24) = 4.59, p < .05, but not after. The analyses carried out in the midline regions yielded similar results to the hemispheres and, thus, we do not report them in detail here (see Table 3).

8 Demonstrative–noun conditions: Summary of ERP results Both the native speakers and the L2 learners showed a P600 for number and gender violations between demonstratives and nouns, an effect which showed a posterior distribution. In addition, the analyses conducted in the 250–400 ms time window revealed no evidence of a LAN for agreement violations in either group.

9 Noun–adjective agreement versus demonstrative–noun agreement Additional analyses were conducted in the 400–900 ms time window, to compare effects for violations between demonstratives and nouns (Table 1, conditions 7–9) and violations between nouns and adjectives (Table 1, conditions 1–3). Effects were calculated by subtracting the grammatical condition from each violation condition within each syntactic context (noun–adjective, demonstrative–noun). Only data from the posterior electrodes were analysed, since this is the region where agreement violations yielded a P600 for both noun–adjective violations and demonstrative–noun violations. Analyses were conducted separately for number and gender. This is because the comparison of interest manipulates the context where number is instantiated in the L2 (demonstrative: context where the L1 and L2 realize number agreement similarly; adjective: context where only the L2 realizes number agreement). We also compared the gender effects in the two contexts to examine whether gender agreement on demonstratives was facilitated in a context where the learners’ L1 instantiates another type of agreement (number).


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a Number. A mixed-design ANOVA with Syntactic Context (noun–adjective, demonstrative–noun) and Hemisphere (left, right) as within-participants factors, and Group (native speaker, L2 learner) as the between-participants factor revealed a significant main effect of Group, F(1, 47) = 9.97, p < .01, a significant main effect of Syntactic Context, F(1, 47) = 10.82, p < .01, and a significant interaction between Syntactic Context and Group, F(1, 47) = 5.97, p < .05. Therefore, analyses were carried out separately for native speakers and L2 learners. In the native speaker group, follow-up tests revealed no effects, suggesting that the amplitude of the P600 for number violations was unaffected by the syntactic context where the violations were realized. In the learner group, follow-up analyses revealed a significant main effect of Syntactic Context, F(1, 24) = 13.03, p < .01, driven by the fact that noun–adjective number violations elicited a larger P600 than demonstrative–noun number violations. The analysis carried out in Midline Posterior revealed a similar pattern of results. b Gender. In the hemispheres, the only significant effect revealed by the ANOVA was a main effect of Group, F(1, 47) = 8.13, p < .01, driven by the fact that the P600 for gender violations was larger in native speakers than in learners. The analysis carried out in Midline Posterior revealed similar results to those in the hemispheres.

VII Discussion The present study examines morphosyntactic processing in adult advanced Englishspeaking learners of Spanish, focusing on how the properties of the L1 and structural distance modulate processing. We addressed the first question by comparing number and gender agreement in Spanish. Recall that, under the Full Transfer / Full Access model (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), advanced English-speaking learners of Spanish are predicted to be able to show native-like processing for both number and gender violations. Both violation types are predicted to elicit a P600 (and possibly a LAN). In contrast, the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) predicts that native-like processing is only possible for number violations (present in the L1). For novel features (gender), learners are predicted to rely on alternative lexically-based mechanisms, such as paying attention to the phonological similarity between the agreeing words or creating lexical associations between forms that tend to co-occur. In such cases, learners are predicted to show an N400 for gender violations (e.g. Barber and Carreiras, 2003, 2005; Osterhout et al., 2006). Our results demonstrate that adult L2 learners can show native-like sensitivity, not only to features that exist in the L1, but also novel features, as suggested by the P600 for both number and gender violations. Crucially, the Spanish controls from our previous study (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012) also showed a P600 for the same agreement violations, a result that is consistent with most studies on the native processing of agreement in sentential contexts (e.g. Martín-Loeches et al., 2006; Wicha et al., 2004). Our results are not easily accommodated by models that posit a permanent representational deficit for the acquisition of new uninterpretable features in post-puberty learners, such as the Interpretability Hypothesis (e.g. Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) or the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (e.g. Franceschina, 2001, 2005; Hawkins and

