This study reports on findings from two experiments investigating the interpretive patterns of overt pronouns in an embedded subject position with three types of matrix subjects (i.e. a referential NP, a quantified NP, or a "wh"-phrase) in Mandarin, English, and Japanese. According to the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC), overt pronouns in…

The present study explored the processing units of high-proficiency second language (L2) Chinese learners in on-line reading in an eye-tracking experiment. The critical aim was to investigate how learners segment continuous characters into words without the aid of word boundary demarcations. Based on previous studies, the embedded words of 2- and…

The acquisition of Italian stop consonants by Mandarin Chinese-speaking learners has hardly been investigated. This study was designed to fill this gap. To investigate Chinese learners' acquisition patterns of Italian voiced and voiceless stops, a perception experiment and a production experiment were conducted. Twenty Mandarin Chinese-speaking…

The present study aims to explore how second language (L2) speakers process four types of presupposition triggers in an online self-paced reading task and an offline acceptability judgment task. The four types of triggers are definite expressions with "the," the factive verb "know," the change-of-state verb "stop" and…

In this research note I want to address some misunderstandings about the construct of redeployment and suggest that we need to fit these behavioural data from Yang, Chen and Xiao (YCX) into a broader context. I will suggest that these authors' work is not just about the failure of three models to predict equivalence classification. Equivalence…

Word-initial stops in Mandarin and English show a distinctive phonological categorization but a similar phonetic realization along the VOT (Voice Onset Time) continuum. Previous research reported that native Mandarin adults produce measurably longer long-lag VOTs than native English adults. The present study examined whether and how the difference…

Adult second language learners often show considerable individual variability in the ease with which lexical tones are learned. It is known that factors pertaining to a learner's first language (L1; such as L1 tonal status or L1 tone type) as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory) modulate tone learning…

As Chinese shows both satellite- and verb-framed properties (Slobin, 2004; Talmy, 2012, 2016), it provides a unique lens through which to observe the extent of first-language (L1) typological influence in second language (L2) acquisition of motion expressions. This study has dual purposes. First, it extends Wu's (2016) investigation on motion…

This study investigates the processing of "wh"-dependencies in English by native speakers and advanced Mandarin Chinese-speaking learners. We examined processing at a filled gap site that was in a licit position (non-island) or located inside an island, a grammatically unlicensed position. Natives showed N400 in the non-island condition,…

This study aims to understand if Mandarin late learners of English can successfully manipulate acoustic and kinematic cues to deliver English stress contrast in production. Mandarin (N = 8) and English (N = 8) speakers were recorded producing English trochaic (initial stress) and iambic (final stress) items during a nonword repetition task.…

According to rational adaptation approaches of language processing, readers adjust their expectations of upcoming information depending on the distributional properties of the preceding language input. However, adaptation to sentence structures has not been systematically attested, especially not in second-language (L2) processing. To further our…

The current study examined the phonolexical processing of Mandarin segments and tones by English speakers at different Mandarin proficiency levels. Eleven English speakers naive to Mandarin, 15 intermediate and 9 advanced second language (L2) learners participated in a word-learning experiment. After learning the sound and meaning of 16 Mandarin…

We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains 'atoms' or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic…

This study investigates (1) whether second language learners (L2ers) acquire the Mandarin system of pronouns and reflexives despite differences from their first languages (L1s) and (2) whether L1-English and L1-Korean L2ers differ due to L1-transfer. Unlike English, Mandarin and Korean allow long-distance (LD) reflexives. While…

It remains unclear whether late second language learners (L2ers) can acquire sufficient knowledge about unique-to-L2 constructions through implicit learning to build anticipations during real-time processing. To tackle this question, we conducted a visual world paradigm experiment to investigate high-proficiency late first-language Dutch…