Hostname: page-component-5cf477f64f-r2nwp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-02T06:08:16.664Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Grammatical processing in language learners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2006

HARALD CLAHSEN  and
CLAUDIA FELSER
HARALD CLAHSEN
Affiliation:
University of Essex
CLAUDIA FELSER
Affiliation:
University of Essex
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The ability to process the linguistic input in real time is crucial for successfully acquiring a language, and yet little is known about how language learners comprehend or produce language in real time. Against this background, we have conducted a detailed study of grammatical processing in language learners using experimental psycholinguistic techniques and comparing different populations (mature native speakers, child first language [L1] and adult second language [L2] learners) as well as different domains of language (morphology and syntax). This article presents an overview of the results from this project and of other previous studies, with the aim of explaining how grammatical processing in language learners differs from that of mature native speakers. For child L1 processing, we will argue for a continuity hypothesis claiming that the child's parsing mechanism is basically the same as that of mature speakers and does not change over time. Instead, empirical differences between child and mature speaker's processing can be explained by other factors such as the child's limited working memory capacity and by less efficient lexical retrieval. In nonnative (adult L2) language processing, some striking differences to native speakers were observed in the domain of sentence processing. Adult learners are guided by lexical–semantic cues during parsing in the same way as native speakers, but less so by syntactic information. We suggest that the observed L1/L2 differences can be explained by assuming that the syntactic representations adult L2 learners compute during comprehension are shallower and less detailed than those of native speakers.

Type
Keynote Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 3 - 42
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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

Adams A., & Gathercole S. 2000. Limitations in working memory: Implications for language development. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 35, 95– 116.Google Scholar
Akker E., & Cutler A. 2003. Prosodic cues to semantic structure in native and nonnative listening. Unpublished manuscript, Nijmegen. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,
Altmann G., & Steedman M. 1988. Interaction with context during human sentence processing. Cognition, 30, 191– 238.Google Scholar
Andersen R. 1993. Four operating principles and input distribution as explanations for underdeveloped and mature morphological systems. In K. Hyltenstam & A. Viberg (Eds.), Progression and regression in language: Sociocultural, neuropsychological and linguistic perspectives (pp. 309– 339). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aoshima S., Phillips C., & Weinberg A. 2004. Processing filler-gap dependencies in a head-final language. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 23– 54.Google Scholar
Ardal S., Donald M. W., Meuter R., Muldrew S., & Luce M. 1990. Brain responses to semantic incongruity in bilinguals. Brain and Language, 39, 187– 205.Google Scholar
Bates E., & MacWhinney B. 1982. Functionalist approaches to grammar. In L. Gleitman & E. Wanner (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Beck M.-L. 1997. Regular verbs, past tense and frequency: Tracking down a potential source of NS/NNS competence differences. Second Language Research, 13, 93– 115.Google Scholar
Bever T. G. 1970. The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In J. R. Hayes (Ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.
Bever T. G., & McElree B. 1988. Empty categories access their antecedents during comprehension. Linguistic Inquiry, 19, 35– 43.Google Scholar
Birdsong D., & Flege J. 2000. Regular–irregular dissociations in L2 acquisition of English morphology. Paper presented at the 25th Boston University Conference on Language Development, November 2000.
Bley-Vroman R. 1990. The logical problem of second language learning. Linguistic Analysis, 20, 3– 49.Google Scholar
Booth J., MacWhinney B., & Harasaki Y. 2000. Developmental differences in visual and auditory processing of complex sentences. Child Development, 71, 981– 1003.Google Scholar
Brovetto C., & Ullman M. 2001. First vs. second language: A differential reliance on grammatical computations and lexical memory. Poster presented at the 14th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Pennsylvania.
Carreiras M., & Clifton C. 1993. Relative clause interpretation preferences in Spanish and English. Language and Speech, 36, 353– 372.Google Scholar
Carreiras M., & Clifton C. 1999. Another word on parsing relative clauses: Eyetracking evidence from Spanish and English. Memory and Cognition, 27, 826– 833.Google Scholar
Carroll S. 2001. Input and evidence: The raw material of second language acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chaudron C. 1985. Intake: On models and methods for discovering learners' processing of input. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 7, 1– 14.Google Scholar
Chien Y.-C., & Wexler K. 1990. Children's knowledge of locality constraints for reflexives and pronouns. Language Acquisition, 1, 225– 295.Google Scholar
Choi Y., & Mazuka R. 2002. Young children's use of prosodic cues in sentence processing. Paper presented at he 15th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York.
Chomsky N. 1977. On wh-movement. In P. Culivcover, T. Wasow, & A. Akmajian (Eds.), Formal syntax (pp. 71– 132). New York: Academic Press.
