Second Language Processing and Linguistic Theory: October 2017

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Second Language Processing and Linguistic Theory
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Second Language Processing and Linguistic Theory
John Archibald
Summary
Keywords (5-10)
Processing; second language acquisition; bilingualism;
1.0 Using a Second Language
For most people, it is a daily occurrence to either speak in a second language or listen to
someone speaking in a second language. Therefore, the study of second language
processing (either production or perception) is central to understanding the linguistic
abilities of humans. Because many of the properties of this processing are unconscious, it
is not obvious that there are many factors which underlie our linguistic abilities. This
entry will focus on the role of linguistic theory (or, perhaps more accurately, theories) in
describing and explaining the processing of second language speech.
Linguistic theory is intended to account for the often unconscious, systematic
knowledge of a native speaker of a particular language. Why is it grammatical in French
but ungrammatical in English to say I drink often coffee? Why is stop a possible word in
English but not in Spanish? Monolingual, native speakers are taken as the starting point,
not because they are more interesting or more important but because they provide a
baseline for description. If linguistic theory provides an account of the grammatical
system of the phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics of, say, a native speaker of
French, then this will be the baseline for understanding, (a) what the French speaker
transfers in the attempt to acquire a second language, and (b) what second language
learners are trying to acquire when they learn French. The linguist may then compare the
grammars of monolinguals with second language leaners in order to understand the
nature of the bilingual system. Comparison, however, does not mean rankings or
judgments are made. Comparing native and non-native grammars is like comparing
elements on the periodic table. It is illuminating to capture the structure of oxygen or
hydrogen, but, when noting the differences, it is not to say that one element is better or
more advanced than another. The same is true of native and non-native grammars.
The study of linguistic competence tries to remove the confounds of linguistic
performance. Properties of the physical system (e.g., fatigue) or the physical
environment (e.g., ambient noise) may lead to occasional inaccurate production or
perception by an individual. However, it does not indicate that the stable, symbolic
system (i.e., grammar) is degenerating if a native speaker says I'm teally rired - instead of
I'm really tired - or mishears the word peace as peas.
And yet, people are much more than knowers of language, they are users of
language. The field of language processing explores how people do things like read,
write, listen and talk. It models how spoken utterances are comprehended, and how
spoken phrases are planned for articulation. Such domains of inquiry are separate from
(though related to) the structure of the mental grammar itself. The psycholinguist seeks
an understanding of how second language learners use language. How do they
To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

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comprehend messages in real time? How do they construct grammatical sentences in

conversation?
In introducing a term such as second language learner, though, some clarification
is in order. While adult native speakers of a language share many principles of what
makes a well-formed phonological, morphological, or syntactic string, non-native
speakers reveal considerable variation in both their competence and performance. There
are, of course, many factors which influence this variation: age of acquisition, L2
proficiency, regional dialect, etc. In delimiting the population of second language leaners,
there is considerable diversity: simultaneous bilinguals from birth; intermediate
proficiency L2 users living in a foreign country; instructed adult learners who have
studied 120 minutes a week for a year; children who are in weekend heritage language
maintenance classes. Clearly, each of these populations will have unique properties, yet
they also share many traits. In this entry, the term second language learner is used as an
umbrella term to include all of the above categories (and most likely more); it is a
maximally inclusive term.
1.1 Representations and Processes

The distinction between representations and processes is central to most models
of the cognitive science of language (Pylyshyn, 1984). Given the arbitrariness of
language, certain knowledge (e.g., entries in the mental lexicon (the English word fork,
the Spanish plural marker –s), contrastive phonological units (French /p/, Thai /ph/), etc.)
needs to be stored in memory as part of a mental representation. In addition to
representations, though, there are processes which take as their input an existing
representation and produce a new representation. One example would be a syntactic
operation like Move which would take an element (like a question word) and move it
within the syntactic structure. So, an underlying structure of "We should eat what?"
would be transformed (in English) to "What should we eat?" This distinction is
maintained in many linguistic frameworks which reinforces that it is linguistic theory
which informs the nature of the assumed linguistic representation in the mind of the
person (what Gregg (1996) calls a property theory). Over time, theories change. The
architecture of Lexical Phonology (Mohanan, 1986) is quite different from that of
Harmonic Serialism (McCarthy & Pater, 2016). The derivations in Transformational
Generative Grammar (Chomsky, 1965) are fundamentally different from Phase-based
Syntax (Chomsky, 1999). This has implications for the study of SLA (see Schwartz &
Sprouse, 2000 for a discussion of this issue). As will become clear in Section 6.0, there is
no single linguistic theory, and considerable variation amongst current theories.
All theories, however, must address the question of how representations are
acquired in either first or second language learning. Drawing on the construct of language
learnability (Pinker, 1989; Wexler & Culicover, 1980), consider the task of the linguist.
First a model of the grammatical knowledge of the adult, native speaker of the language
must be established. Then that grammar must be tested to ensure that such a grammar
could be arrived at by the child based on exposure to typical linguistic input (see Yang,
2006, 2016). This is the target end-state of L1 acquisition. The initial state of the child’s
grammar is the initial state of the language faculty (or more neutrally, the cognitive
apparatus). Developmental linguists (interested in transition theories) must model how
the learners come to know what they know about the languages they are exposed to.

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Outside of exceptional cases, first language learners in a speech community converge on

a grammar. There is minimal variation in core representations, but variation in skills such
as story-telling, essay writing, or poetry writing. For second language learners, the target
end-state is a grammar of the language of the environment. There is much more variation
in the attested end states of second language learning than for first language learning
(Birdsong, 2009).
Epistemologically, we may refer to grammatical knowledge, as knowledge-that.
Crucially, this knowledge is unconscious. Native English speakers may be unable to
articulate why "I am walking a dog" is acceptable while "I am hearing a voice" is
unacceptable. Grammaticality judgement tasks are paradigmatic as we seek to gain
insight into what a learner’s grammar looks like (see Ionin (2013) for more discussion of
diverse methods available for the study of SLA; see also the IRIS web site.) Learners
behave as if certain phonological morphological, or syntactic strings (which may or may
not be targetlike) were well-formed. Proficient knowers of English, for example, are able
to judge whether the following strings are well- or ill-formed:
a) plant
b) unpleasantness
c) I know the man that you saw him.
d) understandityable
e) [mrostr]
It is the task of the researcher to understand the nature of the knowledge which governs
those well-formedness beliefs. Speakers of a language may not be able to articulate the
rules which drive their judgments but judgements they have, even if there may be areas of
knowledge which lead to less certainty in native and non-natives speakers alike. Phillips
(2010) notes that native speakers of English vary in whether they judge the following
sentences to be grammatical or not:
There is likely a man to appear.

