Nieuwland, M. , Martin, A. & Carreiras, M.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language
Quantitative and qualitative differences in native and nonnative syntactic processing might surface especially around syntactic parameters that are not shared between L1 and L2. This could mean that even between proficient native Spanish speakers of Basque and native Basque speakers, quantitative andor qualitative differences exists in processing related to the ergative case system, which has no equivalent in Spanish, but not in processing related to the syntactic number agreement system which does have a Spanish equivalent. In an event-related FMRI experiment, we tested this hypothesis by examining the cortical networks involved in Basque sentence processing in native Basque speakers and highly proficient native Spanish speakers of Basque. Participants read sentences containing ergative case violations or number violations and correct sentences while performing an acceptability judgment task. Preliminary results (6 nonnative and 18 native speakers) suggest that whereas participants were more accurate for ergative case violations than for number violations or correct sentences overall, the two groups did not show any behavioral differences. In native speakers, ergative case violations elicited relative activation increases compared to correct sentences in the inferior parietal lobules, the posterior cingulate and in the precuneus, while number violations elicited additional activation increases in left middle and inferior frontal cortex consistent with reports for morphosyntactic agreement errors. The nonnative speakers showed roughly similar activation patterns but with additional effects in medial prefrontal cortex. While more data for nonnative speakers is needed, the current patterns of results suggest that they achieve the same behavioral outcome via differential neural recruitment.