Clahsen H. 1984. The acquisition of German word order: A test case for cognitive approaches to L2 development. In R. Andersen (Ed.), Second languages: A cross-linguistic perspective. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Clahsen H. 1999. Lexical entries and rules of language: A multidisciplinary study of German inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 991– 1060.Google Scholar
Clahsen H., & Featherston S. 1999. Antecedent priming at trace positions: Evidence from German scrambling. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28, 415– 437.Google Scholar
Clahsen H., Hadler M., & Weyerts H. 2004. Speeded production of inflected words in children and adults. Journal of Child Language, 31, 683– 712.Google Scholar
Clahsen H., & Muysken P. 1986. The accessibility of universal grammar to adult and child learners: A study of the acquisition of German word order. Second Language Research, 2, 93– 119.Google Scholar
Clahsen H., & Muysken P. 1989. The UG paradox in L2 acquisition. Second Language Research, 5, 1– 29.Google Scholar
Clahsen H., & Muysken P. 1996. How adult second language learning differs from child first language development. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19, 721– 723.Google Scholar
Clifton C., & Frazier L. 1989. Comprehending sentences with long-distance dependencies. In G. M. Carlson & M. K. Tanenhaus (Eds.), Linguistic structure in language processing (pp. 273– 317). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Crain S., & McKee C. 1986. The acquisition of structural restrictions on anaphora. In S. Berman, J.-W. Choe, & J. McDonough (Eds.), Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (Vol. 16, pp. 94– 110). Amherst, MA: GLSA.
Crain S., & Steedman M. 1985. On not being led up the garden path: The use of context by the psychological parser. In D. Dowty, L. Karttunen, & A. Zwicky (Eds.), Natural language parsing (pp. 320– 358). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Crain S., & Wexler K. 1999. Methodology in the study of language acquisition: A modular approach. In W. Ritchie & T. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of child language acquisition (pp. 387– 425). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Cuetos F., & Mitchell D. 1988. Cross-linguistic differences in parsing: Restrictions on the use of the late closure strategy in Spanish. Cognition, 30, 73– 105.Google Scholar
Cuetos F., Mitchell D., & Corley M. 1996. Parsing in different languages. In M. Carreiras, J. Garcia-Albea, & N. Sebastian-Galles (Eds.), Language processing in Spanish (pp. 145– 187). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Daneman M., & Carpenter P. 1980. Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450– 466.Google Scholar
De Vincenzi M. 1991. Filler-gap dependencies in a null-subject language: Referential and non-referential WHs. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 20, 197– 213.Google Scholar
Dussias P. 2001. Sentence parsing in fluent Spanish–English bilinguals. In J. Nicol (Ed.), One mind, two languages: Bilingual language processing (pp. 159– 176). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Dussias P. 2003. Syntactic ambiguity resolution in second language learners: Some effects of bilinguality on L1 and L2 processing strategies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 529– 557.Google Scholar
Felser C., Marinis T., & Clahsen H. 2003. Children's processing of ambiguous sentences: A study of relative clause attachment. Language Acquisition, 11, 127– 163.Google Scholar
Felser C., & Roberts L. 2004. Plausibility and recovery from garden paths in second language sentence processing. Poster presented at AMLaP, Aix-en-Provence, September 2004.