Wallace stood more buckets in the garage than Gromit did in the basement.
Grammaticality judgement tasks are not, however, direct windows onto grammar but
need to be treated as psycholinguistic tasks (Schütze, 2016; Gibson & Federenko, 2010)
with their results interpreted.
Linguistic representations, then, are what are taken to be the targets for second
language acquisition. Taking the assumptions of the Full Transfer/Full Access model of
SLA (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996) the initial state of L2 learning is the final state of the
L1 grammar.
1.2 Processing and Grammar
Traditional accounts of processing, on the other hand, look to the real-time use of
language, either in production or perception, and invoke discussions of skill or
knowledge-how. There has long been a connection between linguistic theory and theories

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of processing as evidenced by the work of Berwick & Weinberg (1986). Structure does
not come directly labelled or transparently signalled in the acoustic input. It is the task of
a cognitive construct known as a parser to assign abstract structure to a phonological,
morphological or syntactic string in real time. Linguistic theories may posit particular
hierarchical structures for "plant" (phonological) or " snowman" (morphological) or "I
saw Hermione" (syntactic) in order to explain knowledge, but it is the study of language
processing which explores how such structure is assigned to an input string. Processing
studies such as the Garden Path phenomenon have revealed that grammaticality and
processability are distinct constructs; sentences which are grammatical in a language may
well be difficult to parse. The metaphor here is that the processor is led down the garden
path in interpreting sentences such as:
The horse raced past the barn fell.
The processor, moving left to right, engages in something like the following ‘thought’
process:
The horse [Noun phrase] raced [Verb] past [Preposition] the barn [Noun phrase]
fell [Huh?!]
The speaker may consciously understand it to be analogous to the horse taken past the
barn fell, and be able to metalinguistically assign the appropriate structure, but even with
explicit knowledge the automatic processor can continue to be led astray. Just as there is
a distinction between sentences which are well-formed but meaningless (Colourless
green ideas sleep furiously) and sentences which are ill-formed but interpretable (What
did you bring the book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?), there is a distinction
between the processing of an utterance and its its grammaticality.
In some models, however, the distinction between grammar and processing is less
clear-cut. See Phillips and Ehrenhofer (2015) for a general discussion. Phillips (1996)
consolidated parsing and grammatical principles with his assertion that Parsing Is
Grammar (PIG). By proposing that abstract syntactic structures were built from left to
right (as dictated by a condition of Merge Right) and subject to an economy principle of
Branch Right, the lines between grammar and processing were blurred. For Phillips
(Lewis & Phillips, 2015), the mental grammar is a “real-time computational system.”
O’Grady (2005) builds an emergentist theory with no grammar, only processing.
Bayesian models of acquisition (Hayes & Wilson, 2008), and indeed of knowledge,
assume that the grammars we set up are governed by a principle of entropy which
governs other aspects of human behaviour; knowledge and skill are combined. Exemplar
models (Pierrehumbert, 2001) view the processing of the input as a storing of all phonetic
detail that is in the environment, not storing abstract categories; the categories emerge via
a process of comparing exemplars.
With all its diversity, linguistic theory, broadly conceived, helps illuminate the
processing of input to acquire new L2 representations, and the access of those
representations in real time.

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2.0 Technologies
A range of experimental psycholinguistic techniques have been used to assess the skills
necessary for processing or accessing representations: self-paced reading, eye-tracking,
ERPs, MEG, priming, lexical decision, AXB discrimination, etc. Such online measures
can reveal how the dynamics of language when it comes to activities such as production
or comprehension. Which technology or technique is used is, of course, dependent on the
question being asked. ERPs are good at providing detailed timelines of processing but
less-good at localization. Self-paced reading can reveal parts of a sentence which slow
processing down but eye-tracking can reveal more of what is happening during those
processing times. For a good overview see Roberts (2012) and Marinis (2003).
3.0 Components of Processing
Research tends to be divided as to the level of representation investigated in processing

studies: phonological, lexical, or syntactic. Morphological structure and processing are
here considered under the rubric of syntax both because there is a longer history to the
study of syntactic processing and because they both share properties of hierarchical
constituent structure (Selkirk, 1982), but see Libben & Jarema (2006) for an overview of
issues in morphological processing. Section 5.0 addresses the phonological level, but first
consider lexical and syntactic processing. Much research assumes a divide between the
two.
3.1 Lexical Processing
One of the central issues that has been probed in lexical processing is the question of
selective versus non-selective access to the lexicon. Going back to the work of Weinreich
(1963), researchers have asked whether the two languages of a bilingual are stored
separately. The metaphor of the mental lexicon helps here when we ask: is there one
dictionary or two? Costa (2005) provides a good overview. A basic empirical question is
whether, in a monolingual task, lexical items from the language not-in-use affect the
processing of the language which is in-use. The bulk of evidence suggests that they do.
Consider the type of evidence provided by Dijkstra et al. (1999) who looked at
interlingual homographs and interlingual homophones. What they conclusively found
was that words which were spelled the same (in the two languages of a bilingual;
homographs) facilitated lexical access (as measured by reduced response time in a lexical
decision task) whereas words which were pronounced the same (in the two languages of a
bilingual; homophones) impeded lexical access (as measured by increased response times
in a LDT). Thus, even though a task was conducted entirely, say, in English, the
properties of, say, Dutch words (in the bilingual lexicon) affected the processing of the
English words. All this is completely below the conscious radar of the subjects. In the
following chart, the capital letters indicate which elements are shared (Semantics,
Orthography, Phonology).

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SOP Cognates SO Cognates SP Cognates

hotel fruit [frøyt] news/nieuws
film chaos [xaos] boat/boot
lip jury [ʒrri] wheel/wiel
OP False Friends O (Interlingual P (Interlingual
step (scooter) Homographs) Homophones)
arts (doctor) glad [lif]
kin (chin) [xlɑt] (slippery) ‘leaf’ ‘lief’ (dear)
Nakayama & Archibald (2005) showed similar effects in an eye-tracking study of

sentence reading with longer fixations on interlingual homophones. This both confirms
the basic finding in a more natural task (sentence reading as opposed to lexical decision)
and shows that lexical effects are relevant to sentence processing.
3.2 Neurolinguistic Processing and the ‘language switch’
There are many aspects to the neurolinguistics of bilingualism (Wang et al., 2007).
Studies (Kim et al., 1997; Perani et al. 1998) have looked at the localization of L1 versus
L2. The effects of age of onset of acquisition have been probed (Weber-Fox & Neville,
1996) via ERP studies. There is also a rich tradition of looking at the processes which
govern how a bilingual switches between the two languages appropriately (Jared & Kroll,
2001; Kroll et al., 2006). While it is true that there are occasions where we see language
mixing, or code switching) sometimes in the most proficient of bilinguals, bilinguals are
remarkably good at keeping the two languages apart even though we know from studies
on the bilingual lexicon (Costa, 2005) that all languages are active all the time.
Green (1998) proposed the Inhibitory Control model, and more recently (Green &
Abutalebi, 2013) the Adaptive Control Hypothesis. This research program suggests that
the non-active language is suppressed via cognitive executive control. Recent work in
Pylkkänen’s lab has shown how linguistic theory can inform the study of language
switching. Blanco-Elorrieta & Pylkkänen (2015, 2016) investigate language switching in
both production and comprehension. They compare the activation of a particular
language by a linguistic cue (e.g. orthography) versus a cultural cue (e.g traditional dress
in a photo). The orthographic script condition was activated more automatically and
required more executive control to suppress. Their work shows that there is not a ‘single’
language switch as different neurological systems are implicated in a production switch
compared to a comprehension switch. Furthermore, their works shows that there is a
close relationship between the regions of interest in executive control of language and
general cognition in production tasks but not so in comprehension tasks. This type of
work has the potential of informing the debate on emergentist versus essentialist (i.e.,
domain-specific) approaches.
Pylkkänen et al.’s earlier (2006) work using the MEG M350 signature to
investigate polysemy, also has some possible implications for bilingual processing. They
provided evidence for single category-neutral root activation in polysemes (as opposed to
homophones which activate different entries) in monolinguals. Given the non-selective
nature of the bilingual lexicon, it is interesting to speculate whether words like English
cat, French chat and German katze could be thought of as interlingual allomorphs which

