How do L2 learners deal with a “dead” language? A psycholinguistic study on sentence processing in Latin

Abstract

Many decades of research have shown that sentence processing works in an highly incremental and predictive fashion (Marslen-Wilson, 1975) – in the L1 but also (maybe to a lower extent) in the L2. But whereas almost all studies on L2 sentence processing focus on modern languages, it is fully unclear how a language like Latin that fundamentally differs in the way it is taught and used is processed. Thus, the current study focuses on the question if proficient L2 learners of Latin show any evidence for incremental and predictive processing when reading Latin sentences. In a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task 25 advanced learners of Latin read 384 easy three-word Latin sentences that were manipulated among the factors animacy, argument order and verb position. The results indicate that the participants used the word order and animacy information to incorporate the arguments into the sentence structure on-line and to predict upcoming arguments on the basis of verb information. These findings are interpreted as the first evidence for incremental and predictive processing when reading Latin sentences.