Laka, I. 1 , Erdocia, K. 1 , Duñabeitia, J. A. 2 , Molinaro, N. 2 & Carreiras, M. 3, 2, 1
1 Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
2 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL). Donostia. Spain
3 Ikerbasque. Basque Foundation for Science
Despite the classical Subject Relative clauses (SR) processing ease found in most languages, Carreiras et al. (2010) report that in Basque Object Relatives (ORs) are easier to process than SRs. We report a study on Basque relative clause processing by proficient bilinguals whose L1 is Spanish (a language showing SR advantage). We explored whether non-natives transfer a SR advantage from Spanish (L1), or whether they show the same OR advantage as natives. Experiment 1 used a self paced reading task; ERPs were recorded in Experiment 2. As in Carreiras et al. (2010), materials were ambiguous between OR or SR until the penultimate word. Experiment 1 revealed longer reading times for SR than OR after the critical disambiguating region. Experiment 2 showed larger amplitudes for SR than OR in the N400 component after reading the critical disambiguating word. These results show that the OR advantage previously reported in Basque holds for proficient nonnatives, even if their L1 yields the opposite processing-pattern. Hence, proficient speakers do not seem to transfer syntactic structures and processing strategies from L1 into L2 (McLaughlin et al. 2010), and they are not restricted to non-native-like processing preferences, as argued for by Clahsen and Felser (2006). However, a significant difference in the ERP pattern was observed compared to the P600 effect found by Carreiras et al. 2010: nonnative proficient bilinguals showed a N400 effect, rather than a P600 effect. Similar constrasts are found by Osterhout et al. (2010) and Maclaughing et al. (2010) for language learners at initial stages, indicating that L2 learners rely more on item-based schemas. In contrast to theories suggesting that at high proficiency non-native processing becomes native-like (Steinhauer et al. 2009), our findings suggest that, at least in tasks involving syntactic dependencies and ambiguity resolution, proficient nonnatives rely more on lexical strategies than natives.