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share a category-neutral root (or lemma) which has different post-syntactic spell-out. In
the terms of Dijkstra et al. (1999) shown in the above chart, these would be forms which
shared Orthography alone. The M350 (as it is sensitive to root frequency) also has the
potential to address some of the questions raised by Friedline (2010) probing the Shallow
Processing Hypothesis (Clahsen et al., 2010,; Silva & Clahsen, 2008) concerning lack of
control for frequency of complex versus simple primes. Baayen et al. (2011) raises more
general questions about investigating lexical neighbourhood effects in explain seeming
shallow-processing results.
3.3 A Single Engine
There is one theoretical approach which unifies the lexical and the syntactic approaches:
distributed morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993; McGinnis, 2016). This is a model where
vocabulary items are inserted into a syntactic frame post-syntactically and thus receive
phonological content only at the spell out stage which is the interface between syntax and
phonology. What we traditionally think of as affixes are, the realization of an abstract
bundle of syntactic features, while what we think of as lexical forms are category-neutral
roots which are merged with functional heads (such as v or n) to generate lexical
categories.
While admittedly, there has not been much SLA work done within a DM
perspective, there has been some. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH;
Prévost & White, 2000) is one approach to the well-studied question of why L2ers
sometimes omit inflectional morphemes in their production. Hawkins & Chan (1997)
argue that the interlanguage grammar is deficient in that it lacks certain target
grammatical features (e.g., [+past]) while Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou (2007) refine this
to note that only L2 uninterpretable features are lacking. Lardiere (2007) ascribes the
variable presence of the affixes as a mapping problem from an intact feature to a surface
form. The MSIH localizes the problem to the mapping of a morphological form onto a
phonological representation. In this way, it is consistent with the DM architecture as it is
the Spell-Out of the syntactic feature bundle which in non-nativelike.
Alexiadou et al. (2015) do not specifically tackle second language learning.
However, they do invoke DM to document the properties of code-mixed speech. The
examples they give come from speakers of Norwegian in the United States. These
subjects will produce sentences such as:
Så play-de dom game-r

then play-PAST they game-INDEF.PL
Then, they played games.
There are English lexical items inserted into a Norwegian syntactic structure. Note that
the grammatical morphology (i.e., past; indefinite plural) comes from the Norwegian
syntax. Crucially, note that these are examples of intra-word code switching. The spell
out (or realization) of the syntactic features (such as [PAST] or [INDEF.PL]) are the
result of the features found in the Norwegian syntactic structure even though the lexical
items (play and game) are English. Thus, a single-engine account of the processing of

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word structure and sentence structure is able to account elegantly for this kind of data
where the syntactic structure explains the morphological properties of the code-switch.
4.0 Syntactic Processing
There are many ways to investigate sentence processing (in either production or
comprehension). The study of processing in comprehension tasks is usually referred to as
parsing. Processing involves the investigation of many phenomena. Studies may look at
the interpretation of ambiguity in relative clauses, or the processing of traces in
movement constructions. As Phillips (2012) suggests, there is a long history of probing
parser-grammar relations from the early days of the Derivational Theory of Complexity
(Fodor & Garrett, 1967) to Phillips’ own current work. Levelt (1989) assigns primary
status to the lemma in production which then triggers access to syntactic frames in
building a sentence. Gibson (e.g., 1998; Grodner & Gibson, 2009) looks to test the
predictions of abstract syntactic representations in the interpretation of sentences in real
time. In SLA, we have seen the work of Juffs (Juffs & Rodriguez, 2015) demonstrate
how numerous factors can play a significant role in the interpretation of complex
sentences.
4.1 Filler Gaps
The literature which explores the interpretation of WH sentences often invokes the phrase
filler-gap dependencies: the wh-phrase fills in the information found in the position left
by the syntactic trace. As grammatical relations are determined at Merge (i.e. before
Move) then processing a sentence with moved elements requires some unpacking. Merge
is the operation which generates the constituent structure of a sentence. Consider the
following sentences:
Subject: Which man does Jane expect __ to fire Bill?

Object: Which man did Jane say her friend likes ___?
In the first sentence, the wh-phrase functions as the subject of the embedded clause while
in the second sentence the wh-phrase functions as the object. This is clear from the
underlying syntactic structure (indicated by the gap position) but is not indicated in the
surface sentential string.
White & Juffs (1998), in addition to a grammaticality judgement task, measured
response time as an indicator of processing difficulty. They noted, however, that RTs on
a grammaticality judgement task reveal nothing of the locus of processing difficulty. So,
we might discover that one sentence is processed more quickly than another, but this may
not reveal where the processing difficulty lies. Self-paced reading studies are able to
answer this question by exploring incremental processing in different sentence types.
Juffs & Harrington (1995) showed that the subject extraction gap site was the locus of
reading delay and confusion in NNS. So in a sentence like:
Who does the ranger know __ saw the deer in the woods?

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it is exactly at the gap position that we find the longest fixation times. They interpret this
to indicate that the subject extraction is the in the reason for lower accuracy scores they
reported on the grammaticality judgement of subject-extracted wh-questions. Similarly,
Felser et al. (2012) argue that L2ers have a delayed sensitivity to structural gaps.
Pliatsikas & Marinis (2013) probed this issue by comparing a group of classroom learners
with a group of naturalistic learners (L1 Greek; L2 English). They found that the
naturalistic learners showed evidence of filler-gap effects, while the classroom learners
did not.
4.2. Near-Nativelike Knowledge and Processing of WH-Questions
White & Genesee (1996) looked at the question of native-like knowledge and ability of
L2ers at various different ages of acquisition. Many of the previous studies on effects of
age (Coppieters, 1987; Birdsong, 1992) have relied on casual or anecdotal assessment of
the near-nativelike status prior to testing. White & Genesee administered independent
measures of nativeness prior to final subject selection. Without getting into the technical
details, they were interested in the processing of WH questions and the constraints on
movement related to what are known as strong islands (complex NPs, adjuncts, subjects).
Strong islands are said to form barriers to movement which is what accounts for the
ungrammaticality of sentences such as:
*Who did Mary meet the man who saw?