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Franceschina, 2004). Our results are more in line with the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis (e.g. Schwartz and Sprouse, 1996), which posits that late L2 acquisition is influenced, but not constrained by the properties of the L1. It could be argued that the use of canonical gender marking might, to some extent, account for the native-like ERP pattern that we found for gender violations in the learner group. Our motivation for testing canonically-marked nouns, similar to all ERP studies that have examined gender agreement in native speakers and adult L2 learners of Spanish (e.g. Barber and Carreiras, 2005; Gillon-Dowens et al., 2010, 2011; MartínLoeches et al., 2006; O’Rourke and Van Petten, 2011; Wicha et al., 2004), is that they are the most representative nouns of the Spanish lexicon. That is, 99.8% of the nouns that end in -o are masculine, and 96.3% of the nouns that end in -a are feminine (Teschner and Russell, 1984). Therefore, such regularity is likely to make lexical gender assignment transparent to the learner. Since the present study is mainly concerned with syntactic agreement (on adjectives and demonstratives) and previous studies (e.g. Sabourin and Stowe, 2008; but see Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2011) have shown that knowledge of lexical gender can hinder the learner’s ability to establish agreement, the purpose of choosing canonically-marked nouns was to minimize lexical factors on agreement processing. Interestingly, the P600 for noun–adjective violations was found to be larger for number than gender, in both native speakers and L2 learners. Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010) compared the processing of number and gender agreement in Spanish by advanced English-speaking learners and found a larger P600 for number than gender violations. However, unlike the present study, the difference was only significant in the learner group. In this respect, it is worth noting that, when the native speakers in the present study were analysed independently (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012), this number/gender difference did not emerge, in line with previous studies (Nevins et al., 2007). Agreement violations in the present study did not elicit a Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) in either the L2 learners or the Spanish controls (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012). Given that the LAN is assumed to index automatic morphosyntactic processing, the absence of the LAN for morphosyntactic violations in L2 processing has traditionally been interpreted as evidence that L2 learners do not process morphosyntactic dependencies in a native-like manner (Clahsen and Felser, 2006; Hahne and Friederici, 2001; Weber-Fox and Neville, 1996). However, the fact that the Spanish controls in the current study did not consistently elicit a LAN for either number or gender violations in any of the contexts under investigation (see also Martín-Loeches et al., 2006; Wicha et al., 2004, amongst others), indicates that claims attributing the absence of the LAN in L2 learners to processing deficits may be premature (see McLaughlin et al., 2010). In the present study, we also examined the extent to which morphological differences in how the L1 and L2 realize a shared feature impact processing. We did so by examining number agreement between demonstratives and nouns, which is a syntactic context where both English and Spanish realize number agreement, and between nouns and adjectives, which is a syntactic context where only Spanish realizes number agreement. Neither the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis nor the Interpretability Hypothesis predicts differences based on morphological realization. However, previous studies (e.g. Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2011) have shown that L2 processing is facilitated by L1–L2 similarity at


