THE NATIVE AND NONNATIVE PROCESSING OF NUMBER AND GENDER AGREEMENT IN SPANISH: AN ERP INVESTIGATION By Copyright 2012 José Alemán Bañón Submitted to the graduate degree program in Linguistics and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ___________________________ Co-chair: Alison Gabriele, Ph.D. ___________________________ Co-chair: Robert Fiorentino, Ph.D. ___________________________ Sara Rosen, Ph.D. ___________________________ Amy Rossomondo, Ph.D. ___________________________ Harold Torrence, Ph.D. Date Defended: July 9 th 2012 The Dissertation Committee for José Alemán Bañón certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: THE NATIVE AND NONNATIVE PROCESSING OF NUMBER AND GENDER AGREEMENT IN SPANISH: AN ERP INVESTIGATION ________________________ Co-chair: Alison Gabriele, Ph.D. ________________________ Co-chair: Robert Fiorentino, Ph.D. Date approved: July 9 th 2012 ii ABSTRACT The present study utilizes EEG (Electroencephalography) to examine the processing of number and gender agreement in Spanish by native speakers and adult English-speaking learners. With respect to native processing, the study focuses on how different agreement features (number, gender) are retrieved for the purposes of agreement and on how structural distance (number of intervening phrases) impacts agreement resolution. With respect to nonnative processing, the study investigates the extent to which second language (L2) morphosyntactic processing is impacted by the properties of the learners’ first language (L1), focusing on whether novel features (gender) and novel instantiations of a shared feature (number on adjectives) can be processed in a native-like manner. An additional question examined in the study is whether L2 morphosyntactic processing is impacted by structural distance. Agreement was examined between nouns and adjectives within the same phrase ( edificio muy seguro “building -MASC-SG very safe -MASC-SG ”), between nouns and adjectives across a verb phrase (VP) (cuento es anónimo “story -MASC-SG is anonymous -MASC-SG ”), and between demonstratives and nouns ( este apartamento “this -MASC-SG apartment -MASC-SG ”), which is a syntactic context where both English and Spanish instantiate number agreement. Both native speakers (n=24) and advanced English-speaking learners of Spanish (n=25) elicited a P600 for number and gender violations overall, which was not preceded by a Left Anterior Negativity. For native speakers, effects were equally robust for number and gender, suggesting that both features are processed similarly at the brain level. For learners, effects were more positive for number than gender, suggesting a quantitative advantage for the feature present in the L1. These results are in line with the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996), which predicts that adult L2 learners can show iii native-like processing for novel features. Furthermore, while both groups showed sensitivity to across-phrase violations, they were both affected by the distance manipulation, as suggested by the fact that within-phrase agreement yielded more positive waveforms than across-phrase agreement overall. These results suggest that L2 learners can establish syntactic dependencies outside of local domains (contra the Shallow Structure Hypothesis, Clahsen & Felser, 2006) and that both native and nonnative processing are modulated by structural distance similarly. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful to the Fulbright Commission in Madrid (Spain) for supporting me during the initial years of my Ph.D. Without their initial push, I would probably not be here today. I am also very grateful to the Neurolinguistics and Language Processing Laboratory and the Linguistics Department at the University of Kansas for their support. Without it, the completion of this study would not have been possible. This project was also supported by National Science Foundation grant BCS-0951900 (to Robert Fiorentino and Alison Gabriele). Additional funding was provided by the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas, for which I am very grateful. I owe thanks to María García Puente and Amy Rossomondo for helping me recruit participants for the study. María, I can’t thank you enough for advertising the study to every native speaker and advanced learner that you could think of. I was touched! Special thanks also to Kristi Bond, Jamie Bost, Carla Fernández Guzmán, Ella Fund-Reznicek, Brooke Gunter, Yuka Naito-Billen, Frank Plummer, and Steve Politzer-Ahles, for being great lab colleagues and for helping me out every time that you could, which was basically every time that I asked for your help. I would also like to thank my advisers, Dr. Alison Gabriele and Dr. Robert Fiorentino for their unconditional support throughout the completion of this project, and the rest of my committee members, Dr. Sara Rosen, Dr. Amy Rossomondo, and Dr. Harold Torrence for their valuable feedback. Last, but not least, I am indebted to all of my participants for being so generous with their time. Your contribution to this project was crucial, and I am extremely grateful for it. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations ………………..……………………………………….........................ix CHAPTER 1. Introduction …………...……………………...…….………………………...1 CHAPTER 2. The Syntax of Number and Gender …………………………………..…...11 2.1. Number……………………………….……….……………………………...……...11 2.2. Gender………………………………………….……………..…………………..…13 2.3. Number and Gender in Spanish……………………………………………………..15 2.3.1. Spanish Number Morphology ……………………………….………………15 2.3.2. Spanish Gender System………………………………………………………16 CHAPTER 3. EEG and ERPs ……………………………………...…….………………...19 3.1. Main Event-Related Potentials Reported for Sentence Processing………………….20 3.1.1. Lexical and Semantic Processing: The N400………………………………...20 3.1.2. Morphosyntactic Processing: The P600……...………………………………23 3.1.3. Morphosyntactic Processing: The Left Anterior Negativity…………………27 CHAPTER 4. Agreement Processing in Native Speakers ……………..…………………30 4.1. The Native Processing of Agreement in Spanish…………………...……………….30 4.2. The Electrophysiological Processing of Number and Gender………………………33 4.3. Effects of Structural Distance on the Online Processing of Agreement…..…….......37 CHAPTER 5. Morphosyntactic Second Language (L2) Processing ……………………..48 5.1. Age of Acquisition vs. Proficiency………………………………………………….48 5.2. The Effects of L1-L2 Similarity in L2 Morphosyntactic Processing…...…………...60 5.3. Effects of Structural Distance on L2 Morphosyntactic Processing…………………68 CHAPTER 6. Present Study and Predictions ……………………………………………..78 6.1. Agreement Processing in Native Speakers...…...…………………...………………78 6.1.1. Predictions for Spanish Native Speakers………...…………………………...80 6.2. Morphosyntactic Processing in Adult L2 Learners…………..……………………...81 6.2.1. Theoretical Models of Second Language Acquisition……………………….83 6.2.2. Research Questions…………………………………………………………..84 6.2.2.1.Predictions for Adult L2 Learners………………………………………..85 6.2.2.2.Number…………………………………………………………………...85 6.2.2.3.Gender…………………………………..………………………………..85 6.2.2.4.Structural Distance: Within vs. Across-Phrase Agreement………………86 CHAPTER 7. Materials and Methods ……………………………………...…….………..87 7.1. Participants...….…………………………………………...…….…………………..87 7.1.1. Spanish Native Speakers……………………………………………………..87 7.1.2. Advanced English-Speaking Learners of Spanish…..……………………….88 7.2. Stimuli…………...…………………………………………………………………..88 7.2.1. Experiment 1: Within-Phrase Agreement……………………………………88 7.2.2. Experiment 2: Across-Phrase Agreement……….…………………………...89 7.2.3. Experiment 3: Demonstrative-Noun Agreement.……………………..……...90 7.3. Item Controls………………………………………………………………………...91 7.4. Fillers…………………………………………………………………………….......93 vi 7.5. Procedure……………………………………………………………………...…..…94 7.5.1. EEG Recording and Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT)…………………95 7.5.2. Gender Assignment Task…………………………………………………….96 7.5.3. Vocabulary Task……………………………………………………………..97 7.6. EEG Recording and Analysis………………………………………………………..97 CHAPTER 8. Results ……………………………………...…….…………………….......100 8.1. Experiments 1 and 2: Within-Phrase vs. Across-Phrase Agreement………………100 8.1.1. Spanish Native Speakers: Behavioral Results……...……………………….100 8.1.2. Advanced L2 Learners: Behavioral Results…….…..………………………100 8.1.3. ERP Results…...…………………………………………………………….101 8.1.4. 250-400 ms Time Window: Spanish Native Speakers….…………………..105 8.1.5. 250-400 ms Time Window: Advanced L2 Learners………………………..108 8.1.6. 250-400 ms Time Window: Summary……………………...………………108 8.1.7. 400-900 ms Time Window: Spanish Native Speakers....…………………...109 8.1.8. 400-900 ms Time Window: Advanced L2 Learners...….…………………..110 8.1.9. 400-900 ms Time Window: Summary…………….…….…...………...…...111 8.1.10. 400-650 ms Time Window: Spanish Native Speakers....…………………...111 8.1.11. 400-650 ms Time Window: Advanced L2 Learners...….…………...……...112 8.1.12. 400-650 ms Time Window: Summary……………………...………………114 8.1.13. 650-900 ms Time Window: Spanish Native Speakers....………………..….114 8.1.14. 650-900 ms Time Window: Advanced L2 Learners...….…………………..115 8.1.15. 650-900 ms Time Window: Summary…………….…….……...…………..116 8.2. Experiment 3: Demonstrative-Noun Agreement…………………..…………..…..116 8.2.1. Spanish Native Speakers: Behavioral Results……...……………………….116 8.2.2. Advanced L2 Learners: Behavioral Results…….…..………………………117 8.2.3. ERP Results…...…………………………………………………………….117 8.2.4. 250-400 ms Time Window: Spanish Native Speakers....…………………...119