This study examines how second language (L2) learners acquire and process count and mass nouns in English, with a particular emphasis on the influence of their first language (L1). Given the crosslinguistic similarities in plural-marking systems between English and Russian, as well as the differences between English and Korean, the study aims to compare Korean- and Russian-L1 learners, investigating their ability to detect plural-marking errors in English sentence comprehension.
Design/Methodology/Approach:
The study employs both offline acceptability judgment and online self-paced reading tasks to assess learners’ explicit and implicit knowledge, respectively. Participants consist of three groups: Korean-L1 learners (Korean group), Russian-L1 learners (Russian group), and native English speakers (English group). This comparative design enables a systematic analysis of L1 influence on L2 acquisition.
Data and Analysis:
Data from the acceptability judgment task were analyzed using a cumulative link mixed-effects model. For the self-paced reading task, a linear mixed-effects regression model was applied.
Findings/Conclusions:
The results indicate that the Russian group performed similarly to the English group in the acceptability judgment task, while the Korean group exhibited sensitivity to grammatical errors only for count nouns. In the self-paced reading task, both learner groups struggled with real-time processing, suggesting incomplete implicit knowledge.
Originality:
This paper uniquely integrates offline and online tasks to test the effects of L1 knowledge on L2 acquisition and processing of plural marking, as well as contributing to the understanding of explicit and implicit knowledge in L2 learners.
Significance/Implications:
The findings support theories emphasizing crosslinguistic differences as major obstacles in L2 morphosyntactic acquisition. The study also demonstrates the influential roles of task type and linguistic interfaces, suggesting that cognitive load from online processing and the management of multiple information sources can impede the application of L1 and explicit knowledge during real-time processing.
AlaskarS.CunningsI. (2024). Agreement and reflexives in non-native sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. Published Online.
2.
BaayenR. H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics. Cambridge University Press.
3.
BaronciniI.TorregrossaJ. (2024). Bilingual children’s explicit language knowledge and its relationship to priming within- and across-languages. In GrimmA.LemmerR.ListantiA.WeicherM. (Eds.), Empirical and theoretical approaches to language acquisition: A generative perspective (pp. 204–225). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
4.
CarbonaraV.ScibettaA.TorregrossaJ. (2024). The benefits of multilingual pedagogies for multilingual children’s narrative abilities. International Journal of Multilingualism, 21(2), 645–669.
5.
CeleF.TabriziS. A. (2024). Bridging the Gap between L2 Acquisition and Processing: Implications for Teaching. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
6.
ChangT. A.TuZ.BergenB. K. (2022). The geometry of multilingual language model representations. In Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (pp. 119–136). Association for Computational Linguistics.
7.
ChenL.ShuH.LiuY.ZhaoJ.LiP. (2007). ERP signatures of subject-verb agreement in L2 learning. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(2), 161–174.
8.
ChierchiaG. (1998). Plurality of mass nouns and the notion of “semantic parameter..” In RothsteinK. (Ed.), Events and Grammar (pp. 53–103). Kluwer.
9.
ChoiS. H.IoninT. (2021). Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer. Applied Psycholinguistics, 42(3), 549–578.
10.
ChoiS. H.IoninT.ZhuY. (2018). L1 Korean and L1 Mandarin L2 English learners’ acquisition of the count/mass distinction in English. Second Language Research, 34(2), 147–177.
11.
ChristensenR. H. B. (2015). Ordinal: Regression models for ordinal data. R package version, 28, 2015.
12.
ClahsenH.FelserC. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27(1), 3–42.
13.
ClahsenH.FelserC. (2018). Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(3), 693–706.
14.
CunningsI. (2017). Parsing and working memory in bilingual sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20(4), 659–678.
15.
de Prada PérezA. (2019). Theoretical implications of research on bilingual subject production: The Vulnerability Hypothesis. International Journal of Bilingualism, 23(2), 670–694.
16.
DijkstraT.Van HeuvenW. J. B. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5(3), 175–197.
17.
EllisN.SagarraN. (2010). The bounds of adult language acquisition: Blocking and learned attention. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(4), 553–580.
18.
EllisN. C. (2006). Selective attention and transfer phenomena in L2 acquisition: Contingency, cue competition, salience, interference, overshadowing, blocking, and perceptual learning. Applied Linguistics, 27(2), 164–194.
19.
EllisR. (2005). Measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language: A psychometric study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27(2), 141–172.
20.
GillonB. S. (1992). Towards a common semantics for English count and mass nouns. Linguistics and Philosophy, 15, 597–639.
21.
GordonP. (1985). Evaluating the semantic categories hypothesis: The case of the count/mass distinction. Cognition, 20(3), 209–242.
22.
GrüterT.LauE.LingW. (2020). How classifiers facilitate predictive processing in L1 and L2 Chinese: The role of semantic and grammatical cues. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35(2), 221–234.
23.
HartsuikerR. J.BernoletS. (2017). The development of shared syntax in second language learning. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20(2), 219–234.
24.
HoppH. (2013). Grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition: Relations between lexical and syntactic variability. Second Language Research, 29(1), 33–56.
25.
HoppH. (2014). Working memory effects in the L2 processing of ambiguous relative clauses. Language Acquisition, 21(3), 250–278.
26.
