Structure building, memory retrieval, and structural prediction in second language sentence comprehension

Abstract

Potential difficulty in second language (L2) compared to first language (L1) sentence processing has been ascribed to various factors, including difficulty in building syntactic structure, difficulty in retrieving information from memory during comprehension, and difficulty in making predictions about upcoming elements. In this paper, we examine pronoun resolution in so-called crossover constructions ( The girl who she helped earlier today went home ), where comprehension requires the interaction of structure building, structural prediction, and memory retrieval in real-time, as a test case of these claims. In three preregistered experiments (N = 96 in Experiments 1a/b, and N = 160 in Experiment 2), we found that L1 and L2 real-time processing and final comprehension are constrained by crossover constraints. There was also no evidence for L1/L2 differences in the processing of crossover. These results suggest similar processes of structure building, structural prediction, and memory retrieval in L1 and L2 readers during sentence comprehension.