Pronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic…

The present study investigates how L2 learners adapt their production preferences following immediate and cumulative experience with a syntactic structure when an L2 structure differs from an L1 structure in terms of verb subcategorization frame and argument structure. Korean learners of English described causative events in English in a…

In order to better understand the role of syntactic similarity in a code-switched sentence, the current study explored the effect of similar and different syntactic structures on Chinese-English bilinguals' intra-sentential switching costs. L2 proficiency and switching directions as factors that potentially intervene in bilingual performance were…

The mechanisms underlying native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing have been widely debated. One account of potential L1/L2 differences is that L2 sentence processing underuses syntactic information and relies heavily on semantic and surface cues. Recently, an alternative account has been proposed, which argues that the source of L1/L2…

It has been proposed that second language (L2) learners differ from native speakers in processing due to either influence from their native language or an inability to integrate information from multiple linguistic domains in a second language. To shed new light on the underlying mechanism of L2 processing, we used an event-related potentials…

This study investigates the relationships among working memory (WM), syntactic parsing ability (SP), and L2 reading performance across varying proficiency levels. A cohort of 120 L1-Persian EFL learners was categorized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced proficiency groups based on their IELTS scores. Participants completed a reading span…

Items in the mental lexicon have three storage and processing strata, the concept, lemma, and lexeme, which equate to semantic, syntactic and phonological information. Lexical items relate to each other at each stratum. Bilingual lexicons, which contain items from all languages, may contain cognates, items sharing concepts and with overlapping…

Within the last two decades, researchers have begun to investigate how L2 learners process syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and lexical information during the comprehension of L2 sentences. The present study aimed to add to research by investigating how L1 influences L2 processing of sentences indicating plurality in constructions involving numerals.…

This study investigates the use of high-frequency cognitive verbs - think and believe - in Turkish L2 learners' interlanguage, both in terms of their verb senses and complementation patterns. In line with this purpose, a Sentence Production Task consisting of context-independent items and a Sentence Completion Task consisting of context-dependent…

Research consistently shows that adults engaged in tutored acquisition benefit from explicit instruction in several linguistic domains. For preschool children, it is often assumed that such explicit instruction does not make a difference. In the present study, we investigated whether explicit instruction affected young learners in acquiring a…

Several studies used artificial language (AL) learning paradigms to investigate structural priming between languages in early phases of learning. The presence of such priming would indicate that these languages share syntactic representations. Muylle et al. (2020a) found similar priming of transitives and ditransitives between Dutch (SVO order)…

The study explored the contribution of prior knowledge and reliance on L1 syntactic knowledge to L2 written sentence comprehension. Participants, 102 native Hebrew speakers at three education levels (junior high, high school, and postsecondary), answered questions in two sentence categories: Semantically plausible sentences that readers can…

Purpose: Diagnoses, assessments, and treatments, as well as social and language interventions, can be effective in identifying and interpreting specific linguistic features that present special challenges to the language abilities of individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). This article reports on a study analyzing complex sentences and…

This study investigates the processing of long-distance syntactic dependencies by native speakers of Slovenian (L1) who are advanced learners of Italian as a second language (L2), compared with monolingual Italian speakers. Using a self-paced reading task, we compare sensitivity of the early-acquired L2 learners to syntactic anomalies in their L2…

The perfective aspect marker in Chinese is partly functionally similar to inflectional suffixes in Indo-European languages but is non-inflectional and lexical in nature, lying thus at the semantics-syntax interface. This provides us with the opportunity to compare directly the syntactic and semantic constraints during second language (L2) sentence…