Native and Nonnative Number

Agreement Processing Across

Structural Distance:
An ERP Study
Gwisun Min

Sungkyunkwan University
Introduction
Morphological
Processing
differences between
L1 and L2

Due to shallow Due to limitations in

processing and influence general cognitive
of age of acquisition (AoA) processing capacity
 The Shallow Structure  The Declarative/
Hypothesis (SSH) Procedural (DP) Model
Review of Literature

Can late Korean EFL learners with high proficiency process number
feature checking as L1 speakers when there is structural separation
between feature checking elements?

YES NO

The SSH is refuted. The DP model is

refuted.
Review of Literature

Do different structural distances modulate

L2 processing?

The DP
The SSH
Model

L2 processing of
L2 lacks syntactic hierarchical structures
hierarchies. can be as automatized
as L1 processing.
Research Questions

1. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical

number morpheme in simple NP in a nativelike way?
2. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical
number morpheme in partitive NP in a nativelike way?
Method

Participants
Materials
Procedures
Data acquisition and analysis
6
Method: Participants
• 9 native speakers
• 16 Korean EFL learners
Method

Participants
Materials
Procedures
Data acquisition and analysis
8
Method: Materials
(1a) Thomas added [QP many{+count} [NP exciting new items{+plural} ]] to
the collection.
(1b) Thomas added [QP many{+count} [NP exciting new item{+plural} ]] to
the collection.
(1c) Mary donated [QP many{+count} [NP (UNIT){+count} [PP of [DP her [NP
books{+plural} ]]]]] to the library.
(1d) Mary donated [QP many{+count} [NP (UNIT){+count} [PP of [DP her [NP
book{+plural} ]]]]] to the library.

(Adopted from Song, 2015)

Method

Participants
Materials
Procedures
Data acquisition and analysis
10
Method: Procedure
Method

Participants
Materials
Procedures
Data acquisition and analysis
12
Method: Data acquisition and analysis
• 28 electrodes, referenced online to FCz and offline to both mastoid electrodes
• The impedance threshold value was kept below 10kohm at all sites.
• 8.7% of trials were excluded across all conditions due to artefacts.
• Online filter and sampling: A 0.016 to 250Hz bandpass filter and 1000HZ sampling
rate
• Offline filter and sampling: A 0.1 to 30 Hz bandpass filter and downsampled to
200Hz.
• Epochs: -200ms ~ 1000ms
• Time windows: 300-500ms, 500-700ms, and 700-1000ms.
• ANOVAs were performed within each time window separately for midline and lateral
sites.
- Midline sites: Grammaticality x Electrodes (Fz, Cz, Pz)
- Lateral sites: Grammaticality x Anteriority (anterior, center, posterior) x Hemisphere
Results
Behavioral results
ERP results
- Native speakers
- Korean EFL learners
- Visual inspection of individual data

14
Results: Behavioral results
• Accuracy rates for comprehension questions
Native speakers Korean EFL learners

94.79% 92.80%

t (23) = 1.73, p > 0.05, d = 0.65

• Awareness of syntactic violations

Native speakers Korean EFL learners

46.66% 23.12%

t (23) = 1.51, p > 0.05, d = 0.66

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 Results
Behavioral results
ERP results
- Native speakers
- Korean EFL learners
- Visual inspection of individual data
16
Results: ERP Results

Native
Speakers EFL Learners

Simple Partitive Simple Partitive

NP NP NP NP

17
Results
Behavioral results
ERP results
- Native speakers
- Korean EFL learners
- Visual inspection of individual data
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ERP Results: Native speaker group
• Simple NPs • Partitive NPs
- No significant effect of
grammaticality appeared.

Fz

Cz

-5μv
Pz
_________ Grammatical
200 400 600 800 1000 --------- Ungrammatical
+5μv
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Results
Behavioral results
ERP results
- Native speakers
- Korean EFL learners
- Visual inspection of individual data
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 ERP Results: EFL learner group
• Simple NPs • Partitive NPs

Fz
Fz

Cz Cz

-5μv
Pz
Pz _________ Grammatical
--------- Ungrammatical

+5μv
200 400 600 800 1000
21
Results
Behavioral results
ERP results
- Native speakers
- Korean EFL learners
- Visual inspection of individual data
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Visual inspection of individual data
• Native speakers
Fz in 500-700ms in partitive NPs Cz in 500-700ms in partitive NPs Pz in 500-700ms in partitive NPs

• Korean EFL learners

Fz in 300-500ms in simple NPs Pz in 300-500ms in partitive NPs

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Topography of native Topography of Korean EFL
speakers (n=6) excluding learners (n=16) in simple NP
negative-response-dominant condition
individuals in partitive NP
condition
2
4
Discussion
Absence of the P600
Functional nature of sustained anterior negativity (SAN) and early positivity
General discussion
Revisiting research questions

25
Discussion: Absence of the P600

Syntactic violation during comprehension task as opposed to GJT, may not elicit
the P600.
1. The P600 is task-dependent (Brouwer & Crocker, 2017; Schacht et al., 2014).
2. Elicitation of the P600 depends on parsers’ subjective judgment of
grammatical acceptability (Caffarra et al., 2015; Lemhöfer et al., 2014).
3. The P600 may not indicate detection of violations per se but sentence-level
reanalysis after detection of linguistic violations (Tanner & van Hell, 2017).

