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Editorial published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 2:2 (2012) ► pp.109–140
Editorial

Missing verbal inflections as a representational problem

Evidence from self-paced reading

| Michigan State University
| San Diego State University
| Florida State University

A continuing concern in second language acquisition (SLA) research is whether problems with inflectional morphology are representational or related somehow to performance. In this study, we examine 25 non-advanced learners of L2 Spanish and compare them with 18 native Spanish speakers on three grammatical structures: subject-verb inversion, adverb placement and person-number inflections on verbs. We use self-paced reading as a measure of underlying sensitivity to grammatical violations. Our results clearly show that the L2 learners pattern like the native speakers on the two syntactic structures; both groups demonstrate sensitivity to grammatical violations while reading sentences for meaning. For person-number on verbs, L2 learners did not show sensitivity to grammatical violations whereas the native speakers did. We argue that these results suggest a representational problem for morphology in our L2 population.

Keywords: second language inflectional morphology, representation, self-paced reading, sensitivity to grammatical violations
Article outline
  • 1.Background and motivation
    • 1.1Morphological deficiencies in Second Language Acquisition (SLA)
    • 1.2Verbal inflections in Spanish
    • 1.3Subject-verb inversion and adverb placement
    • 1.4The use of on-line methods for testing grammatical sensitivity
  • 2.The present study
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials
      • 2.2.1Verbal morphology
      • 2.2.2Subject-verb inversion
      • 2.2.3Adverb placement
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Reading time measures
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Verb morphology
      • 3.1.1All person-number manipulations
      • 3.1.21st-person singular versus 3rd-person singular
      • 3.1.32nd-person singular versus 3rd-person plural
      • 3.1.4lst-person singular
      • 3.1.53rd-person singular
      • 3.1.62nd-person singular
      • 3.1.73rd-person plural
    • 3.2Subject-verb inversion
    • 3.3Adverb placement
    • 3.4Summary of results
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 May 2012
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.2.2.01pat
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