Felser C., Roberts L., Gross R., & Marinis T. 2003. The processing of ambiguous sentences by first and second language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 453– 489.Google Scholar
Fernández E. 1999. Processing strategies in second language acquisition: Some preliminary results. In E. Klein & G. Martohardjono (Eds.), The development of second language grammars: A generative approach (pp. 217– 240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fernández E. 2003. Bilingual sentence processing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ferreira F., Bailey K., & Ferraro V. 2002. Good enough representations in language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 11– 15.Google Scholar
Fiebach C., Schlesewsky M., & Friederici A. 2002. Separating syntactic memory costs and syntactic integration costs during parsing: The processing of German wh-questions. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 250– 272.Google Scholar
Fodor J. D. 1989. Empty categories in sentence processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 4, 155– 209.Google Scholar
Fodor J. D. 1995. Comprehending sentence structure. In L. R. Gleitman & M. Liberman (Eds.), An invitation to cognitive science: Vol. 1. Language (2nd ed., pp. 209– 246). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fodor J. D. 1998a. Learning to parse? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27, 285– 319.Google Scholar
Fodor J. D. 1998b. Parsing to learn. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27, 339– 374.Google Scholar
Fodor J. D. 1999. Triggers for parsing with. In E. Klein & G. Martohardjano (Eds.), The development of second language grammars: A generative approach (pp. 373– 406). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Frazier L. 1978. On comprehending sentences: Syntactic parsing strategies. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Storrs. University of Connecticut,
Frazier L., & Clifton C. 1996. Construal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Frenck-Mestre C. 1999. Examining second language reading: An on-line look. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcok (Eds.), Language acquisition: Knowledge representation and processing (pp. 474– 478). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Frenck-Mestre C. 2002. An on-line look at sentence processing in the second language. In R. Heredia & J. Altarriba (Eds.), Bilingual sentence processing (pp. 217– 236). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Frenck-Mestre C., & Pynte J. 1997. Syntactic ambiguity resolution while reading in second and native languages. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50A, 119– 148.Google Scholar
Friederici A. 2002. Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 78– 84.Google Scholar
Friederici A., & Hahne A. 2001. Development patterns of brain activity. In J. Weissenborn & B. Höhle (Eds.), Approaches to bootstrapping: Phonological, lexical, syntactic and neurophysiological aspects of early language acquisition (Vol. 2, pp. 231– 246). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Friederici A., Steinhauer K., & Pfeifer E. 2002. Brain signatures of artificial language processing: Evidence challenging the critical period hypothesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 99, 529– 534.Google Scholar
Gaulin C., & Campbell T. 1994. Procedure for assessing verbal working memory in normal school-age children: Some preliminary data. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 79, 55– 64.Google Scholar
Gibson E. 1998. Linguistic complexity: Locality and syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68, 1– 76.Google Scholar
Gibson E., & Pearlmutter N. 1998. Constraints on sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2, 262– 268.Google Scholar
Gibson E., & Warren T. 2004. Reading-time evidence for intermediate linguistic structure in long-distance dependencies. Syntax, 7, 55– 78.Google Scholar
Gibson E., Pearlmutter N., Canseco-Gonzalez E., & Hickock G. 1996. Recency preferences in the human sentence processing mechanism. Cognition, 59, 23– 59.Google Scholar
Gilboy E., Sopena J., Clifton C., & Frazier L. 1995. Argument structure and association preferences in Spanish and English compound NPs. Cognition, 54, 131– 167.Google Scholar
Gregg K. 2003. The state of emergentism in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 19, 95– 128.Google Scholar
Gross M., Say T., Kleingers M., Münte T., & Clahsen H. 1998. Human brain potentials to violations in morphologically complex Italian words. Neuroscience Letters, 241, 83– 86.Google Scholar
Hahne A. 2001. What's different in second-language processing? Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30, 251– 266.Google Scholar
Hahne A., & Friederici A. 2001. Processing a second language: Late learners' comprehension mechanisms as revealed by event-related brain potentials. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 123– 141.Google Scholar
Hahne A., Müller J., & Clahsen H. 2006. Morphological processing in a second language: Behavioral and ERP evidence for storage and decomposition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18.Google Scholar
Harrington M. 1992. Working memory capacity as a constraint in L2 development. In R. Harris (Ed.), Cognitive processing in bilinguals pp. 123– 134). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Hawkins R. 2001. Second language syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hemforth B., Konieczny L., & Scheepers C. 2000. Syntactic attachment and anaphor resolution: Two sides of relative clause attachment. In M. Crocker, M. Pickering, & C. Clifton (Eds.), Architectures and mechanisms for language processing (pp. 259– 282). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoover M., & Dwivedi V. 1998. Syntactic processing by skilled bilinguals. Language Learning, 48, 1– 29.Google Scholar
Hulstijn J. 2002. Towards a unified account of the representation, processing, and acquisition of a second language. Second Language Research, 18, 193– 232.Google Scholar
Hurewitz F., Brown-Schmidt S., Thorpe K., Gleitman L., & Trueswell J. 2000. One frog, two frog, red frog, blue frog: Factors affecting children's syntactic choices in production and comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 597– 626.Google Scholar
Juffs A. 1998a. Main verb vs reduced relative clause ambiguity resolution in second language sentence processing. Language Learning, 48, 107– 147.Google Scholar
Juffs A. 1998b. Some effects of first language argument structure and syntax on second language processing. Second Language Research, 14, 406– 424.Google Scholar
Juffs A. 2004. Representation, processing, and working memory in a second language. Transactions of the Philological Society, 102, 199– 225.Google Scholar
Juffs A. 2005. The influence of first language on the processing of wh-movement in English as a second language. Second Language Research, 21, 121– 151.Google Scholar
Juffs A., & Harrington M. 1995. Parsing effects in second language sentence processing: Subject and object asymmetries in wh-extraction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17, 483– 516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Juffs A., & Harrington M. 1996. Garden path sentences and error data in second language processing research. Language Learning, 46, 286– 324.Google Scholar
Kilborn K. 1992. On-line integration of grammatical information in a second language. In R. Harris (Ed.), Cognitive processing in bilinguals (pp. 337– 350). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
King J., & Just M. 1991. Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 580– 602.Google Scholar
Kutas M., & Schmitt B. 2003. Language in microvolts. In M. T. Banich & M. Mack (Eds.), Mind, brain, and language (pp. 171– 209). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lalleman J., van Santen A., & van Heuven V. 1997. L2 processing of Dutch regular and irregular verbs. Review of Applied Linguistics, 115/116, 1– 26.Google Scholar
Love T., & Swinney D. 1996. Coreference processing and levels of analysis in object–relative constructions: Demonstration of antecedent reactivation with the cross-modal priming paradigm. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 20, 5– 24.Google Scholar
Love T., & Swinney D. 1997. Real time processing of object relative constructions by pre-school children. Poster presented at the 10th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Language Processing, Santa Monica, CA.