*Who did Mary meet the man after she saw?
They looked at 89 subjects who were evaluated independently on their pronunciation,

morphology, syntax, vocabulary, fluency and overall nativeness on a scale from 1-18 (18
being most nativelike). Individuals who were rated at either 17 or 18 on all scales by both
judges (with one score allowed to be below 17) were classified as near-native. By this
procedure, they identified 45 near-native speakers. Subjects were administered an online
grammaticality judgement task for which both accuracy and response time were
measured. Overall, there was no statistical difference between the accuracy judgments
(on both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences) of the native speakers and the near-
native speakers. The RT data looked at responses to both grammatical and ungrammatical
sentences. There were no significant differences between near-natives and natives on any
of the sentence types. White & Genesee thus conclude that both knowledge and
processing in the L2 are nativelike.
4.3. Ambiguous Relative Clauses
One set of data which show the effects on processing grammatical utterances cross-
linguistically, is relative clause attachment. Consider sentences of the following type:
Someone saw the servant of the actress who was on the balcony

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In this sentence, it is ambiguous as to who was on the balcony: the actress or the servant.
If it is the actress who was on the balcony, we say that this is low attachment (LA)
whereas if the servant is on the balcony, we say the relative clause evidences high
attachment (HA) in the syntactic structure.
These attachment preference vary cross-linguistically. English speakers prefer LA
(Cuetos & Mitchell, 1988). Spanish speakers prefer HA (Fernandez, 2002). Japanese
speakers prefer HA (Kamide & Mitchell, 1997). Of course, preference can be forced or
biased pragmatically, as shown in the following sentences:
Someone photographed the servant of the actress who was serving tea.
Someone photographed the servant of the actress who was very famous.
World knowledge predisposes a listener to believe that it would the servant who is
serving tea, and the actress who is very famous. However, even when there is no
pragmatic or semantic biasing there can be variation in attachment preference within a
single language. Pynte & Colonna (2000) demonstrate that French speakers prefer HA
when the relative clause is long as in who cried all through the night but show no
preference when the relative clause in short as in who cried. Thus, phonology explains
the performance variation. This is relevant because both Papadopoulou & Clahsen (2003)
– who looked at L1 Greek (high attachment) subjects acquiring English (low
attachment)—and Felser et al. (2003) –who looked at German and Greek learners of
English – suggest that the L2ers are not showing a relative-clause attachment preference
(unlike the NSers). Ferndandez (2006), however, points out that this may not be because
of either (a) the subjects lack the appropriate structures, or (b) cannot process ‘deep’
syntax, but rather because prosody has not been properly controlled for. If there is a
misalignment with syntactic preference with implicit prosody then the results may well
turn out to be random. Further work on the role of input frequency (Dussias & Sagarra,
2007) and of individual memory (Swets, et al., (2007); Wen et al. (2015)) show that there
are other factors to be considered before it can be suggested that there is a qualitative
difference in L2 processing.
4.4. Binding Theory
There is also a body of work which investigates the processing of sentences to probe
whether the grammatical binding relationships are used in real-time (Felser et al., 2009;
Felser & Cunnings, 2012). One of the reasons this is of interest, is because languages can
vary in the binding relations they allow. In the following Chinese sentence, the reflexive
ziji can refer back to any of the possible italicised antecedents; what is known as long-
distance binding.
Chinese: [Zhangsan renwei [Lisi zhidao [Wangwu xihuan ziji.]]]

Zhangsan think Lisi know Wangwu like self
‘Zhangsan thinks that Lisi knows that Wangwu likes self.’
In the following English sentence, the reflexive self can only be coreferent with Bill.

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English: [John thinks [Tom knows [ Bill likes himself.]]]
There are many complex issues to be explored here but the broad findings are that L2ers
can acquire new binding domains in the L2 which are different that the L1 (Thomas,
1993). Many of these acquisition studies use offline tasks (e.g. truth-value or
acceptability judgement tasks). Kim, Montrul and Yoon (2015) looked at the L2
processing of binding relations in an eye-tracking study. Their study showed that non-
native speakers were able to process anaphoric reflexives (such as himself) in a more
nativelike fashion than pronouns (such as him). They suggest that their adult L2 learners
were able to apply syntactic binding principles to assign interpretation to anaphoric
expressions but have difficulty integrating syntactic information with contextual and
discourse information.
4.5 The Shallow Processing Hypothesis
The results seen in 4.3 led Clahsen & Felser (2006a, b) to propose the Shallow Structure
Hypothesis which argues that L2ers’ processing is syntactically shallower than native
processing. L2 processing, they argue, relies more heavily on lexical and pragmatic
information than it does on syntactic structure, and this also lead to greater processing
time. They argue that second language learners can achieve nativelike processing for
phenomena involving local dependencies (e.g. gender agreement within a noun phrase)
but not for phenomena involving non-local dependencies (e.g., anaphoric reference).
They suggest that while a full parse might consult all of the syntactic details (such as
empty categories and coindexing) shown in the following sentence:
[DP The nurse [CP [ whoi ] the doctor argued [CP [e2 ] that the rude patient had
angered [ e1 ] ]]] ...is refusing to work late.
that a shallow parse would proceed more along the following steps:
(i) the doctor is assigned the role of AGENT of the verb argue
(ii) the rude patient is assigned the role of THEME of the verb angered
(iii) the nurse is assigned the role of EXPERIENCER of the verb angered
Thus, an interpretation can be arrived at using what are known as thematic roles to
capture the semantic relations between the constituents of the sentence. An agent is an
entity that performs an action; a theme undergoes an action but does not change state; an
experiencer receives sensory input..
Kim Montrul & Yoon (2015) also address the Shallow Processing claims of Felser and
Cunnings (2012) who concluded that L2 processing cannot fully utilize syntactic
resources. KM&Y argue that the processing of their advanced subjects demonstrates the
ability to process elaborate syntactic representations.

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Clahsen et al. (2010) argue that L2 processing (both morphological and syntactic) relies
more on declarative than procedural knowledge (drawing on the work of Ullman, 2001)
and will thus invoke less morphological decomposition than native processing. Silva &
Clahsen (2008) showed that L2ers had significantly slower response times (compared
with natives) in a priming study when it came to the effect of a morphologically complex
form (like kindness) on a monomorphemic form (like kind) in a lexical decision task.
However, what this does not take into account are the frequency effects in that the
morphologically complex forms (kindness) are often less frequent than the simple forms
(kind). This too can influence the processing effects found in the L2ers (see Archibald
and Libben, in press). Native speakers of English show access to the word corn as a result
of seeing corner (Lehtonen, Monahan, & Poeppel, 2011). Does it follow that second
language speakers should be seen as less developed in terms of English morphology if
they do not show this effect? Shallow Processing is discussed further in section 7.0.
5.0 Phonological Processing
5.1 Cross-Linguistic Speech Perception
Of course, one of the major types of processing in SLA that must be considered is the
processing of the sound system. At the phonetic end of the spectrum, there is a rich
literature on cross-linguistic speech perception (Flege, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007,
Escudero & Vasilev, 2011) which explore how ‘foreign’ sounds are processed by an L1
system. Rochet (1995) for example, notes that English speakers typically produce a [ü] (a
high, front, rounded vowel) sound as [u] (getting the [back] feature wrong) while
Brazilian Portuguese speakers produce it as [i] (getting the [round] feature wrong).
Questions arise as to whether inaccurate production arises from inaccurate
perception, and, perhaps more tellingly, what type of perception. Discrimination studies
have been conducted (e.g., Brown, 2000) which explore whether L2ers can discriminate a
sound which is not found in the L1. A variety of tasks can be used, but to take a simple
example, subjects would be presented with stimuli like the following:
ra la
pha pa
ba ba
ba pa
And asked to press one button if the stimuli are the same and another button if the stimuli
are different. Both response times and accuracy can be measured.
We are also interested to know, though, whether the subjects can use these sounds
to distinguish lexical items. In other words, can they represent the phonological contrast.
To answer this questions, subjects might be given a forced choice picture selection task
where subjects are presented with a single picture while listening to a minimal pair
auditory file, and have to indicate whether they are looking at, say, a picture of a ‘rake’ or
a ‘lake.’ Again, response time and accuracy can be measured.