26
Discussion
Absence of the P600
Functional nature of sustained anterior negativity (SAN) and early positivity
General discussion
Revisiting research questions

27
Functional nature of sustained anterior
negativity (SAN)
• SAN was often associated with increased demand on working
memory (e.g., Boudewyn, Long, Traxler, Lesh, Dave, Mangun,
Carter & Swaab, 2015; Fiebach, Schlesewsky, and Friederici, 2002;
Meltzer and Braun, 2013).
 Not suitably applicable to the current experiment context since
ungrammatical condition does not require additional WM in
processing.

28
• SAN emerged in syntactic violation paradigm studies that involve
comprehension question tasks (e.g., Hsu, Tsai, Yang, & Chan, 2014;
Jiang, Tan, & Zhou, 2009; Jiang & Zhou, 2009; Ye & Zhou, 2008).
- A sign of automatic second pass semantic reinterpretation (Jiang
et al., 2009)
 Applicable to the current study. However, SAN in Jiang et al.’s
study (2009) and that in the current study may manifest
different stages of cognitive processes due to different time
windows.

29
• SAN may signifies metacognitive, executive control processes that
resolve conflicts, i.e., inhibitory processes (Hsu et al., 2014; Ye &
Zhou, 2008).
- Inhibitory processes in the current study: comprehension vs.
syntactic violation resolution

SAN

Ye & Zhou (2008) The current study

Task-takers with high
Native speakers in simpler
cognitive control abilities
sentence condition (i.e.,
and low complexity
simple NP)
sentence
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Functional nature of early positivity
• Early positivity (300-500ms) in the current study
- The P300? However, it is usually elicited in oddball or memory
recall tasks rather than to syntactic violations.
- Other possible interpretations:
1. The effort of integrating quantifiers with mismatching referents
(Jiang et al., 2009)
2. A process of detecting or resolving conflict between an expected
plurality and actual input of singularity (Ye & Zhou, 2008)
Effortful syntactic processing with attention involved
31
Discussion
Absence of the P600
Functional nature of sustained anterior negativity (SAN) and early positivity
General discussion
Revisiting research questions

32
General discussion

Native Speakers
Simple NPs Partitive NPs
Controlled syntactic processing
Automatic syntactic violation
detection and resolution Automatic syntactic violation
detection and resolution

33
 Extra cognitive demand required
Why different ERP patterns for processing more complex
across structural sentences
conditions? Individual differences

• Individual differences in language processing are reported in other

studies (e.g., Tanner & van Hell, 2017; Ye & Zhou, 2008)
- Ye & Zhou (2008): Participants with high cognitive control abilities
showed SAN in simple sentences while those with lower abilities
showed sustained positivity to the same type of sentences, which is
comparable to the current study findings.
34
 Korean EFL Learners
Simple NPs Partitive NPs

Controlled detection/monitoring of syntactic violations

35
Discussion
Absence of the P600
Functional nature of sustained anterior negativity (SAN) and early positivity
General discussion
Revisiting research questions

36
Revisiting research questions
• The research questions were as follows:
1. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical number
morpheme in simple NPs in a nativelike way?
2. Do advanced late Korean EFL learners process ungrammatical number
morpheme in partitive NPs in a nativelike way?
 Late Korean EFL learners showed different ERP patterns from native
speakers in both simple NP and partitive NP condition in spite of their high
proficiency.

37
• This suggests that L2 processing is qualitatively different from L1
processing, in line with the SSH. However, the difference between
L1 and L2 processing seems to lie in different degrees of
automatization between the two rather than language deficits in
L2. For both L1 and L2, the degree of automatization in processing
was manipulated by the degree of sentence complexity, indicating
that both L1 and L2 processing rely on general cognitive capacities,
at least to some extent.
Implications and limitations

38
Implications and limitations
• Merit of the current study:
- An ERP study that investigated the effect of structural distance in L2
processing like the current study is scarce.
- With a comprehension task, this study revealed how syntactic violations were
processed with parsers’ attention drawn to meaning.
• Limitations:
- Small sample size
- Bilinguals in the native speaker group

39
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THANK YOU

40
Contact Information
• Name: Gwisun Min

• Position: Lecturer

• Affiliation: Sungkyunkwan University

• Email: gwisunmin@gmail.com