Abstract
We carried out four timed judgement experiments investigating whether bilingual speakers differ in their sensitivity to different kinds of filler–gap dependency violation in L1 German and L2 English. Using a within-subjects design and parallel experimental designs for both languages, we manipulated either the availability of a gap (“filled-gap paradigm”) or the semantic congruency between the filler and its licensing verb. We examined whether participants exhibited consistent judgement patterns for syntactic (i.e., filled wh-gaps) and semantic (i.e., implausible wh-fillers) violations within and across their languages. Our results showed that participants’ sensitivity to filled gaps correlated positively with their sensitivity to a filler’s semantic fit in their L1 but not in their L2, and that participants’ sensitivity to semantic fit was positively correlated in their two languages whilst their sensitivity to gap availability was not. Further analyses of the L2 data showed that participants’ sensitivity to semantic fit but not to filled gaps increased with L2 proficiency. Our findings are in line with earlier findings indicating reduced sensitivity to structural gaps even at advanced L2 proficiency levels. They also highlight the need for L2 processing research to look beyond group-level performance and consider bilinguals’ sensitivity to different types of linguistic constraints at the individual level.
Published Version
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