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Processing foreign-accented speech in a second language: Evidence from ERPs during sentence comprehension in bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

SARAH GREY ,
LAURA C. SCHUBEL ,
JAMES M. MCQUEEN  and
JANET G. VAN HELL
SARAH GREY*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Fordham University
LAURA C. SCHUBEL
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, George Washington University
JAMES M. MCQUEEN
Affiliation:
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
JANET G. VAN HELL
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, The Center for Language Science, Pennsylvania State University
*
Address for correspondence: Sarah Grey, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Faber Hall 556, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458[email protected]
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Abstract

This study examined electrophysiological correlates of sentence comprehension of native-accented and foreign-accented speech in a second language (L2), for sentences produced in a foreign accent different from that associated with the listeners' L1. Bilingual speaker-listeners process different accents in their L2 conversations, but the effects on real-time L2 sentence comprehension are unknown. Dutch–English bilinguals listened to native American-English accented sentences and foreign (and for them unfamiliarly-accented) Chinese-English accented sentences while EEG was recorded. Behavioral sentence comprehension was highly accurate for both native-accented and foreign-accented sentences. ERPs showed different patterns for L2 grammar and semantic processing of native- and foreign-accented speech. For grammar, only native-accented speech elicited an Nref. For semantics, both native- and foreign-accented speech elicited an N400 effect, but with a delayed onset across both accent conditions. These findings suggest that the way listeners comprehend native- and foreign-accented sentences in their L2 depends on their familiarity with the accent.

Keywords

foreign accentsentence comprehensionsecond languageERPsgrammarsemantics
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , November 2019 , pp. 912 - 929
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

This research was supported by NSF SMA-1514276/1659920 to Sarah Grey and Janet G. van Hell and NSF OISE-0968369, NSF BCS 1349110, and OISE 1545900 to Janet G. van Hell. Portions of this research were presented at the 2016 meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. We thank Courtney Johnson-Fowler, Yiran Zhang, Abigail L. Cosgrove, Carrie Jackson, Kaitlyn Litcofsky, and Tim Poepsel for assistance with this project. We thank Darren Tanner and Katharina Schumann for helpful input on a previous version of the manuscript.

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