This study examined how L1 Mandarin L2 English learners with different L2 proficiency levels processed the syntactic structure of English sentences. Using a self-paced reading paradigm, this study investigated three issues: first, whether Mandarin learners of English were able to predict the syntactic structure, subject filled-gap, in online English sentence reading; second, whether the parser would commit more strongly to the subject gap analysis when there is a longer distance between the filler and the potential gap; third, how L2 proficiency levels would influence this process. The results showed that regardless of their English proficiency levels, Mandarin learners of English were capable to predict a subject filled-gap when processing English sentences. Besides, the subject filled-gap effect was not found in the sentences with adjuncts between the filler and the potential gap. This indicated that L2 learners’ predictive ability in syntactic processing did not need to be activated by the increase of processing time or difficulty. Due to the efficiency of sentence processing, there is no need to increase the processing burden for L2 learners.

本研究考察了不同 L2 水平的 L1 普通话 L2 英语学习者如何处理英语句子的句法结构。本研究采用自定进度阅读范式，研究了三个问题：第一，英语普通话学习者是否能够预测在线英语句子阅读中的句法结构、主题填空；第二，当填充物和潜在差距之间的距离更长时，解析器是否会更强烈地致力于主题差距分析；第三，L2 水平如何影响这个过程。结果表明，无论他们的英语水平如何，普通话学习者在处理英语句子时都能够预测一个主题填补空缺。除了，在填充词和潜在差距之间有附加词的句子中没有发现主题填充差距效应。这表明二语学习者在句法加工方面的预测能力不需要随着加工时间或难度的增加而激活。由于句子处理的效率，没有必要增加二语学习者的处理负担。