Past tense grammaticality judgment and production in non-native and stressed native English speakers

Abstract

This paper explores whether the poor mastery of morphosyntax exhibited by second language (L2) learners can be tied to difficulties with non-syntactic processing. Specifically, we examine whether problems with English regular and irregular past tense are related to poor L2 phonological ability and lexical access, respectively. In Experiment 1, L2 learners showed poorer past tense mastery than native English speakers in grammaticality judgment and production tasks. L2 phonological ability was positively correlated with correct performance on regular verbs and negatively with unmarked production. L2 lexical access was positively correlated with correct performance on irregular verbs, and negatively with overregularization production. Experiment 2 simulated these difficulties in native English speakers by placing them under phonological processing (noise) or lexical access (deadline) stress. Noise selectively impacted regular verbs in grammaticality judgment but impacted all verb types in production. Deadline pressure impacted irregular verbs while sparing regular verbs across both tasks. Thus, non-syntactic processing difficulties can have specific impacts on morphosyntactic performance in both non-native and native English speakers.

Analysing Interlanguage Stages ALEs Pass through in the Acquisition of the Simple Past Tense

“…McDonald & Roussel (2010) examined whether problems with English regular and irregular past tense are related to poor L2 phonological ability and lexical access. They conclude that non-syntactic processing difficulties can have a specific impact on morphosynatctic performances in both non-native and native English speakers.…”

Not so individual after all: An ecological approach to age as an individual difference variable in a classroom

“…In many naturalistic studies (e.g., Clahsen & Felser, 2006;DeKeyser, AlfiShabtay, & Ravid, 2010;Granena & Long, 2013;McDonald, 2006McDonald, , 2008, it is pointed out that L2 morpho-syntax seems to be more vulnerable to processing difficulties than L2 lexico-semantics and more susceptible to age. Such difficulties have been linked to resource limitations that might lead to the inability (a) to access and retrieve stored L2 knowledge (semantically-related difficulties) and/or (b) to detect phonological discriminations in the input (phonologicallyrelated difficulties), similar to the difficulties of native speakers under specific types of stress manipulation (McDonald & Roussel, 2010;Pfenninger, 2011).…”

The Quantity and Quality of Language Practice in Typical Interactive Pair/Group Tasks

“…Control over the feature requires knowledge of both the irregular and regular forms, but systematic use of the irregular past (did, said, went) tends to occur before productive use of the regular past (Lee, 2001;Rohde, 1996). At least some of the difficulty derives from the lack of perceptual salience of the regular form of the simple past (Bell, Trofimovich, & Collins, in press;McDonald & Roussel, 2010; see also Bayley, 1996;Goad, White, & Steele, 2003;Wolfram, 1985). In addition, learners initially make much more frequent use of the simple past with the class of verbs known as telics (finished, made something), which are bounded events with inherent end points.…”