Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:06:14.219Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Electrophysiology finds no inherent delay for grammatical gender retrieval in non-native production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2019

Kailen Shantz Open the ORCID record for Kailen Shantz [Opens in a new window]  and
Darren Tanner
Kailen Shantz*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA
Darren Tanner
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Kailen Shantz, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Late second language (L2) learners experience pervasive difficulty mastering grammatical gender, and a comprehensive account of this deficit has yet to emerge. We investigate a previously unexamined aspect of L2 gender use: the time course of lexical feature retrieval. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) with a covert production task, we examined whether L2 gender retrieval is delayed relative to phonology and to the time course of feature retrieval in native speakers for familiar nouns whose gender participants had strong knowledge of. Results find that L2 gender retrieval is not fundamentally delayed, and that L2 lexical feature retrieval may be more susceptible to top-down influences. These findings place important constraints on accounts of L2 acquisition and processing with respect to how lexical features are represented and retrieved. Our results further suggest that deficits in online L2 gender use may stem from post-retrieval processes and/or retrieval errors rather than inherent delays in gender retrieval.

Keywords

lexical accessgrammatical genderphonologyERPsL2 processing
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 98 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdel Rahman, R and Sommer, W (2003) Does phonological encoding in speech production always follow the retrieval of semantic knowledge? Cognitive Brain Research 16(3), 372–382.Google Scholar
Abdel Rahman, R, van Turennout, M and Levelt, WJM (2003) Phonological Encoding is Not Contingent on Semantic Feature Retrieval: An Electrophysiological Study on Object Naming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 29(5), 850–860.Google Scholar
Alarcón, IV (2011) Spanish gender agreement under complete and incomplete acquisition: Early and late bilinguals’ linguistic behavior within the noun phrase. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 14(3), 332–350.Google Scholar
Alemán Bañón, J, Fiorentino, R and Gabriele, A (2012) The processing of number and gender agreement in Spanish: An event-related potential investigation of the effects of structural distance. Brain Research 1456, 49–63.Google Scholar
Alemán Bañón, J, Fiorentino, R and Gabriele, A (2014) Morphosyntactic processing in advanced second language (L2) learners: An event-related potential investigation of the effects of L1-L2 similarity and structural distance. Second Language Research 30(3), 275–306.Google Scholar
Alemán Bañón, J, Miller, D and Rothman, J (2017) Morphological variability in second language learners: An examination of electrophysiological and production data. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition.Google Scholar
Arnon, I and Ramscar, M (2012) Granularity and the acquisition of grammatical gender: How order-of-acquisition affects what gets learned. Cognition 122(3), 292–305.Google Scholar
Baayen, RH, Davidson, DJ and Bates, DM (2008) Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4), 390–412.Google Scholar
Barber, HA and Carreiras, M (2005) Grammatical gender and number agreement in Spanish: an ERP comparison. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 17(1), 137–153.Google Scholar
Barber, HA, Salillas, E and Carreiras, M (2004) Gender or Genders Agreement? In Carrieras, M and Clifton, C (eds), The on-line study of sentence comprehension: Eyetracking-ERPs, and beyond New York: Psychology Press, pp. 309–328.Google Scholar
Barr, DJ, Levy, R, Scheepers, C and Tily, HJ (2013) Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68(3), 255–278.Google Scholar
Bates, DM, Mächler, M, Bolker, B and Walker, S (2015) Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1), arXiv:1406.5823.Google Scholar
Bates, EA, Elman, J and Li, P (1994) Language in, on, and about time. In Haith, M, Benson, J, Roberts, R and Pennington, B (eds.) The Development of Future-Oriented Processes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 293–321.Google Scholar