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the morphological level and that, even at high levels of proficiency, learners may not show native-like processing for features that are realized differently in the L1 and the L2. Our results suggest that adult L2 learners can show native-like processing for novel instantiations of a feature, as suggested by the P600 for number violations realized on adjectives (different in L1/L2). An interesting result in the present study is that number violations between nouns and adjectives yielded a more robust P600 than number violations realized between demonstratives and nouns (similar in L1/L2). Interestingly, this asymmetry was not found for gender violations. Our results suggest that other factors in addition to L1–L2 similarity may impact the establishment of morphosyntactic dependencies in an L2. There are a number of differences between the noun–adjective conditions and the demonstrative–noun conditions that might account for the pattern of results found in the present study. For example, in the noun–adjective conditions, agreement involves two content words, whereas in the demonstrative–noun conditions, agreement is realized between a function word (demonstrative) and a content word. Furthermore, in the noun–adjective conditions, the noun, which is the agreement trigger, precedes the adjective. In contrast, in the demonstrative–noun conditions, the noun follows the determiner. Finally, the masculine demonstrative in the demonstrative–noun conditions (este) does not exhibit canonical gender marking. However, this factor is unlikely to have affected the processing of number agreement, since it did not affect the processing of gender violations, which elicited a P600 that was largely similar to the P600 for noun–adjective gender violations, where all nouns and adjectives exhibited canonical gender marking. Future studies should investigate the extent to which these factors impact L2 processing. However, it should be noted that if the ERP differences we found in the learner group between noun–adjective number violations and demonstrative–noun number violations were due to the contexts being different, we should have also observed ERP differences for gender violations in the two contexts, which was not the case. It is also important to keep in mind that our results for demonstrative–noun number violations are not predicted by either the Full Transfer / Full Access Hypothesis or by the Interpretability Hypothesis, both of which predict native-like processing of number (present in the L1), nor are they predicted by any account of positive transfer (Foucart and Frenck-Mestre, 2011; Tokowicz and MacWhinney, 2005), since both English and Spanish realize number agreement between demonstratives and nouns in a similar manner. Finally, our study also examined whether the establishment of syntactic dependencies in a late-acquired L2 is limited to local domains, as suggested by the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (Clahsen and Felser, 2006; Clahsen et al., 2010). We addressed this question by comparing within-phrase (e.g. órgano muy complejo ‘organ-MASC-SG very complexMASC-SG’) and across-phrase agreement (e.g. cuadro es auténtico ‘painting-MASC-SG is authentic-MASC-SG’). The Shallow Structure Hypothesis predicts that within-phrase violations could yield a P600 (and, possibly, a LAN), although it is not guaranteed. In contrast, learners are not predicted to show native-like processing for violations realized across the phrase. In addition, no differences are predicted between number and gender either within or across the phrase. Our results show that adult L2 learners can establish agreement outside of local domains, as suggested by the robust P600 effects for both number and gender violations realized across the phrase. These results do not support the Shallow Structure

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Hypothesis. In addition, native speakers and L2 learners showed a very similar pattern of results, that is, within-phrase agreement yielded more positive waveforms than their across-phrase counterparts in both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, a difference that would have been obscured in an offline task, since the accuracy rates for both the within and the across-phrase conditions were very high and did not differ.4 In Alemán Bañón et al (2012) we interpreted these results for native speakers as evidence that structural distance decreases sensitivity to the establishment of agreement overall, not only to the repair of agreement violations. Crucially, the syntactic category of the agreeing elements and the linear distance between them were controlled for and, therefore, the smaller waveforms for across-phrase agreement in the 400–900 ms time window are likely to be due to the greater structural distance between the agreeing elements.5 We interpret the fact that the L2 learners were affected by the structural distance between the agreeing elements in a native-like manner as evidence that adult L2 learners are able to posit hierarchical syntactic representations during L2 processing (Wen et al., 2010). An alternative interpretation for the structural distance effects reported herein concerns differences in syntactic predictability. In the within-phrase conditions (órgano muy complejo ‘organ-MASC-SG very complex-MASC-SG’), the critical word is preceded by the adverb ‘muy’, which is very likely to be followed by an adjective. In contrast, in the across-phrase conditions (cuadro es auténtico ‘painting-MASC-SG is authentic-MASC-SG’) the critical word is preceded by the copula es, which can be followed by either an adjective or a determiner phrase. While the present study does not currently allow us to discriminate between the two interpretations, it is important to note that previous studies focusing on agreement in contexts that also differed in syntactic predictability have not provided systematic evidence that syntactic predictability modulates the processing of agreement.6 In addition, the simple versus complex conditions examined by Vos et al. (2001) do not differ in syntactic predictability (upon consultation with a native speaker of Dutch). However, their complexity manipulation yielded a similar ERP pattern to the one in the present study. In addition, it remains an open question whether the effects of predictability would emerge in the P600 time window, which is where the main effect of distance emerged in the present study. There are no previous ERP studies that we are aware of showing that the P600 is modulated by predictability, suggesting that there is no clear account of how this variable would impact syntactic processing in either native speakers or L2 learners. However, it would be valuable in future research to identify and test structures that differ in structural complexity yet contain identical lexical material immediately preceding the critical region. To sum up, our results show that native-like processing is attainable in adult L2 acquisition, as suggested by the P600s for both number and gender agreement violations overall. Our results also suggest that adult L2 learners can show native-like processing for novel instantiations of a feature, as suggested by the P600 for number violations realized on adjectives, a syntactic context where English does not realize agreement. In contrast to previous studies, the results for demonstrative–noun number violations in the present study also suggest that sharing a feature and realizing it similarly in the L1 and the L2 does not necessarily guarantee native-like processing. Finally, our results suggest that morphosyntactic processing in adult L2 learners is not confined to local domains and,


