Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2018
This study examines possible crosslinguistic influence on basic word order processing in a second language (L2). Targeting Swedish V2 word order we investigate adult German learners (+V2 in the L1) and English learners (-V2 in the L1) of Swedish who are matched for proficiency. We report results from two offline behavioural tasks (written production, metalinguistic judgements), and online processing as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). All groups showed sensitivity to word order violations behaviourally and neurocognitively. Behaviourally, the learners differed from the native speakers only on judgements. Crucially, they did not differ from each other. Neurocognitively, all groups showed a similar increased centro-parietal P600 ERP-effect, but German learners (+V2) displayed more nativelike anterior ERP-effects than English learners (-V2). The results suggest crosslinguistic influence in that the presence of a similar word order in the L1 can facilitate online processing in an L2 – even if no offline behavioural effects are discerned.
* We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Swedish Research Council, grant number 421-2010-2114 to M. Gullberg (Swedish Word Order Processing in Second Language Learners and Native Speakers: A Psycholinguistic and Neurocognitive Approach). We also thank Lund University Humanities Lab. We are especially grateful to Henrik Garde for programming support, and to Dr Joost van de Weijer and Dr Johan Frid for statistical support. We also thank all our participants. We express special thanks to the anonymous reviewers and to Dr John Drury for input on a previous version of this paper. All remaining errors are our own.
Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000573