13
Werker & Logan (1985) have shown the importance of methodological factors
such as inter-stimulus interval (ISI) when it comes to tapping into discriminatory ability.
Referring back to the example above, they note that results may vary depending on
whether the ISI is more or less than 500 ms. This is because our ability to access
representations decays rapidly. Shorter ISIs allow the subjects to make phonetic or
acoustic comparisons but if there is a longer pause between the stimuli then actual stored
(phonemic) representations must be consulted as the phonetic information is no longer
accessible. So, a Japanese speaker, lacking a phonemic /l/ vs. /r/ contrast may be able to
discriminate the sounds with a short ISI but be unable to accurately identify the correct
picture when hearing the lexical items ‘rake’ or ‘lake’ with a long ISI.
The previous discussion demonstrates that we should be able to tell whether or
not an individual represents a particular contrast. But how is such a contrast acquired
over time? Gonzalez Poot (2014) provides a discussion of how such feature acquisition
may take place in SLA. He looked at native speakers of Spanish acquiring Yucatec
Mayan ejectives. Ejectives are a class of sound made with the feature [constricted
glottis]; a feature absent in Spanish. He shows that the L2ers are able to acquire the new
feature but that the contrast is not acquired across-the-board. Their pattern of accuracy in
syllable onsets is different than their pattern of accuracy in syllable codas. In the
following schema, the > symbol is to be read as ‘is more accurate than’:
Onsets: k’/p’ > t’/tʃ’ > ts’

Codas: tʃ’ > ts’ > k’ >’ p’ > t’
What this reveals is that not all exemplars of [constricted glottis] are parsed at the same
time. It may well be the case, that the obstruent release bursts in the onsets (e.g. [k’] are
processed more easily while the strident release bursts in the codas are processed more
easily. Thus, the developmental path (which is also grounded typologically) can be
explained by phonetic processing. The phonetic processing (hence perceptual accuracy)
paves the way for grammatical restructuring and the phonologicization of the
phonological feature [constricted glottis]. Archibald (2013) formalizes this via the
construct of intake frequency. The ejectives with the most robust phonetic cues (e.g. onset
[k'] and coda [tʃ’]) become intake to the processor earlier than those with less robust cues
(e.g., onset [ts'] and coda [t']). The earlier processing leads to earlier acquisition.
5.2 The Segmentation Problem
One of the first tasks facing the learner exposed to an unfamiliar L2 acoustic stream, is to
be able to extract and store phonological strings and assign meaning to them. This is what
Carroll (2012) refers to as the segmentation problem. Carroll (2014: 107) makes clear
that “words are not primitives of language.” She demonstrates the ability of first-
exposure subjects to segment word-sized units (in this case proper names) from an
acoustic stream on the basis of very few trials. How do learners decide where boundaries
are in a continuous acoustic signal? Kaye (1990) discusses the role that phonology can
play in this regard, emphasizing the delimiting properties of many phonological

14
phenomena (e.g., aspirate at the beginning of a constituent; devoice at the end of a

constituent). This is consistent with Shoemaker & Rast (2013) who show that ‘first-
exposure’ (see also Rast (2008) learners recognize sentence-initial or sentence-final
words better than sentence-medial words. They attribute this to a sensitivity to the edge
of constituents. It is well-documented that prosodic factors influence word recognition
(Cutler, 2012) as do phonotactics (Weber & Cutler, 2006). Carroll & Windsor (2015)
show how L1 lexical properties (i.e., cognate status) can also influence the segmentation
of the signal.
5.3 Perceptual Challenges
A number of studies have argued for perceptual or processing deficits in L2ers. Consider
the following two examples:
(1) epenthesis errors in perceptual tasks

(2) stress ‘deafness’
5.4.1 Epenthesis
The phenomenon of syllable repair strategies of L2ers who attempt to acquire and
produce phontactic sequences that are not licensed in the L1 grammar is well studied
(Abrahamsson, 2003; Kabak & Idsardi, 2007). This is evident when a language borrows a
lexical item, and when an L2er produces an unfamiliar sequence.
Target Form Borrowed (or Repaired) Form
‘pencil’ ‘pensuru’
‘went’ [wɛntəә]
Researchers have posited a range of possible explanations for these productions:

markedness (Carlisle, 1997; Cardoso, 2007, 2009), proficiency (Abrahamsson, 2003),
task (Lin, 2001) –for an overview see Young-Scholten & Archibald (2000). Dehaene-
Lambertz, Dupoux & Gout (2000) show that these kinds of repairs are not late production
routine strategies but rather appear as perceptual illusions driven by the properties of the
L1 grammar.
Matthews & Brown (2004) also address this issue, and their title is illustrative
When intake exceeds input. Without going into details, it is a property of Japanese
phonotactics that a string like ‘ebzo’ is ill-formed in that [b] cannot appear in a coda
position. When illicit sequences arise in Japanese they can be repaired via epenthesis. So
an English word like ‘handbag’ when borrowed into the language might be pronounced
[hændɯbægɯ] where an epenthetic [ɯ] is inserted to make the form fit the L1 rules.
Similarly, ‘baseball’ would be pronounced [besɯbaɾɯ]. What Dehaene-Lambertz et al.
showed is that the Japanese listeners actually hear the epenthetic [ɯ] in strings (such as
[ebzo]) where it is, in fact, absent. The input processed by the learner is mapped onto L1
phonotactic structures. Kabak & Idsardi (2007) demonstrate that this mapping is
mediated by syllable structure and not just linear adjacency.

