Nienke Meulman

An ERP study on L2 syntax processing: When do learners fail?

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) can reveal online processing differences between native speakers and second language (L2) learners during language comprehension. Using the P600 as a measure of native-likeness, we investigated processing of grammatical gender agreement in highly proficient immersed Romance L2 learners of Dutch. We demonstrate that these late learners consistently fail to show native-like sensitivity to gender violations. This appears to be due to a combination of differences from the gender marking in their L1 and the relatively opaque Dutch gender system. We find that L2 use predicts the effect magnitude of non-finite verb violations, a relatively regular and transparent construction, but not that of gender agreement violations. There were no effects of age of acquisition, length of residence, proficiency or offline gender knowledge. Additionally, a within-subject comparison of stimulus modalities (written vs. auditory) shows that immersed learners may show some of the effects only in the auditory modality; in non-finite verb violations, an early native-like N400 was only present for auditory stimuli. However, modality failed to influence the response to gender. Taken together, the results confirm the persistent problems of Romance learners of Dutch with online gender processing and show that they cannot be overcome by reducing task demands related to the modality of stimulus presentation.

Prolonged L2 immersion engenders little change in morphosyntactic processing of bilingual natives

Bilingual and monolingual language processing differ, presumably because of constant parallel activation of both languages in bilinguals. We attempt to isolate the effects of parallel activation in a group of German first-language (L1) attriters, who have grown up as monolingual natives before emigrating to an L2 environment. We hypothesized that prolonged immersion will lead to changes in the processing of morphosyntactic violations. Two types of constructions were presented as stimuli in an event-related potential experiment: (1) verb form combinations (auxiliaries+past participles and modals+infinitives) and (2) determiner–noun combinations marked for grammatical gender. L1 attriters showed the same response to violations of gender agreement as monolingual controls (i.e. a significant P600 effect strongest over posterior electrodes). Incorrect verb form combinations also elicited a significant posterior P600 effect in both groups. In attriters, however, there was an additional posterior N400 effect for this type of violation. Such biphasic patterns have been found before in L1 and L2 speakers of English and might reflect the influence of this language. Generally, we interpret our results as evidence for the stability of the deeply entrenched L1 system, even in the face of L2 interference.

Designing research on bilingual development: Behavioral and neurolinguistic experiments

Chapter 1. Introduction by Monika S. Schmid.- Chapter 2. Multi-factorial studies: Populations and linguistic features by Monika S. Schmid.- Chapter 3. The multi-lab, multi-language, multi-method challenge By Bregtje J. Seton and Laurie A. Stowe.- Chapter 4. Collecting and analyzing spontaneous speech data by Christopher Bergmann.- Chapter 5. Eye-tracking and the visual world paradigm by Sanne Meike Berends, Susanne M. Brouwer and Simone A. Sprenger.- Chapter 6. EEG and event-related brain potentials by Nienke Meulman, Bregtje J. Seton and Laurie A. Stowe.

EEG and Event-Related Brain Potentials

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have become a standard method in many areas of cognitive research, including second-language research, over the last decade and a half (Van Hell and Tokowicz 2010). ERPs can provide evidence which is central to the controversy on the similarity or difference of first and second-language processing. However, they provide a challenge which can be daunting for a large-scale multi-lab study, because there are so many technical details which vary from lab to lab, making it difficult to acquire data that is fully comparable across testing sites. In this chapter we will discuss a number of aspects of ERP measurement, focusing partly on experimental designs and partly on the way in which data from different languages and different labs can successfully be combined. These aspects will require somewhat more detail than the techniques treated in previous chapters.