Rossi, E. 1 , Dussias, P. 2 & Kroll, J. F. 1
1 Department of Psychology and Center for Language Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
2 Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and Center for Language Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
The successful processing of complex morphosyntactic parameters in adult second language (L2) learners has been shown to be influenced by age of acquisition (Steinhauer et al., 2008). More recent evidence, based on neurocognitive measures such as fMRI and ERPs, suggests that proficiency plays a role in modulating L2 language processing (Van Hell & Tokowicz, 2010). To investigate this issue we compared the performance in L1 speakers of Spanish and proficient late English-Spanish bilinguals. We utilized a specific morphosyntactic structure that differs between English and Spanish. Spanish object clitics appear before a finite verb and are marked for grammatical gender and number. English pronouns appear after the finite verb and mark number alone. In Experiment 1, we examined the on-line processing of Spanish clitics in 20 L1 Spanish, and in 20 English-Spanish bilinguals while clitics were presented in the correct and incorrect position. Results showed that L1 speakers demonstrated sensitivity to a violation of clitic placement by producing longer RTs at the incorrect clitic site and at the following word. L2 learners showed a similar effect at the clitic site but no spillover effect. In Experiment 2 we investigated the neurophysiological bases of clitic processing using ERPs. Participants (16 L1 Spanish and 14 English-Spanish bilinguals) read sentences in which clitics varied in correctness for gender, number, or both. Results revealed that native speakers showed a larger positivity in the 500-700 ms window for gender and number violations, whereas L2 speakers show a larger positivity specifically for number violations. Taken together, the results suggest that there are not hard constraints that prevent late bilinguals from accessing grammatical information in the L2. Rather, the cognitive load imposed by the L2 may constrain the ability to use that information predictively and may also modulate the signature of language processing at the neurophysiological level.