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5.3.2 Stress Deafness

In a series of studies, Dupoux and colleagues have looked at the processing of stress in
L2ers. Their conclusions are that certain L1 groups have difficulty discriminating
contrastive stress on a variety of tasks, even into advanced proficiency levels. They
catalogue languages in the following way with respect to their ability to ‘hear’ English
stress:
Totally deaf: French, Finnish, Hungarian

Partially deaf: Polish
Not deaf: Spanish
Their analysis is that Spanish has what they call lexical stress while French, Finnish,
Hungarian and Polish do not (Peperkamp, S. & Dupoux, E., 2002). This is an important
body of research that can be accessed here. I will not summarize or critique the
behavioural results here but rather probe the linguistic assumptions underlying the causal
claims. It could be argued their results do show difficulty in processing but not
necessarily deficient representations (as is indicated perhaps by their use of the term
deafness). As the work of Lardiere (1998) demonstrates, problems in surface processing
of a feature may arise even when there is accurate underlying representation.
There are some concerns with the theoretical assumptions about linguistic stress.
Linguistic theory definitely has a part to play here. The work seems to assume a diacritic
notion of ‘lexical stress’ where stress is assumed to be stored as part of the representation
of the vowel in the word. Three of the languages they refer to as exhibiting stress
deafness (French, Finnish and Hungarian) all exhibit certain fixed stress patterns. French
stresses toward the right edge of phonological strings while Finnish and Hungarian stress
toward the left edge of strings (specifically word-initially). Polish, which exhibits partial
deafness, has primarily penultimate stress. Spanish, which does not show deafness, has,
like English, variable stress placement.
The problem with the causal connection proposed in this literature is that the
stress placement of all of these languages is the product of a set of complex factors or
principles (see Dresher & Kaye, 1992), not a primitive diacritic. Archibald (1991, 1993)
has looked at the production and perception abilities of native speakers of Hungarian,
Spanish and Polish. He has argued that stress is not a monotonic, primitive of linguistic
representation but rather a complex system of knowledge which L2ers must, and
evidently, can acquire.
Pater (1997) argued that French L1 subjects are able acquire English trochaic feet
but not the Quantity Sensitivity of English. Furthermore, Tremblay (2008) showed that
only those learners who had acquired English stress settings could use stress as a tool for
lexical access. Once again, this shows the importance of distinguishing between
representation and process. Ultimately, what all this shows us is that the studies reveal
something about processing but are not a direct window onto representation.
5.4 The Role of Orthography
One factor often explored in the processing of L2 input is the orthography. This is clearly
paramount in lexical decision, and other reading tasks but also plays a role in

16
phonological processing and word learning. It must also be remembered that not all
subjects are literate (either in the L1 or the L2) and that this needs to be controlled for
(see the Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition (LESSLA) works
(http://www.leslla.org) for more information). Bassetti et al. (2015) explore some of these
issues. Admittedly, the empirical findings are a bit scattered. Some studies (Escudero,
Hayes-Harb & Mitterer, 2008; Showalter & Hayes-Harb, 2013) show that L2
orthographic input can facilitate production, perception, and word learning, while others
argue that it hinders targetlike acquisition (Bassetti, 2007; Hayes-Harb, Nicol & Barker,
2010). Still others (Escudero & Wanrooij, 2010; Simon, Chamblessb &Alvesc, 2010)
show mixed effects or no effect. Cutler (2015) suggests that while orthographic
information may help L2ers to form distinct lexical representations, it will not help them
to discriminate the sounds in perception.
5.5 Phonological Production
If we can expand our discussion of processing just briefly into the realm of production,
consider some studies by Bongaerts et al., which focus on the question of ultimate
attainment in L2 speech. There are clearly age effects in SLA; the age of onset of
learning the L2 is one of the factors (along with things like transfer, motivation,
feedback, etc.) which can affect the end state. Stated broadly, L2ers who begin SLA later
tend to have stronger accents than those who begin earlier (Flege, Munro & Mackay,
1995, 1996). And, while acknowledging that accent is just one small part of L2
communicative competence (Bachman, 1990), the question of whether there are any late
learners who can perform within the range of NS ability with respect to global accent is
an intriguing one. As White and Genesee (1996) showed, there are late learners who
perform indistinguishably from NSers with respect to both accuracy and response time of
syntactic tasks. Bongaerts et al. (2000) looked at late learners of Dutch in a reading-out-
loud task.
Alle exemplaren van de dichtbundel zijn uit de handel genomen.

De digitale revolutie geeft leraren behoollijk het nakijken.
In this (and other) studies, there were some L2ers whose accents were statistically
indistinguishable from NS accents. The (2000) study is of interest because it looked at
learners who started learning Dutch after the age of 12 and who had acquired it in a
naturalistic (i.e., uninstructed) setting. The NSers of Dutch were given global accent
ratings between 4.00 and 4.91 while the NNSers were given ratings between 1.70 and
4.49. A score of 1 was “a very strong accent; definitely non-native” while a score of 5
was “n foreign accent; definitely native”. The mean scores reported were based on the
ratings by 21 Dutch NS judges. The NNSers who were scored with two standard
deviations of the NSers were taken as nativelike. This resulted in 4 of the 30 subjects
falling into the nativelike category. What this shows is that it is not impossible for L2ers
who started learning the second language later is life to achieve even pronunciation
proficiency which has a definite motoric production component.
There is, of course, a rich literature in the field of individual variation in SLA
(Dörnyei, 2010) and it is not the goal of this entry to address it. This research

17
demonstrates that even in the realm of speech, the area most-associated with non-
nativelike production, there are some late learners who can achieve nativelike
pronunciation.
For a corpus of second language accents in English, see this website.
For more information on improving L2 pronunciation in English, click this website.
6.0 Theoretical Models
6.1 Bayesian Approaches
Looking at recent work in Optimality Theory, we can see some other approaches which
blur the lines between grammar and processing. Optimality Theory seeks to explain
phonological patterns via violable output constraints on production. An optimal string
will be produced regardless of the underlying representation due to the ranking of a
variety of linguistic constraints. Tessier (2016) provides a nice overview of the model in
the domain of child phonology. Regardless of the particular model of OT assumed
(classical (Prince & Smolensky, 2004), stratal (Bermudez Otero, in preparation),
harmonic serial (McCarthy & Pater, 2016), the function of the grammar is to select an
optimal output candidate by the ranking of constraints. The grammatical machinery
brings together phonetics, phonology, markedness, and typology. Much of the work
(Tessier & Jesney, 2014) is explicitly concerned with modelling the learning of input
forms, constraint rankings, and output forms. Of particular interest to this entry are the
models which invoke Bayesian probability (Watanabe & Chien, 2015) and the construct
of entropy in seeking to explain learner behaviour. Bayesian models are ‘inductive’ (see
Perfors, A., J. Tenenbaum, E. Gibson & T. Regier (2010). They are good at handling
induction problems when there is ‘insufficient data.’ These are accounts which argue that
knowledge (or belief) is governed by the same principles as action. The change in the
state of the current grammar is made to maximize the entropy of the system.
Wilson & Davidson (2009) look at the gradient production effects evident in the
production of non-native consonant clusters. Not all clusters which are absent from the
L1 are treated in the same way. Their subjects listen to and produce clusters which are
allowed in Russian but not in English. They note that “they are more likely to faithfully
represent nonce words beginning with illegal fricative-nasal clusters (e.g., zmagu) than
nonce words beginning with illegal fricative-stop clusters (e.g., zbatu) because the former
have higher acceptability according to the English phonotactic grammar.” The
explanation they invoke is as follows. Given a particular stimulus {z} (produced by a
Russian native speaker), the probability that an English listener will represent {z} as [x]
is, according to Bayes Theorem, proportional to the probability that [x] would be realized
as {z} multiplied by the probability of [x] in English independent of the stimulus based
on comparison with an English corpus.
Representational choices are made based on the phonotactic probability of
occurrence which they model via Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) (Hayes & Wilson, 2008).
Research within this framework would take the production evidence from an elicited
imitation task, argue that the chosen output candidate was selected via a principle of

