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Part of
Research on Second Language Processing and Processing Instruction: Studies in honor of Bill VanPatten
Edited by Michael J. Leeser, Gregory D. Keating and Wynne Wong
[Studies in Bilingualism 62] 2021
► pp. 125–150

Chapter 4
When more is better

Higher L1/L2 similarity, L2 proficiency, and working memory facilitate L2 morphosyntactic processing

| Rutgers University

This chapter investigates the role of first language (L1) transfer, second language (L2) proficiency, and working memory (WM) on processing subject-verb number agreement in Spanish. Intermediate and advanced English and Romanian learners of Spanish and Spanish monolinguals completed a WM test and a reading eye-tracking task with sentences with adjacent subject-verb number agreement/disagreement. Results revealed that all groups were sensitive to violations but processed them differently, depending on their L1 (the less morphologically rich, the more reliance on subjects), proficiency (the more advanced, the more reliance on verbs), and WM (the higher the span, the more sensitivity to violations). These findings indicate that higher L1/L2 similarity, L2 proficiency, and WM facilitate L2 verbal morphosyntactic processing.

Keywords: subject-verb agreement, number agreement, L1 transfer, L2 proficiency, working memory, L2 morphosyntactic processing
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background
    • L1 transfer and L2 processing of subject-verb number agreement
    • Proficiency level and L2 processing of subject-verb number agreement
    • Working memory and L2 processing of subject-verb number agreement
  • The current study
  • Experiment
    • Participants
    • Materials and procedure
    • Scoring
  • Results
    • Gaze duration
    • Total time
    • First pass fixation count
    • Total fixation count
    • Summary of reading time data
    • Picture interpretation and verb bias
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 17 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.62.04sag
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