Previous research has shown that anaphor resolution in a non-native language may be more vulnerable to interference from structurally inappropriate antecedents compared to native anaphor resolution. To test whether previous findings on reflexive anaphors generalize to non-reflexive pronouns, we carried out an eye-movement monitoring study investigating the application of binding condition B during native and non-native sentence processing. In two online reading experiments we examined when during processing local and/or non-local antecedents for pronouns were considered in different types of syntactic environment. Our results demonstrate that both native English speakers and native German-speaking learners of English showed online sensitivity to binding condition B in that they did not consider syntactically inappropriate antecedents. For pronouns thought to be exempt from condition B (so-called “short-distance pronouns”), the native readers showed a weak preference for the local antecedent during processing. The non-native readers, on the other hand, showed a preference for the matrix subject even where local coreference was permitted, and despite demonstrating awareness of short-distance pronouns' referential ambiguity in a complementary offline task. This indicates that non-native comprehenders are less sensitive during processing to structural cues that render pronouns exempt from condition B, and prefer to link a pronoun to a salient subject antecedent instead.

In three experiments we explored the representation and encoding of verb regularity. Contrasting articulation latencies of present and past regular and irregular forms from paradigms consisting of regular, irregular, or hybrid verbs (regular in present, but irregular in past tense), allowed us to differentiate between affixation and stem selection processes. The analyses revealed that regular verbs in the present and past tense were produced significantly faster than all other forms. Crucially, the naming latencies of hybrid and irregular verbs did not differ from each other in both tenses. We conclude that regularity is not a property of individual verb forms, but generalizes to all forms within a paradigm. In a third, picture word interference experiment, we tested whether regularity, when not bound to individual verb forms, is represented in the form of abstract regularity nodes, as assumed for gender or conjugational class. However, the critical conditions did not exhibit the expected congruency effect. Consequently we conclude that the paradigmatic effects could be explained as a result of the complexity of lexical entries. The retrieval of a complex entry (irregular and hybrid verbs) takes longer than the retrieval of a single stem entry (regular verbs).