18
maximizing entropy, and claim that this entropic principle underlies our grammatical
knowledge of well-formedness. Thus, well-formedness derives from mapping input
auditory properties to a rich environmental phonetically-detailed corpus. Critics of this
approach would argue that differential output frequency has nothing to do with well-
formedness. Adopting this as a model of acquiring phonological representations runs
directly into Dresher’s (1999) epistemological problem. There is still the need for a
transducer to get from the vocabulary of the acoustic input to the vocabulary of
phonological cognition.
These researchers, thus, extend a notion drawn from knowledge-how and apply it
to knowledge-that. Critics of this kind of Bayesian epistemology (Dretske, 2003; Pollock,
1990) argue that human beliefs (i.e., knowledge of well-formedness of strings) are not
gradient in this fashion.
6.2 Processability Theory
Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998) invokes a modular processing approach based

on Levelt’s (1989) production model. He argues that, at any stage of development, the
learner is able to produce only those L2 forms which the processor can handle. The
developmental path, and hence hierarchy of processing difficulty is formalized through
Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan, 2001). In this respect, it differs from the
Competition Model (Bates & MacWhinney 1981, 1987) which, also a processing model,
is a functionalist model which invokes domain-general processing machinery. An
example of such a developmental path would be the acquisition of German word order by
L2ers from differing L1s. Pienemann (1989) draws attention to the stages of development
noted in Clahsen (1984):
1. Canonical word order. Sentences are primarily SVO.

Da kinder spielen mim ball.
The children play with ball.
2. Adverb preposing. Adverbs can move to the beginning of the sentence but, unlike
native German (Da spielen kinden), the verb is not in second position (Da kinder
spielen).
3. Verb separation. The auxiliary and main verb can be separated, and the main verb
starts to be in final position.
Alle kinder muβ die pause machen
All children must the pause make.
4. Inversion. The verb starts to appear in second position after an adverb.
Dann hat sie wieder die knoch gebringt
Then has she again the bone bringed
Clahsen (1984) argued that this developmental path is guided by the processability of
certain sentential positions. Adverb preposing comes early because an element is moved
into initial position. Verb separation is acquired before inversion because an element is
moved into final position. Initial positions are processed more easily than final positions.
Inversion is acquired last because it involves sentence internal displacement. Pienemann
(1998) accounts for these insights within an LFG-processing model where we see the

19
following (modified from Pienemann, 1998, pg. 87) implicational hierarchy of processing
procedures:
•subordinate clause procedure;

•inter-phrasal morphemes
•phrasal morphemes
•lexical morphemes
•lemma access
Learners begin by being able to process at the lemma level and then move up the list. In
other words, being able to process the structures at the top of the list implies the ability to
process the structures lower on the list. In this way, Pienemann (1998) proposes a
processing explanation to the developmental path, rather than a maturational
representational account as seen in Vainikka & Young Scholten, 2011.
The work of VanPatten (2004) also brings together processing and instruction (in
his Processing Instruction model). He notes that if a second language learner is
producing a nontargetlike form as a result of having an inaccurate grammatical
representation then having that learner practice and repeat that lexical item (even after
explicit corrective feedback) is not going to change the underlying representation. He
argues that what will change the underlying representation is instruction which focusses
on the input processing rather than the production. VanPatten (2013) reiterates the
importance of keeping the notions of grammar, processing, and production distinct.
6.3 Modular On-Line Growth and Use of Language (MOGUL)
The Acquisition by Processing Model of Truscott & Sharwood Smith (2004) developed
into the Modular On-Line Growth and Use of Language (MOGUL) (Sharwood Smith &
Truscott, 2014) and offers a model of language development within a processing
perspective. They adopt a modular view of mind, and of linguistic representational levels
drawing largely on Jackendoff (1997). Production and comprehension draw on the same
mechanisms. Acquisition is operationalized as the strengthening of representational
activation levels. The processors are either integrative processors (which function much
like parsers at a single level of representation) or interface processors which mediate
between the different levels (or modules) of representation (e.g. syntactic, phonological,
conceptual). The MOGUL model makes it very clear that there is no single processor but
rather many.
6.4. Emergentism
The work of O’Grady (e.g., 2005) is illustrative of what have come to be known as
emergentist views which propose that, rather than being the product of autonomous
grammatical principles, the key properties of the human language faculty are shaped by
non-linguistic properties such as attention, memory, physiology, and processing pressures
(see MacWhinney & O’Grady, 2015 for an overview). O’Grady (2005) shows how a
range of complex syntactic phenomena (e.g., agreement, control, anaphora, Wh-effects,
etc.) can be accounted for by invoking an efficiency-driven processor rather than

20
principles of syntactic structure. In essence, and indeed in his own words, he is proposing
‘language without grammar’. This builds upon work he has been engaged in since (1987)
in the exploration of general nativism; a view in which there are innate components to
knowledge and learning but that they are not domain-specific. He allows that there is a
conceptual-symbolic system which encodes words and morphemes) and which
(following Ullman, 2001) is instantiated in declarative memory. There is also a
computational system (procedural memory) invoked to combine lexical items. The
combinatorics are to satisfy the dependencies associated with individual words (e.g.,
number of arguments, etc.). The operating system is constrained by principles such as
minimize the burden on working memory, or resolve dependencies at the first
opportunity. For O’Grady (e.g. 2006), SLA could be described via the same mechanisms,
and he illustrates this thoroughly via quantifier scope. See Gregg (2003) for criticisms of
externalist emergentist approaches (as opposed to O’Grady’s general nativism).
6.5. Exemplar Models
Exemplar models fall into the class of usage-based grammar which is also influential in
the field of SLA (Ellis & Wulff, 2012). These models would fall into the Externalist
camp as they view the learner as stochastically modelling the frequency and distribution
of the primary data. In this respect, many of the effects attributed to processing in
traditional models are here attributed to representation. The learner stores all of this
detailed information by memorization, and draws on associative memory to find patterns
and connections within the data. Like emergentist approaches, these are non-modular
models which focus on the learner acquiring constructions (rather than words and rules).
Linguistic structure emerges from the conspiracy of frequency of occurrence and
transitional probability. Learning will be influenced by such things as: distribution of the
construction, recency of the construction in the input, salience and redundancy of the
construction, and prototypicality of the exemplar (Ellis & Ferreira-Junior, 2009). See
Gullberg et al. (2010) for a discussion of the limitations of the explanatory power of
transitional probabilities calculated on natural language input (rather than artificial
languages) when it comes to word learning.
6.6 Multiple Grammars
Often one of the reasons that processing explanations are invoked is to explain variable
performance in second language subjects. The standard assumption is that knowledge is a
relatively stable trait while skill is variable. However, there are certain models which
attempt to address variability in other ways. See Montrul (2010), White (2009) and
Sorace & Serratrice (2009) for thorough discussions of optionality in SLA.
Roeper (2004) comments on Sharwood Smith & Truscott’s (Acquisition By
Processing model) which foreshadows his own (Amaral & Roeper, 2014) Multiple
Grammars model for SLA. This is an approach which seeks to account for variation,
often attributed to processing factors, via a model of representation. Rather than relying
on a processing account alone, Roeper argues for multiple grammars (i.e. representations)
within an individual (like the rules that apply to Anglo-Saxon and Latinate vocabulary in
English). Some rules are lexically limited while others are productive; these diacritic

