L2 Processing of Dutch regular and irregular Verbs

Do Ll and (advanced) L2 speakers of Dutch employ distinct processes — rule application for regulars and lexical lookup for irregulars — when producing Dutch past tense forms? Do L2 speakers of a language that observes the same dual conjugation system as in Dutch (e.g. English, German) produce Dutch past tenses by a different process (i.e. more like that of Ll speakers) than learners of Dutch with a different Ll verb system (e.g. Japanese and Chinese)? We studied the on-line past tense production performance of Ll speakers and of advanced L2 speakers of Dutch varying relative past tense frequency of regular and irreg-ular Dutch verbs. Performance proved slower and less accurate with both Ll and L2 speakers for irregular verbs with relatively low past tense frequency. No frequency effects were found for regular verbs. The results were qualitatively the same for English/German and for Japanese/Chinese L2 speakers, with a striking tendency to overgeneralize the regular past tense formation. We conclude that the mental representation of the Dutch past tense rule is essentially the same for Ll and L2 language users.