Kotz Sonja A, Holcomb Phillip J, Osterhout Lee
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstrasse 1a, Leipzig, Germany.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2008 Jul;128(3):514-27. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.10.003. Epub 2007 Dec 3.
L2 syntactic processing has been primarily investigated in the context of syntactic anomaly detection, but only sparsely with syntactic ambiguity. In the field of event-related potentials (ERPs) syntactic anomaly detection and syntactic ambiguity resolution is linked to the P600. The current ERP experiment examined L2 syntactic processing in highly proficient L1 Spanish-L2 English readers who had acquired English informally around the age of 5 years. Temporary syntactic ambiguity (induced by verb subcategorization information) was tested as a language-specific phenomenon of L2, while syntactic anomaly resulted from phrase structure constraints that are similar in L1 and L2. Participants judged whether a sentence was syntactically acceptable or not. Native readers of English showed a P600 in the temporary syntactically ambiguous and syntactically anomalous sentences. A comparable picture emerged in the non-native readers of English. Both critical syntactic conditions elicited a P600, however, the distribution and latency of the P600 varied in the syntactic anomaly condition. The results clearly show that early acquisition of L2 syntactic knowledge leads to comparable online sensitivity towards temporal syntactic ambiguity and syntactic anomaly in early and highly proficient non-native readers of English and native readers of English.
二语句法加工主要是在句法异常检测的背景下进行研究的，但对句法歧义的研究却很少。在事件相关电位（ERP）领域，句法异常检测和句法歧义消解与P600相关。当前的ERP实验考察了母语为西班牙语、在5岁左右非正式习得英语的高水平二语英语读者的二语句法加工情况。临时句法歧义（由动词次范畴化信息引起）作为二语的一种特定语言现象进行测试，而句法异常则由第一语言和第二语言中相似的短语结构限制导致。参与者判断一个句子在句法上是否可接受。以英语为母语的读者在临时句法歧义句和句法异常句中均表现出P600。在非英语母语读者中也出现了类似的情况。两种关键的句法条件均引发了P600，然而，在句法异常条件下，P600的分布和潜伏期有所不同。结果清楚地表明，早期获得二语句法知识会使早期高水平的非英语母语读者和以英语为母语的读者在在线处理临时句法歧义和句法异常方面具有相当的敏感性。