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most importantly, that learners are sensitive to hierarchical structure in a similar way to native speakers. In conclusion, the results of our study suggest that, at an advanced level of proficiency, L2 processing can be very effective, and learners are able to resolve morphosyntactic dependencies online without being limited to structurally local domains. Our results also show that the properties of the L1 are not deterministic with respect to L2 ultimate attainment, as learners can show native-like processing for properties that are unique to their L2. Acknowledgements We thank Amy Rossomondo and María García Puente for their help in recruiting participants. We would also like to thank Allie Edmonds, Carla Fernández Guzmán, Brooke Gunter, and Frank Plummer for assistance in data collection, as well as Utako Minai and Stephen Politzer-Ahles for their help in preparing the manuscript.

Declaration of conflicting interest The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding This work was supported by National Science Foundation (BCS-0951900), the Institute for Policy and Social Research, and the Linguistics Department at the University of Kansas, USA.

Notes 1. In some studies, the P600 for agreement violations is preceded by a Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) (e.g. Barber and Carreiras, 2005; De Vincenzi et al., 2003; O’Rourke and Van Petten, 2011), a negative-going wave that typically emerges 300 ms post stimulus onset and is evident until 500 ms in left anterior electrodes; this response has been found to be sensitive to a variety of morphosyntactic operations (Friederici, 2002). Importantly, a number of studies on agreement do not report the LAN for agreement violations in native speakers (e.g. FrenckMestre et al., 2008; Martín-Loeches et al., 2006; Wicha et al., 2004). 2. The within-phrase conditions included a gendered noun that appeared before the noun phrase in which we manipulated agreement. Importantly, that noun does not trigger agreement on the critical adjective (in fact, they could be of different genders), and it does not intervene between the agreeing elements. Therefore, it is unlikely that it could potentially cause interference, especially if we take into account (1) that it was consistently matched with the critical noun in number and gender and (2) that it was always singular, since previous studies have shown that attraction errors involving singulars occur very rarely (e.g. only 3% of the time in the study by Eberhard et al., 2005). 3. Although we do not have reason to expect that any priming effects that may arise as a consequence of this design would affect the conditions differently, this possibility cannot be ruled out in principle, as noted by an anonymous reviewer. Future research using singlesession designs (or two-session designs with different lexical material) may inform the issue of whether or to what extent repetition priming influences the pattern of results reported in the current study. 4. It could be argued that the use of a Grammaticality Judgment Task forced participants to check for agreement, which might have led to near-ceiling P600 effects for both within-phrase and

