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INCIDENTAL ACQUISITION OF GRAMMATICAL FEATURES DURING READING IN L1 AND L2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2015

Denisa Bordag ,
Amit Kirschenbaum ,
Andreas Opitz ,
Maria Rogahn  and
Erwin Tschirner
Denisa Bordag*
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig
Amit Kirschenbaum
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig
Andreas Opitz
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig
Maria Rogahn
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig
Erwin Tschirner
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Denisa Bordag, Herder-Institut, University of Leipzig, Beethovenstr. 15, 04107 Leipzig, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The present study explores the initial stages of incidental acquisition of two grammatical properties of verbs (subcategorization and [ir]regularity) during reading in first language (L1) and second language (L2) German using an adjusted self-paced reading paradigm. The results indicate that L1 speakers are superior to L2 speakers in the incidental acquisition of grammatical knowledge (experiments on subcategorization), except when the new knowledge interferes with previously acquired knowledge and mechanisms (experiments on [ir]regularity): Although both populations performed equally well regarding the acquisition of the subcategorization of verbs from the input (i.e., whether the verbs are transitive or intransitive), they differed with respect to the regularity status of new verbs. L1 speakers (in contrast to L2 learners) seem to disprefer irregularly conjugated verb forms in general, irrespective of their conjugation in the previous input. The results further show that the syntactic complexity of the context and morphological markedness positively affect the incidental acquisition of new words in the L2, triggering learners’ shift of attention from the text level to the word level.

Type
Articles
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 445 - 483
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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