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…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) have become widespread in second language acquisition (SLA) research and a growing body of literature has been produced in recent years. We surveyed 61 SLA papers that use ERPs to study L2 sentence processing in healthy late learners. Our main aim was to provide a critical summary of findings from the decade…

The article deals with the problems of colloquial interrogative sentences having the function features in the source and target fiction texts. The importance of the research of interrogative sentences is defined by frequent use of questioning in the process of communication and a close connection of the problem of questioning with other…

Questions under Discussion (QUDs) have been suggested to influence the integration of individual utterances into a discourse-level representation. Previous work has shown that processing ungrammatical ellipses is facilitated when the elided material addresses an implicit QUD raised through a nonactuality implicature (NAIs). It is not clear,…

Task-irrelevant background sound can disrupt performance of visually based cognitive tasks. The cross-modal breakdown of attentional selectivity in the context of reading was addressed using analyses of eye movements. Moreover, the study addressed whether task-sensitivity to distraction via background speech on reading was modulated by the…

We examine the stylistic aspects of L2 translations using a set of quantifiable descriptors. The sample includes 40 translations of a promotional text from Czech into English and French produced by novices and professional translators. The general stylistic competence is slightly higher in the group of professionals, although the overall quality…

Here we report findings from a cross-sectional study of morphosyntactic processing in native German speakers and native English speakers enrolled in college-level German courses. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while participants read sentences that were either well-formed or violated German subject-verb agreement. Results showed that…

Recent data suggest that the first presentation of a foreign accent triggers a delay in word identification, followed by a subsequent adaptation. This study examines under what conditions the delay resumes to baseline level. The delay will be experimentally induced by the presentation of sentences spoken to listeners in a foreign or a regional…

Baggio presents the results of an event-related potential (ERP) study in which he examines the processing consequences of reading tense violations such as *"Afgelopen zondag lakt Vincent de kozijnen van zijn landhuis" (*"Last Sunday Vincent paints the window-frames of his country house"). The violation is arguably caused by a mismatch between the…

Using the self-paced reading paradigm, the present study examines whether highly proficient second language (L2) speakers of German (English first language) use case-marking information during the on-line comprehension of unambiguous "wh"-extractions, even when task demands do not draw explicit attention to this morphosyntactic feature in German.…

The goal of this study was to examine the effect of the linguistic distance between a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) on neural activity during second language relative to first language processing. We compared different L1-L2 pairs in which different linguistic features characterize linguistic distance. Chinese and Korean native…