Second Language Proficiency Places Cognitive Constraints on Sentence Processing Noriko Hoshino Department of Psychology The Pennsylvania State University

I can’t answer your question right now. I have to concentrate on driving.

Why was it so hard for a beginning driver to answer a question in her L2 while driving? Small working memory capacity? Low L2 proficiency?? L1 and L2 have very different syntactic structures???

Cognitive Resources and Sentence Processing Within-Language Research (Just & Carpenter, 1992; Hartsuiker et al., 1999) Individuals with limited cognitive resources are less sensitive to semantic information during on-line sentence processing than those with a high level of cognitive resources. Bilingual Research (Hasegawa et al., 2003) More computation and activation is required to process the L2 than the L1.

Research Question Does L2 proficiency place cognitive constraints on sentence processing? Examine the production of subject-verb agreement in monolingual and bilingual speakers Is the ease of access to conceptual number in the production of subject-verb agreement modulated by L2 proficiency?

Conceptually Distributive Number Single-Referent The baby on the blankets Distributive-Referent The label on the bottles

The baby on the blankets (singe-referent mismatch) The baby on the blanket (match control) The label on the bottles (distributive-referent mismatch) The label on the bottle (match control) Magnitude of Number Mismatch Magnitude of Number Mismatch Sensitive to conceptual as well as grammatical number Sensitive to grammatical number alone Magnitude of Number Mismatch = Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control

Cognitive Resources and Subject-Verb Agreement (Hartsuiker et al Magnitude of Number Mismatch Magnitude of Number Mismatch Sensitivity to conceptual information during the process of subject-verb agreement is constrained by the degree of available computational resources.

Predictions If individual differences in working memory capacity and in L2 proficiency have similar cognitive constraints on the process of subject-verb agreement… High span monolinguals Highly proficient bilinguals Low span monolinguals Less proficient bilinguals Magnitude of Number Mismatch Magnitude of Number Mismatch Sensitive to conceptual as well as grammatical number Sensitive to grammatical number alone

Participants 56 English Monolinguals 41 English-Spanish Bilinguals Higher Span (n=26) Lower Span (n=27) Groups based on a reading span task (adopted from Waters & Caplan, 1996) 41 English-Spanish Bilinguals 30 Spanish-English Bilinguals L1 L1&L2 L1&L2

Materials Design: Four 64-item lists in English and in Spanish 32 Critical Items: The author of the novels (single-referent target) The author of the novel (number match control) The drawing on the posters (distributive-referent target) The drawing on the poster (number match control) 32 Fillers: Include plural head nouns Examples: The roads to the stores The roads to the store The rooms in the apartments The rooms in the apartment

Sentence Completion Task + The author of the novels famous Self-Paced 600 ms 1800 ms RT (Beep)

Scoring Correct Agreement Error Eight other scoring categories The uniform for the soldiers is white. Agreement Error The uniform for the soldiers are white. Eight other scoring categories

English Monolinguals by Reading Span Groups Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters Match Control: The author of the novel Match Control: The drawing on the poster Magnitude of Number Mismatch = Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control

English-Spanish Bilinguals Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters Magnitude of Number Mismatch = Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control

Language History: English-Spanish vs. Spanish-English Bilinguals English-Spanish Bilinguals Spanish-English Bilinguals Age (years) 22.2 25.5 L1 Rating (10-point scale) 9.4 9.5 L2 Rating 6.5 8.3 Immersion (months) 4.3 57.4 Spanish-English bilinguals were more proficient in L2 than English-Spanish bilinguals.

Spanish-English Bilinguals Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters Magnitude of Number Mismatch = Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control

Summary English monolinguals with higher reading span were sensitive to the conceptual number of the subject phrase during the process of subject-verb agreement, whereas those with lower span were not. Less proficient bilinguals showed sensitivity to conceptual number only in their L1, whereas highly proficient bilinguals were sensitive to conceptual number in both languages.

Discussion Individual differences in working memory capacity and in L2 proficiency have similar cognitive constraints on the process of subject-verb agreement. Semantic information comes to play during syntactic processing such as the process of subject-verb agreement only when individuals have available processing resources. Although the availability of processing resources is a critical factor to influence the sensitivity to the conceptual number, are there any language constraints on the process of subject-verb agreement?

Recent within-language (Bock, 2004) and bilingual studies (Nicol & Greth, 2003; Van Hell & Mensies, 2004) suggest that cross-linguistic differences per se do not determine sensitivity to conceptual number. However, within-language lexical and syntactic constraints may contribute to the processing of agreement. Examine the performance of Japanese-English bilinguals whose L1 does not have subject-verb agreement If the absence of a rule for subject-verb agreement in the L1 affects performance in the L2, then Japanese-English bilinguals, even those who are highly proficient in English, may fail to demonstrate sensitivity to conceptual number.

Language History: Spanish-English vs. Japanese-English Bilinguals Spanish-English Bilinguals Japanese-English Bilinguals Age (years) 25.4 29.0 AOA (years) 10.9 11.9 L1 Rating (10-point scale) 9.7 9.6 L2 Rating 8.6 6.9 Immersion (months) 54.0 60.2 LDT Acc Nonword (%) 86.0 81.2 Word (%) 94.5 91.8 Although L2 ratings for Japanese-English were lower than for Spanish-English bilinguals, Japanese-English bilinguals seem to have rated themselves as less proficient than they actually were.

Japanese-English Bilinguals Possibility 1: Significant structural differences between L1 and L2 may affect the ability to compute subject-verb agreement like a native speaker. Possibility 2: Distinctive structural differences may impose higher demands on processing resources in L2. (N = 19) Single Target: The author of the novels Distributive Target: The drawing on the posters Magnitude of Number Mismatch = Agreement Error Rate for Mismatch - Match Control

In ongoing research, we are examining the relation between cognitive resources, L2 proficiency, and cross-language similarity.

Acknowledgements Paola Dussias Judith Kroll Judith Pirela Raul Rios James Burns Natalie De Rosa Grant Support: NSF Grant BCS-0418071 and NIMH Grant RO1MH62479 to Judith F. Kroll Travel Support: Research and Graduate Studies Office, Department of Psychology, and Language Acquisition Graduate Organization, Penn State University