Auditory sentence processing in foreign language learners as revealed by ERPs

Abstract:
We examined auditory sentence processing in foreign language learners. Sixteen native speakers of Russian who had learned German as their foreign language for 2 - 4 years while living in Germany participated in our study. A group of 16 native speakers of German served as a control. We presented three types of German sentences. The sentences ended with a target word that was either (a) correct ("Das Brot wurde gegessen" - The bread was eaten), (b) semantically incorrect, i.e., violating the selectional restriction of the verb ("Der Vulkan wurde gegessen" - The volcano was eaten), or (c) syntactically incorrect, i.e., violating the phrase structure ("Das Eis wurde im gegessen" - literal translation: The ice cream was in the eaten). Participants were asked to judge the correctness of the sentences. During sentence presentation the EEG was registered and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were computed off-line. In the control group of German native speakers, semantic violations elicited an N400 component. This component is thought to reflect semantic integration processes. Syntactic phrase structure violations, however, elicited a fairly different pattern in native speakers: An early anterior negativity was followed by a broad parietally distributed positivity (P600). The processes reflected in the early negativity have been demonstrated to be rather automatic in nature and might reflect first-pass parsing processes (Hahne & Friederici, 1998, 1999). The P600 is thought to reflect secondary syntactic processes of reanalysis and repair. In foreign language learners, ERPs on correctly answered trials, differed remarkably from those of native speakers. The N400 component in the semantic violation condition had a later onset latency, was reduced in amplitude and longer in duration. Interestingly, in the syntactic violation condition there was no early anterior negativity and the P600 component was remarkably reduced in amplitude. These data suggest different processing mechanisms in foreign language acquisition as compared to native language processing, in particular with regard to syntactic processes. It appears that the foreign language learners did not conduct automatic first-pass parsing processes. A current experiment explores whether this also holds formore proficient L2 learners.