Examining the Contribution of Markedness to the L2 Processing of Spanish Person Agreement

Abstract

We used event‑related potentials to investigate how markedness impacts person agreement in English‑speaking learners of L2‑Spanish. Markedness was examined by probing agreement with both first‑person (marked) and third‑person (unmarked) subjects. Agreement was manipulated by crossing first‑person subjects with third‑person verbs and vice versa. Native speakers showed a P600 for both errors, larger for “first‑person subject + third‑person verb” violations. This aligns with claims that, when the first element in the dependency is marked (first person), the parser generates stronger predictions regarding upcoming agreeing elements using feature activation. Twenty‑two upper‑intermediate/advanced learners elicited a P600 across both errors. Learners were equally accurate detecting both errors, but the P600 was marginally reduced for “first‑person subject + third‑person verb” violations, suggesting that learners overused unmarked forms (third person) online. However, this asymmetry mainly characterized lower‑proficiency learners. Results suggest that markedness impacts L2 agreement without constraining it, although learners are less likely to use marked features top‑down.

Perceptual salience and structural ambiguity resolution

“…In this way, these findings can be interpreted to indicate that fundamentally similar processing procedures are engaged during L1 and L2 sentence comprehension. More specifically, these findings are consistent with the idea that L1 and L2 comprehenders draw on available information sources-including structural frequency (e.g., Dussias & Scaltz, 2008), plausibility (e.g., Lee & Witzel, 2022), and markedness (e.g., Alemán Bañón et al, 2021)-in similar ways during online sentence processing. With regard to this issue, it is important to acknowledge that comparisons of L1 and L2 sentence comprehension typically examine whether factors that are relevant to L1 processing also apply in an L2.…”

Being a heritage speaker matters: the role of markedness in subject-verb person agreement in Italian

“…It is as yet not entirely clear how markedness distinctions impact the establishment of person dependencies online. Nonetheless, existent empirical research is consistent with the possibility that specified forms carry greater cognitive weight than their default counterparts, suggesting that first-and second-person cues are stronger than third-person ones ( Carminati, 2005 ; Nevins, 2007 , 2011 ; Nevins et al, 2007 ; Silva-Pereyra and Carreiras, 2007 ; Alemán Bañón and Rothman, 2019 ; Mancini et al, 2019 ; Alemán Bañón et al, 2021 ). Furthermore, other proposals from the psycholinguistics literature (e.g., Nevins et al, 2007 ; Wagers and Phillips, 2014 ) capitalize on the predictive value of marked features claiming that upon encountering a marked feature, the parser can generate a stronger prediction regarding upcoming agreement elements.…”

“…Our main aim was to understand how markedness differences with respect to the speech participant status of the subject (1st-person marked vs. 3rd-person unmarked) influence online processing and offline judgments of agreement resolution at the verb. To that end, markedness was manipulated in the SV person agreement with both 1st-person (marked) and 3rd-person (unmarked) subjects (e.g., Jakobson, 1971 ; Harris, 1995 ; Harley and Ritter, 2002 ; Bianchi, 2006 ; Nevins, 2011 ; Alemán Bañón and Rothman, 2019 ; Alemán Bañón et al, 2021 ). Our design crossed 3rd-person singular lexical DPs subjects ( Lo scrittore “the writer”) and 1st-person singular pronoun ( Io “I”) with verbs inflected for the opposite person, thus two types of errors were created: “1st-person marked subject + *3rd-person unmarked verb” and “3rd-person unmarked subject + *1st-person marked verb.” Based on psycholinguistic proposals making different predictions about the role of markedness in agreement resolution, we hypothesized that it should be easier to detect a person violation realized on a 1st-person marked verb ( lo scrittore *scrivo “the writer -3rd-person write -1st-person ”) because violations have been argued to be more disruptive when they are realized on marked features (e.g., Deutsch and Bentin, 2001 ; Kaan, 2002 ; Nevins et al, 2007 ; Alemán Bañón and Rothman, 2016 ).…”

“…Our main aim was to understand how markedness differences with respect to the speech participant status of the subject (1st-person marked vs. 3rd-person unmarked) influence online processing and offline judgments of agreement resolution at the verb. To that end, markedness was manipulated in the SV person agreement with both 1st-person (marked) and 3rd-person (unmarked) subjects (e.g., Jakobson, 1971;Harris, 1995;Harley and Ritter, 2002;Bianchi, 2006;Nevins, 2011;Alemán Bañón and Rothman, 2019;Alemán Bañón et al, 2021). Our design crossed 3rd-person singular lexical DPs subjects (Lo scrittore "the writer") and 1st-person singular pronoun (Io "I") with verbs inflected for the opposite person, thus two types of errors were created: "1st-person marked subject + *3rd-person unmarked verb" and "3rd-person unmarked subject + *1st-person marked verb. "…”

“…We build on two previous studies on native L1-dominant ( Alemán Bañón and Rothman, 2019 ) and L2 learners of Spanish ( Alemán Bañón et al, 2021 ) that have investigated the same processing target in a similar way using EEG as the main methodology. The authors predicted two possible scenarios: in line with their previous studies on gender agreement ( Alemán Bañón and Rothman, 2016 ; Alemán Bañón et al, 2017 ), they predicted either the verb’s markedness to impact processing at the violating verb or, considering Nevins et al (2007) proposal, the subject’s markedness would impact processing at the verb.…”