ABSTRACT

This study investigates L2 learners’ ability to use morphosyntactic gender as a predictive cue during the processing of Hindi agreement dependencies. Nine L2 learners of low-intermediate proficiency and nine highly proficient multilingual speakers who consider Hindi one of their dominant languages were tested using a speeded picture-selection task. Results indicate that both L2 learners and multilingual speakers of Hindi used gender information to rapidly facilitate access to a target noun during processing, although because the facilitative effects were at the target noun, rather than preceding it, these facilitative effects do not provide unambiguous evidence for prediction. Participants’ processing speed in a control condition was also correlated with sensitivity to the gender cue, which is in line with accounts that posit that the ability to use linguistic cues during processing is modulated by individual differences.

摘要

这项研究调查了二语学习者在处理印地语协议依存关系过程中使用句法性别作为预测线索的能力。使用快速图片选择任务测试了9位L2中级水平的学习者和9位将印地语作为其主要语言之一的精通多语言的人。结果表明，二语学习者和多语种的印地语使用者都使用性别信息来快速促进在处理过程中对目标名词的访问，尽管由于促进作用是在目标名词上而不是在其之前，所以这些促进作用并未提供明确的证据证明。预测。参与者在控制条件下的处理速度也与对性别提示的敏感性相关，