Bates, E, Federmeier, K, Herron, D, Iyer, G, Jacobsen, T, Pechmann, T, D'Amico, S, Devescovi, A, Wicha, N, Orozco-Figueroa, A, Kohnert, K, Gutierrez, G, Lu, C-C, Hung, D, Hsu, J, Tzeng, O, Andonova, E, Gerdjikova, I, Mehotcheva, T, Székely, A and Pléh, C (2000) Introducing the CRL International Picture-Naming Project (CRL-IPNP). Center for Research in Language Newsletter (Vol. 12, No. 1). La Jolla: University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Bates, E, D'Amico, S, Jacobsen, T, Székely, A, Andonova, E, Devescovi, A, Herron, D, Lu, CC, Pechmann, T, Pléh, C, Wicha, N, Federmeier, K, Gerdjikova, I, Gutierrez, G, Hung, D, Hsu, J, Iyer, G, Kohnert, K, Mehotcheva, T, Orozco-Figueroa, A, Tzeng, A and Tzeng, O (2003) Timed picture naming in seven languages. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 10(2), 344–380.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M, Warriner, AB and Kuperman, V (2014) Concreteness ratings for 40 thousand generally known English word lemmas. Behavior Research Methods 46(3), 904–11.Google Scholar
Carreiras, M, Garnham, A and Oakhill, J (1993) The use of superficial and meaning-based representations in interpreting pronouns: Evidence from Spanish. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 5(1), 93–116.Google Scholar
Delorme, A and Makeig, S (2004) EEGLAB: an open sorce toolbox for analysis of single-trail EEG dynamics including independent component anlaysis. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 134, 9–21.Google Scholar
Demestre, J and García-Albea, JE (2007) ERP evidence for the rapid assignment of an (appropriate) antecedent to PRO. Cognitive Science 31(2), 343–354.Google Scholar
Dye, M, Milin, P, Futrell, R and Ramscar, M (2017) A functional theory of gender paradigms. In Kiefer, F, Blevins, JP and Bartos, H (eds.) Perspectives on Morphological Oganization: Data and Analyses. Leiden: Brill, pp. 212–239.Google Scholar
Folstein, JR and van Petten, C (2008) Influence of cognitive control and mismatch on the N2 component of the ERP: A review. Psychophysiology 45(0), 152–170.Google Scholar
Foote, R (2011) Integrated knowledge of agreement in early and late English–Spanish bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics 32(1), 187–220.Google Scholar
Foucart, A and Frenck-Mestre, C (2011) Grammatical gender processing in L2: Electrophysiological evidence of the effect of L1–L2 syntactic similarity. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 14(3), 379–399.Google Scholar
Foucart, A and Frenck-Mestre, C (2012) Can late L2 learners acquire new grammatical features? Evidence from ERPs and eye-tracking. Journal of Memory and Language 66(1), 226–248.Google Scholar
Foucart, A, Martin, CD, Moreno, EM and Costa, A (2014) Can bilinguals see it coming? Word anticipation in L2 sentence reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40(4), 1–9.Google Scholar
Foucart, A, Ruiz-Tada, E and Costa, A (2016) Anticipation processes in L2 speech comprehension: Evidence from ERPs and lexical recognition task. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19(1), 213–219.Google Scholar
Franceschina, F (2005) Fossilized Second Language Grammars (Vol. 38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Gabriele, A, Fiorentino, R and Alemán Bañón, J (2013) Examining second language development using event-related potentials: A cross-sectional study on the processing of gender and number agreement. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 3(2), 213–232.Google Scholar
Garnham, A, Oakhill, J, Ehrlich, MF and Carreiras, M (1995) Representations and processes in the interpretation of pronouns: New evidence from Spanish and French. Journal of Memory and Language 34(1), 41–62.Google Scholar
Gelman, A and Hill, J (2007) Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gillon Dowens, M, Vergara, M, Barber, HA and Carreiras, M (2010) Morphosyntactic processing in late second-language learners. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22(8), 1870–1887.Google Scholar
Gillon Dowens, M, Guo, T, Guo, J, Barber, HA and Carreiras, M (2011) Gender and number processing in Chinese learners of Spanish – Evidence from Event Related Potentials. Neuropsychologia 49, 1651–1659.Google Scholar
Gollan, TH and Frost, R (2001) Two routes to grammatical gender: evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 30(6), 627–51.Google Scholar
Gollan, TH, Montoya, RI, Cera, C and Sandoval, TC (2008) More use almost always means a smaller frequency effect: Aging, bilingualism, and the weaker links hypothesis. Journal of Memory and Language 58(3), 787–814.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F, Dommergues, J-Y, Cornu, E, Guillelmon, D and Besson, C (1994) The gender-marking effect in spoken word recognition. Perception & Psychophysics 56(5), 590–598.Google Scholar