Lück M., Hahne A., Friederici A., & Clahsen H. 2001. Developing brain potentials in children: An ERP study of German noun plurals. Paper presented at 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development, November 2001.
MacWhinney B. 1982. Basic syntactic processes. In S. Kuczaj (Ed.), Language acquisition: Vol. 1. Syntax and semantics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
MacWhinney B. 1997. Second language acquisition and the competition model. In A. De Groot & J. Kroll (Eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 113– 142). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
MacWhinney B. 2002. Extending the competition model. In R. Heredia & J. Altarriba (Eds.), Bilingual sentence processing (pp. 31– 58). New York: Elsevier.
Marcus G. F., Pinker S., Ullman M., Hollander M., Rosen T., & Xu F. 1992. Overregularization in language acquisition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 57, 228.Google Scholar
Marinis T., Roberts L., Felser C., & Clahsen H. 2005. Gaps in second language sentence processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 53– 78.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson W., & Tyler L. K. 1998. Rules, representations, and the English past tense. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2, 428– 435.Google Scholar
Mazuka R., & Uetsuki M. 2004. Children's use of prosody in the comprehension of syntactically ambiguous sentences. Poster presented at the 17th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Maryland, March 2004.
McElree B., & Griffith T. 1995. Syntactic and thematic processing in sentence comprehension: Evidence for a temporal dissociation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 134– 157.Google Scholar
McElree B., & Griffith T. 1998. Structural and lexical constraints on filling gaps during sentence comprehension: A time-course analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 432– 460.Google Scholar
McKee C., Nicol J., & McDaniel D. 1993. Children's application of binding during sentence processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 265– 290.Google Scholar
McLaughlin J. 1999. Event related potentials reflect the early stages of second language lexical acquisition. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Washington.
Meroni L., & Crain S. 2003. On not being led down the kindergarten path. In B. Beachley, A. Brown, & F. Coulin (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 531– 544). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Mitchell D., & Cuetos F. 1991. The origins of parsing strategies. In C. Smith (Ed.), Current issues in natural language processing (pp. 1– 12). Austin, TX: University of Austin, Center for Cognitive Science.
Nakano Y., Felser C., & Clahsen H. 2002. Antecedent priming at trace positions in Japanese long-distance scrambling. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31, 531– 571.Google Scholar
Nicol J. 1988. Coreference processing during sentence comprehension. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Nicol J., & Swinney D. 1989. The role of structure in coreference assignment during sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18, 5– 20.Google Scholar
Osterhout L. 1997. On the brain response to syntactic anomalies: Manipulations of word position and word class reveal individual differences. Brain and Language, 59, 494– 522.Google Scholar
Osterhout L., & Holcomb P. 1995. Event-related brain potentials and language comprehension. In M. Rugg & M. Coles (Eds.), Electrophysiological studies of human cognitive function. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Papadopoulou D., & Clahsen H. 2003. Parsing strategies in L1 and L2 sentence processing: A study of relative clause attachment in Greek. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 501– 528.Google Scholar
Paradis M. 1994. Neurolinguistic aspects of implicit and explicit memory: Implications for bilingualism and SLA. In N. Ellis (Ed.), Implicit and explicit language learning (pp. 393– 419). London: Academic Press.