21
markings may change as the grammatical knowledge develops. A productive L1 rule will
be blocked by a new (more constrained) L2 rule. Via a mechanism of language tagging,
the relevant properties of the linguistic representations (such as which language the
information came from) are stored. Thus, the L1 grammar is not seen to gradually change
into the L2 grammar (as the metaphors of parameter resetting or interlanguage would
suggest) but, rather, the complex grammar is added to with new sub-grammars.
Incompatible sub-grammars can account for optionality in L2 acquisition.
In a slightly different vein, the competing systems hypothesis (CSH) of Rothman
(2008), Long & Rothman (2013) is relevant. The CSH posits two different L2 grammars
in an individual. The first is a standard repository of grammatical competence while the
second is a separate system of learned, metalinguistic knowledge. While reminiscent of,
and indeed adopting some terms from, Krashen (1981), the model makes predictions that
are designed to explain errors found in production (subject to the learned system) which
are not found in comprehension.
7.0 The Universal Parser
Dekydspotter et al. (2006) address the attempts made by a number of researchers

(Dussias, 2001; etc.) to account for behavioural differences between native speakers and
second language learners by invoking not fundamentally different representations (such
as Hawkins & Chan, 1997) but rather by invoking differences in processing speed.
Dekydspotter at al. argue that the processing mechanisms of L1 and L2 are the same but
the time course of L2 processing is slower. Their ‘crucial methodological point’
(acknowledging Bley-Vroman, 1983) is that “the mere fact that there is an observed non-
isomorphy between natives and L2ers does not entail that the natives and the L2ers
deploy fundamentally different mechanisms.” One structure they look at is the
interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses (see section 4.3) where in reporting on L2
learners of Greek (Papadopoulou & Clahsen, 2003) and English (Felser et al. 2003)
where the L2ers had no attachment preference (unlike the native speakers).
Aside from the empirical facts, Dekydspotter et al. (2006) raise an interesting
corollary of this hypothesis concerning the relationship between parsing and learning. As
many have pointed out (e.g. Carroll, 2001; Sharwood Smith & Truscott, 2014; Fodor,
1998), failure to parse a given string may be the trigger for learning to take place. This is
a key assumption in error-driven models of learning (Gibson & Wexler, 1994). Any
description of the developmental path of SLA recognizes that, at some level, learners
must be sensitive to a difference between the strings their current grammar can account
for, and the strings encountered in the linguistic input.
In addressing the observed processing differences between natives and L2ers,
Dekydspotter et al. (2006) cite French-Mestre (2005) who showed that L2ers evidence
slower and less-efficient reading strategies (as measured by eye-tracking); a quantitative
rather than qualitative difference. This raises the possibility that the developing L2
lexicon may not be targetlike so the L2er may take longer to interpret the lexical
semantics of the sentence and this can lead to slower processing times.
8.0 Knowing and Using a Second Language

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Given the complexity of human linguistic knowledge, its interaction with other cognitive
and physical systems, and the ubiquity of multilingual communicative events around the
world, it should not be surprising that the domain of second language processing is
diverse. In the, roughly, fifty years of work alluded to here, there have been great strides
made. Our models of second language processing may become more complex, but
linguistic theory, whatever the school of thought, will always be a critical component.
Further Reading
Berwick, R. & A. Weinberg, eds. (1986). The Grammatical Basis of Linguistic

Performance. MIT Press.
Blanco-Elorrieta, E. & L. Pylkkänen (2016). Bilingual language control in perception
versus action: MEG reveals comprehension control mechanisms in anterior
cingulate cortex and domain-general control of production in dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience 36(2): 290-301.
Carroll, S. (2001). Input and Evidence: The Raw Material of Second Language
Acquisition. John Benjamins.
Clahsen, H. & Felser, C. (2006b). Grammatical processing in language learning. Applied
Psycholinguistics 27: 3-42.
Costa, A. (2005). Lexical access in bilingual production. In Kroll, J. F., & De Groot, A.
M. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford
University Press.
Dijkstra, T., Grainger, J., & Van Heuven, W. J. B (1999). Recognition of cognates and
interlingual homographs: The neglected role of phonology. Journal of Memory and
Language, 41, 496-518.
Dresher, E. (1999). Charting the learning path: cues to parameter setting. Linguistic
Inquiry 30(1): 27-67.
Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Sebastian, N., & Mehler, J. (1997). A destressing ``deafness'' in
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Second Language Processing and Linguistic Theory

Chapter · October 2017

L2 German Allomorphy View project

Intraword codeswitching View project

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Second Language Processing and Linguistic Theory

1.0 Using a Second Language

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

comprehend messages in real time? How do they construct grammatical sentences in

1.1 Representations and Processes

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

Outside of exceptional cases, first language learners in a speech community converge on

There is likely a man to appear.

1.2 Processing and Grammar

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

The horse raced past the barn fell.

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

3.0 Components of Processing

Research tends to be divided as to the level of representation investigated in processing

3.1 Lexical Processing

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

SOP Cognates SO Cognates SP Cognates

Nakayama & Archibald (2005) showed similar effects in an eye-tracking study of

3.2 Neurolinguistic Processing and the ‘language switch’

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

3.3 A Single Engine

Så play-de dom game-r

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

4.0 Syntactic Processing

4.1 Filler Gaps

Subject: Which man does Jane expect __ to fire Bill?

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

4.2. Near-Nativelike Knowledge and Processing of WH-Questions

*Who did Mary meet the man who saw?

They looked at 89 subjects who were evaluated independently on their pronunciation,

4.3. Ambiguous Relative Clauses

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

4.4. Binding Theory

Chinese: [Zhangsan renwei [Lisi zhidao [Wangwu xihuan ziji.]]]

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

English: [John thinks [Tom knows [ Bill likes himself.]]]

4.5 The Shallow Processing Hypothesis

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

5.0 Phonological Processing

5.1 Cross-Linguistic Speech Perception

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

Onsets: k’/p’ > t’/tʃ’ > ts’

5.2 The Segmentation Problem

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

phenomena (e.g., aspirate at the beginning of a constituent; devoice at the end of a

5.3 Perceptual Challenges

(1) epenthesis errors in perceptual tasks

Target Form Borrowed (or Repaired) Form

Researchers have posited a range of possible explanations for these productions:

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

5.3.2 Stress Deafness

Totally deaf: French, Finnish, Hungarian

5.4 The Role of Orthography

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.

5.5 Phonological Production

Alle exemplaren van de dichtbundel zijn uit de handel genomen.

To appear M. Aronoff, ed. Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Linguistics.