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across-phrase violations, obscuring potential differences in grammaticality effects between the two distance conditions. However, it should be noted that the possibility that the use of a Grammaticality Judgment Task led to a near-ceiling P600 effect is not consistent with the results for number violations in the demonstrative–noun condition in the learner group. Learners were highly accurate detecting number violations in this context (96% accuracy) and yet the P600 was significantly less robust than the P600 for noun–adjective number violations (despite a similar accuracy rate of 97%). This suggests that, even when participants are asked to pay attention to grammaticality, the result is not necessarily a near-ceiling P600. In addition, previous studies where participants were explicitly instructed to judge the grammaticality of the sentences have reported distance effects on agreement, suggesting that the lack of such effects in the present study may not be directly related to the task we used. For example, Barber and Carreiras (2005) examined the processing of agreement in Spanish both within the determiner phrase (el faro ‘the-MASC-SG lighthouse-MASC-SG’) and across the verb phrase (faro es alto ‘lighthouse-MASC-SG is high-MASC-SG’) and found greater amplitude for across-phrase than within-phrase violations in the 700–900 ms time window, despite the use of a grammaticality judgment. Likewise, using the same stimuli as Barber and Carreiras (2005), Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010) examined how distance impacted agreement in advanced English-speaking learners of Spanish and found different agreement effects between within-phrase and across-phrase agreement violations (only within-phrase violations elicited a LAN). 5. It must be noted that the critical word occurred in different sentence positions in the withinphrase and across-phrase conditions. Sentence position effects on ERPs have previously been reported for the N400 (Van Petten and Kutas, 1990) but it remains an open question whether the P600 is also affected by sentence position. For example, Van Petten and Kutas (1990) found a reduction in N400 amplitude over the course of the sentence, which they interpret as evidence that, as semantic context is built up, incoming words become increasingly predictable and easier to integrate, causing a reduction in N400 amplitude. In the present study, although the critical word is located mid-sentence in both distance conditions, it appears three words later in the within-phrase conditions (see conditions 1–3 versus conditions 4–6 in Table 1). One possibility in the present study is that the N400 (250–400 ms) in the withinphrase conditions was reduced compared to the N400 in the across-phrase conditions, which might have affected the waveforms in the following time window (400–900 ms), which is the P600 time window. We addressed this issue by baseline-correcting the waveforms using the 250–400 ms time window (Hagoort, 2003; Martín-Loeches et al., 2006; Wicha et al., 2004). The results of this analysis showed that the main effect of distance persisted very robustly in both native speakers (Alemán Bañón et al., 2012) and L2 learners. In addition, the agreement by distance interaction remained non-significant. Importantly, these results show that the main effect of distance that we found in both groups (more positive waveforms for withinphrase agreement overall) is independent from potential differences in the N400 time window between the within-phrase and across-phrase conditions. Furthermore, our results are similar to those reported in Vos et al.’s (2001) study, where the critical word occupied the same sentence position across the two levels of structural complexity. This is consistent with our claim that the distance effects in the present study are unlikely to be determined by differences in sentence position. 6. For example, Barber and Carreiras (2005) compared determiner–noun agreement to noun– adjective agreement and found a larger P600 for noun–adjective violations. Crucially, the syntactic category of the critical word (noun) in the determiner–noun condition (e.g. el faro ‘the lighthouse’) is more predictable than the critical word (adjective) in the noun–adjective condition (e.g. faro es alto ‘lighthouse is tall’). This is because determiners are almost always followed by nouns, but the copula es (in the noun–adjective condition) is less constraining.


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Despite these differences in syntactic predictability, noun–adjective violations elicited a larger P600 than determiner–noun violations, an effect which is very different from the one reported in Alemán Bañón et al., (2012) and, in the present study, where the more predictable configuration elicited more positive waveforms overall (not limited to violations). Moreover, Gillon-Dowens et al. (2010) reported no differences between the two configurations with the same stimuli as those in Barber and Carreiras’ (2005) study, suggesting that there remains no clear account of how syntactic predictability impacts the processing of agreement. In this respect, it is important to point out that the stimuli in Barber and Carreiras (2005) and GillonDowens et al. (2010) differed across a number of dimensions (e.g. structural distance, linear distance, syntactic category of the agreeing elements, the position of the controller noun with respect to the agreeing word).

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