Paradis M. 1997. The cognitive neuropsychology of bilingualism. In A. De Groot & J. Kroll (Eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 331– 354). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Paradis M. 2004. A neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Penke M., Weyerts H., Gross M., Zander E., Münte T., & Clahsen H. 1997. How the brain processes complex words: An event-related potential study of German verb inflections. Cognitive Brain Research, 6, 37– 52.Google Scholar
Pickering M. 1999. Sentence comprehension. In S. Garrod & M. Pickering (Eds.), Language processing (pp. 123– 153). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Pickering M., & Barry G. 1991. Sentence processing without empty categories. Language and Cognitive Processes, 6, 229– 259.Google Scholar
Pienemann M. 1998. Language processing and second language acquisition: Processability theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pinker S. 1999. Words and rules. The ingredients of language. New York: Basic Books.
Prasada S., Pinker S., & Snyder W. 1990. Some evidence that irregular forms are retrieved from memory but regular forms are rule-generated. Paper presented at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New Orleans, LA.
Roberts L. 2003. Syntactic processing in learners of English. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Colchester. University of Essex,
Roberts L., Marinis T., Felser C., & Clahsen H. 2006. Antecedent priming at trace positions in children's sentence processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35.Google Scholar
Rodriguez-Fornells A., Clahsen H., Lleo C., Zaake W., & Münte T. 2001. Event-related brain responses to morphological violations in Catalan. Cognitive Brain Research, 11, 47– 58.Google Scholar
Sabourin L. 2003. Grammatical gender and second language processing: An ERP study. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Groningen.
Sanford A., & Sturt P. 2002. Depth of processing in language comprehension: not noticing the evidence. Trends in Cognitive Science, 6, 382– 386.Google Scholar
Scherag A., Demuth L., Rösler F., Neville H., & Röder B. 2004. The effects of late acquisition of L2 and the consequences of immigration on L1 for semantic and morpho-syntactic language aspects. Cognition, 93, B97– B108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segalowitz N. 2003. Automaticity and second languages. In C. Doughty & M. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 382– 388). Oxford: Blackwell.
Segalowitz N., & Segalowitz S. J. 1993. Skilled performance, practice, and the differentiation of speed-up from automatization effects: Evidence from second language word recognition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 369– 385.Google Scholar
Segalowitz S. J., Segalowitz N., & Wood A. G. 1998. Assessing the development of automaticity in second language word recognition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 53– 67.Google Scholar
Sekerina I., Stromswold K., & Hestvik A. 2004. How do adults and children process referentially ambiguous pronouns? Journal of Child Language, 31, 123– 152.Google Scholar
Smyth R. 2001. Prosody, overt number markers, and late closure in the L1 and L2 acquisition of subject–verb agreement. Unpublished manuscript, University of Toronto.
Snedeker J., Thorpe K., & Trueswell J. 2001. On choosing the parse within the scene: The role of visual context and verb bias in ambiguity resolution. In J. Moore & K. Stenning (Eds.), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 964– 996). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Sturt P. 2003. The time-course of the application of binding constraints in reference resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 542– 562.Google Scholar
Traxler M. 2002. Plausibility and subcategorization preference in children's processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences: Evidence from self-paced reading. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55A, 75– 96.Google Scholar
Trueswell J., Sekerina I., Hill N., & Logrip M. 1999. The kindergarden-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in children. Cognition, 73, 89– 134.Google Scholar
Ullman M. 2001. The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language: The declarative/procedural model. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 105– 122.Google Scholar
Valian V. 1990. Logical and psychological constraints on the acquisition of syntax. In L. Frazier & E. Williams (Eds.), Language processing and language acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
VanPatten B. 1996. Input processing and grammar instruction. Chestnut Hill, NJ: Ablex.
Weber-Fox C., & Neville H. 1996. Maturational constraints on functional specializations for language processing: ERP and behavioral evidence in bilingual speakers. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8, 231– 256.Google Scholar
Wexler K., & Chien Y. 1985. The development of lexical anaphors and pronouns. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development (Vol. 24). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Weyerts H., Penke M., Dohrn U., Clahsen H., & Münte T. 1997. Brain potentials indicate differences between regular and irregular German plurals. NeuroReport, 8, 957– 962.Google Scholar
Weyerts H., Penke M., Münte T., Heinze H., & Clahsen H. 2002. Word order in sentence processing: An experimental study on verb placement in German. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31, 211– 268.Google Scholar
White L., & Juffs A. 1998. Constraints on wh-movement in two different contexts of non-native language acquisition: Competence and processing. In S. Flynn, G. Martohardjono, & W. O'Neill (Eds.), The generative study of second language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Williams J., Möbius P., & Kim C. 2001. Native and non-native processing of English wh-questions: Parsing strategies and plausibility constraints. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 509– 540.Google Scholar
Zagar D., Pynte J., & Rativeau S. 1997. Evidence for early closure attachment on first-pass reading times in French. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50A, 421– 438.Google Scholar