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Syntactic anomaly elicits a lexico‐semantic (N400) ERP effect in the second language but not the first
Author(s) -
Weber Kirsten,
Lavric Aureliu
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00691.x
Subject(s) - p600 , n400 , psychology , linguistics , lexico , sentence processing , sentence , german , first language , cognitive psychology , cognition , event related potential , neuroscience , philosophy
Recent brain potential research into first versus second language (L1 vs. L2) processing revealed striking responses to morphosyntactic features absent in the mother tongue. The aim of the present study was to establish whether the presence of comparable morphosyntactic features in L1 leads to more similar electrophysiological L1 and L2 profiles. ERPs were acquired while German–English bilinguals and native speakers of English read sentences. Some sentences were meaningful and well formed, whereas others contained morphosyntactic or semantic violations in the final word. In addition to the expected P600 component, morphosyntactic violations in L2 but not L1 led to an enhanced N400. This effect may suggest either that resolution of morphosyntactic anomalies in L2 relies on the lexico‐semantic system or that the weaker/slower morphological mechanisms in L2 lead to greater sentence wrap‐up difficulties known to result in N400 enhancement.