Processing clause-internal discourse relations in a second language

Coherence relations are expressed differently across languages, often leading to language learners misusing discourse connectives. We argue that the ability to detect these errors crucially depends on the coherence relation under scrutiny, as errors may remain unnoticed when the relation is clause-internal and marked with a highly optional connective. We focus, therefore, on specifications, a relation that German-speaking learners sometimes struggle to correctly indicate when writing in French. We assessed whether non-native readers detect this error and show preferences for either explicit or implicit marking of specifications. Findings show that non-native speakers were generally able to detect the error in a sentence-evaluation task but did not react to it in a self-paced-reading task, contrary to native speakers. They also judged implicit specifications as more correct than explicitly marked specifications. We conclude that non-native speakers do not always benefit from connectives during text processing, especially when they are highly optional.