Grüter, T, Lew-Williams, C and Fernald, A (2012) Grammatical gender in L2: A production or a real-time processing problem? Second Language Research 28(2), 191–215.Google Scholar
Guillelmon, D and Grosjean, F (2001) The gender marking effect in spoken word recognition: The case of bilinguals. Memory & Cognition 29(3), 503–511.Google Scholar
Guo, T and Peng, D (2007) Speaking words in the second language: From semantics to phonology in 170 ms. Neuroscience Research 57(3), 387–92.Google Scholar
Hagoort, P and Brown, CM (1999) Gender electrified: ERP evidence on the syntactic nature of gender processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 28, 715–728.Google Scholar
Hanulová, J, Davidson, DJ and Indefrey, P (2011) Where does the delay in L2 picture naming come from? Psycholinguistic and neurocognitive evidence on second language word production. Language and Cognitive Processes 26(7), 902–934.Google Scholar
Harrell, FEJ (2001) Regression Modeling Strategies: With Applications to Linear Models, Logistic Regression, and Survival Analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Hawkins, R and Franceschina, F (2004) Explaining the acquisition and non-acquisition of determiner-noun gender concord in French and Spanish. In Prévost, P & Paradis, J (eds.) The acquisition of French in different contexts. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 175–205.Google Scholar
Heath, J (1975) Some functional relationships in grammar. Language 51(1), 89–104.Google Scholar
Heister, J, Würzner, K-M, Bubenzer, J, Pohl, E, Hanneforth, T, Geyken, A and Kliegl, R (2011) dlexDB – eine lexikalische Datenbank für die psychologische und linguistische Forschung [dlexDB – a lexical database for psychological and linguistic research]. Psychologische Rundschau 62(1), 10–20.Google Scholar
Hopp, H (2013) Grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition: Relations between lexical and syntactic variability. Second Language Research 29(1), 33–56.Google Scholar
Hopp, H (2016) Learning (not) to predict: Grammatical gender processing in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 32(2), 277–307.Google Scholar
Jasper, H (1958) Report of the committee on methods of clinical examination in electroencephalography. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 10(2), 370–375.Google Scholar
Kiesel, A, Miller, J, Jolicoeur, P and Brisson, B (2008) Measurement of ERP latency differences: A comparison of single-participant and jackknife-based scoring methods. Psychophysiology 45(2), 250–274.Google Scholar
Kroll, JF and Stewart, E (1994) Category Interference in Translation and Picture Naming: Evidence for Asymmetric Connections Between Bilingual Memory Representations. Journal of Memory and Language 33(2), 149–174.Google Scholar
Kutas, M and Donchin, E (1974) Studies of squeezing: handedness, responding hand, response force, and asymmetry of readiness potential. Science (New York, N.Y.) 186(4163), 545–548.Google Scholar
Kutas, M and Donchin, E (1980) Preparation to respond as manifested by movement-related brain potentials. Brain Research 202, 95–115.Google Scholar
Lawrence, MA (2016) ez: Easy analysis and visualization of factorial experiments. (R package version 4.4-0) [software package].Google Scholar
Lemhöfer, K, Schriefers, H and Indefrey, P (2014) Idiosyncratic grammars: Syntactic processing in second language comprehension uses subjective feature representations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 26(7), 1428–1444.Google Scholar
Lenth, RV (2016) Least-Squares Means: The R Package lsmeans. Journal of Statistical Software 69(1).Google Scholar
Lew-Williams, C and Fernald, A (2010) Real-time processing of gender-marked articles by native and non-native Spanish speakers. Journal of Memory and Language 63(4), 447–464.Google Scholar
Lewis, AG, Lemhöfer, K, Schoffelen, J and Schriefers, H (2016) Gender agreement violations modulate beta oscillatory dynamics during sentence comprehension: A comparison of second language learners and native speakers. Neuropsychologia 89, 254–272.Google Scholar
Lopez-Calderon, J and Luck, SJ (2014) ERPLAB: an open-source toolbox for the analysis of event-related potentials. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8(April), 1–14.Google Scholar
Matuschek, H, Kliegl, R, Vasishth, S, Baayen, RH and Bates, DM (2017) Balancing Type I error and power in linear mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 94, 305–315.Google Scholar
McCarthy, C (2008) Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: an argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research 24(4), 459–486.Google Scholar
Meulman, N, Stowe, LA, Sprenger, SA, Bresser, M and Schmid, MS (2014) An ERP study on L2 syntax processing: When do learners fail? Frontiers in Psychology 5, 1072.Google Scholar