HoppH. (2022). Second language sentence processing. Annual Review of Linguistics, 8, 235–256.
27.
HuaD.LeeT. H. T. (2005). Chinese ESL learners’ understanding of the English count–mass distinction. In DekydtspotterL.SprouseR.LijestrandA. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (pp. 138–149). Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
28.
InagakiS. (2014). Syntax–semantics mappings as a source of difficulty in Japanese speakers’ acquisition of the mass–count distinction in English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(3), 464–477.
29.
IoninT.ChoiS. H.LiuQ. (2021). Knowledge of indefinite articles in L2-English: Online vs. offline performance. Second Language Research, 37(1), 121–160.
30.
IoninT.MontrulS. (2010). The role of L1 transfer in the interpretation of articles with definite plurals in L2 English. Language Learning, 60(4), 877–925.
31.
JackendoffR. (1991). Parts and boundaries. Cognition, 41(1–3), 9–45.
32.
JarvisS.PavlenkoA. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. Routledge.
33.
JiangN. (2007). Selective integration of linguistic knowledge in adult second language learning. Language Learning, 57(1), 1–33.
34.
JiangN.HuG.ChrabaszczA.YeL. (2017). The activation of grammaticalized meaning in L2 processing: Toward an explanation of the morphological congruency effect. International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(1), 81–98.
35.
JiangN.NovokshanovaE.MasudaK.WangX. (2011). Morphological congruency and the acquisition of L2 morphemes. Language Learning, 61(3), 940–967.
36.
JustM. A.CarpenterP. A.WoolleyJ. D. (1982). Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of experimental psychology:. General, 111(2), 228–238.
37.
KulshaD. (2024). L1 acquisition versus L2 acquisition: Functional morphology. In CeleF.TabriziS. A. (Eds.), Bridging the gap between L2 acquisition and processing: Implications for teaching (pp. 50–67). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
38.
LagoS.MoscaM.Stutter GarciaA. (2021). The role of crosslinguistic influence in multilingual processing: Lexicon versus syntax. Language Learning, 71(s1), 163–192.
39.
LardiereD. (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 25(2), 173–227.
40.
LemhöferK.BroersmaM. (2012). Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid lexical test for advanced learners of English. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 325–343.
41.
LenthR. (2018). emmeans: Estimated marginal means, aka least-square means: R package version 1.2.4 [computer software]. Available at: https://cran.r-project.org/package=emmeans
42.
LevineJ. S. (2009). Schaum’s outline of Russian grammar (2nd ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
43.
LukZ. P.ShiraiY. (2009). Is the acquisition order of grammatical morphemes impervious to L1 knowledge? evidence from the acquisition of plural -s, articles, and possessive ’s. Language Learning, 59(4), 721–754.
44.
MacDonaldD.CarrollS. E. (2018). Second-language processing of English mass-count nouns by native-speakers of Korean. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3(1), 1–27.
45.
MehligH. R. (1996). Some analogies between the morphology of nouns and the morphology of aspect in Russian. Folia Linguistica, 30(1–2), 87–110.
46.
NiemeierS. (2008). The notion of boundedness/unboundedness in the foreign language classroom. In cognitive linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary and phraseology (pp. 309–327). Mouton de Gruyter.
47.
OdlinT. (2003). Cross-Linguistic Influence. In DoughtyC.LongM. (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 436–486). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
48.
R Core Team. (2024). R: A language and environment for statistical computing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.R-project.org/
49.
ReifegersteJ.JarvisR.FelserC. (2020). Effects of chronological age on native and nonnative sentence processing: Evidence from subject-verb agreement in German. Journal of Memory and Language, 111, 104083.
50.
SlabakovaR. (2016). Second language acquisition. Oxford University Press.
51.
SnapeN. (2008). Resetting the nominal mapping parameter in L2 English: Definite article use and the count–mass distinction. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(1), 63–79.
52.
SoraceA. (2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 1–33.
53.
SoraceA.FiliaciF. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368.
54.
SpechtenhauserB.JessnerU. (2024). Complex interactions in the multilingual mind: Assessing metalinguistic abilities and their effects on decoding a new language system in trilingual learners. Lingua, 301, 103678.
55.
SuzukiY.DeKeyserR. (2017). The interface of explicit and implicit knowledge in a second language: Insights from individual differences in cognitive aptitudes. Language Learning, 67(4), 747–790.
56.
TangW.FiorentinoR.GabrieleA. (2023). Examining transfer in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction in L2 English. Second Language Research, 39(1), 231–257.
57.
TolentinoL. C.TokowiczN. (2011). Across languages, space and time: A review of the role of cross-language similarity in L2 (morpho)syntactic processing as revealed by fMRI and ERP methods. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(1), 91–125.
58.
TorregrossaJ.EisenbeißS.BongartzC. (2023). Boosting bilingual metalinguistic awareness under dual language activation: Some implications for bilingual education. Language Learning, 73(3), 683–722.
59.
TrenkicD.MirkovicJ.AltmannG. T. (2014). Real-time grammar processing by native and non-native speakers: Constructions unique to the second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(2), 237–257.
60.
TrueswellJ. C.TanenhausM. K.GarnseyS. M. (1994). Semantic influences on parsing: Use of thematic role information in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 33(3), 285–318.
