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In:Second Language Acquisition of Turkish
Edited by Ayşe Gürel
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 59] 2016
► pp. 281–311

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Non-native syntactic processing of Case and Agreement

Evidence from event-related potentials

 | Ankara University
 | Istanbul University
 | Istanbul University
Published online: 25 May 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.59.11ayd
The present study investigates the neural basis of syntactic processing in native and non-native speakers of Turkish, focusing on factors such as second language (L2) proficiency and language distance. Participants’ event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a grammaticality judgment task consisting of subject case and subject-verb agreement violation sentences. The results indicate that while case violations (the divergent condition) reveal different ERP components in native and non-native speakers, agreement violations in finite clauses (the convergent condition) do not. Nevertheless, during the processing of agreement violations in non-finite clauses (the partial divergent condition) only high-intermediate L2 learners show native-like brain processing mechanisms. Findings suggest that L2 syntactic processing is affected by language distance as well as L2 proficiency.
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