Meulman, N, Wieling, M, Sprenger, SA, Stowe, LA and Schmid, MS (2015) Age effects in L2 grammar processing as revealed by ERPs and how (not) to study them. PloS One 10(12), e0143328.Google Scholar
Miller, J, Patterson, T and Ulrich, R (1998) Jackknife-based method for measuring LRP onset latency differences. Psychophysiology 35(1), 99–115.Google Scholar
Montrul, SA, Foote, R and Perpiñán, S (2008) Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning 58(3), 503–553.Google Scholar
Morgan-Short, K, Sanz, C, Steinhauer, K and Ullman, MT (2010) Second language acquisition of gender agreement in explicit and implicit training conditions: An event-related potentials study. Language Learning 60, 154–193.Google Scholar
O'Rourke, PL and van Petten, C (2011) Morphological agreement at a distance: Dissociation between early and late components of the event-related brain potential. Brain Research 1392, 62–79.Google Scholar
Oldfield, RC (1971) The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia 9(1), 97–113.Google Scholar
Perception Research Systems (2007) Paradigm Stimulus Presentation (Version 2.3.0.29) [computer software].Google Scholar
R Core Team (2017) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing (Version 3.4.2) [computer software]. Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Sagarra, N and Herschensohn, J (2010) The role of proficiency and working memory in gender and number agreement processing in L1 and L2 Spanish. Lingua 120(8), 2022–2039.Google Scholar
Shantz, K and Tanner, D (2017) Talking out of order: Task order and retrieval of grammatical gender and phonology in lexical access. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 32(1), 82–101.Google Scholar
Siegelman, N and Arnon, I (2015) The advantage of starting big: Learning from unsegmented input facilitates mastery of grammatical gender in an artificial language. Journal of Memory and Language 85, 60–75.Google Scholar
Strijkers, K, Holcomb, PJ and Costa, A (2011) Conscious intention to speak proactively facilitates lexical access during overt object naming. Journal of Memory and Language 65(4), 345–362.Google Scholar
Strijkers, K, Yum, YN, Grainger, J and Holcomb, PJ (2011) Early goal-directed top-down influences in the production of speech. Frontiers in Psychology 2(371).Google Scholar
Székely, A, Jacobsen, T, D'Amico, S, Devescovi, A, Andonova, E, Herron, D, Lu, C-C, Pechmann, T, Pléh, C, Wicha, N, Federmeier, K, Gerdjikova, I, Gutierrez, G, Hung, D, Hsu, J, Iyer, G, Kohnert, K, Mehotcheva, T, Orozco-Figueroa, A, Tzeng, A, Tzeng, O, Arévalo, A, Vargha, A, Butler, AC, Buffington, R and Bates, E (2004) A new on-line resource for psycholinguistic studies. Journal of Memory and Language 51(2), 247–250.Google Scholar
Tokowicz, N and MacWhinney, B (2005) Implicit and explicit measures of sensitivity to violations in second language grammar: an event-related potential investigation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 27(2), 173–204.Google Scholar
Ulrich, R and Miller, J (2001) Using the jackknife-based scoring method for measuring LRP onset effects in factorial designs. Psychophysiology 38(5), 816–827.Google Scholar
van Rij, J, Wieling, M, Baayen, R and van Rijn, H (2017) itsadug: Interpreting time series and autocorrelated data using GAMMs. (R package version 2.3) [software package].Google Scholar
van Turennout, M, Hagoort, P and Brown, CM (1997) Electrophysiological evidence on the time course of semantic and phonological processes in speech production. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition 23(4), 787–806.Google Scholar
White, L, Valenzuela, E, Kozlowska–Macgregor, M and Leung, Y-KI (2004) Gender and number agreement in nonnative Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics 25(1), 105–133.Google Scholar
Wood, SN (2006) Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R. Boca Raton: Chapmans and Hall/CRC.Google Scholar
Wood, SN (2011) Fast stable restricted maximum liklihood and marginal liklihood estimation of semiparametric generalized linear models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology) 73(1), 3–36.Google Scholar
Yeung, N, Botvinick, MM and Cohen, JD (2004) The neural basis of error detection: Conflict monitoring and the error-related negativity. Psychological Review 111(4), 931–959.Google Scholar
Zubin, DA and Köpcke, K-M (1986) Gender and folk taxonomy: The indexical relation between grammatical and lexical categorization. In Collete, CG (Ed.), Noun Classes and Categorization: Proceedings of a Symposium on Categorization and Noun Classification, Eugene, Oregon, October 1983 Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 139–180.Google Scholar