A Morphological Processing of Determiner-Noun Agreement by Korean Learners of English : An ERP Study

Abstract

The current study investigated the processing of determiner-noun number agreement by advanced Korean learners of English, with distance and working memory capacity as modulating factors. Twelve English native speakers and eighteen Korean learners of English read English sentences, half of which contained agreement violations, while their EEG data were recorded. The sentences also varied in the distance between determiner and noun (i.e. short distance and long distance). From the data analysis, no LAN effect was observed in both groups in the time window of 300-450 ms. However, only the native group showed a P600 effect (500-600 ms) in response to agreement violations. While short distance conditions overall elicited more positive waveforms than long distance conditions for both groups, the distance did not affect the size of P600. Finally, only the L2 learners with high working memory capacity showed a small P600 effect for short distance conditions at a later time window (700-800 ms). These findings demonstrate that advanced Korean learners do not process number agreement in a native-like way when the grammatical feature is absent in their mother language. Nonetheless, working memory capacity was found to play a moderate role in processing determiner-noun agreement for L2 learners with such aptitude.