Language Proficiency and Language Use Cause Individual Variability in L2 Predictive Processing

Conference: The European Conference on Language Learning (ECLL2021)
Title: Language Proficiency and Language Use Cause Individual Variability in L2 Predictive Processing
Stream: Plurilingualism - Bilingualism
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Laura Fernandez Arroyo, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, United States
Nuria Sagarra, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, United States
Cristina Lozano-Argüelles, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, United States

Abstract:

Language prediction is essential because it contributes to language comprehension. Inability to predict may be an obstacle in second language (L2) comprehension, especially in small structures like morphology. While ability to predict in non-native speakers has been researched before, sources of individual variability are still unclear: working memory effects have hardly been found (e.g., Sagarra & Casillas, 2018); language activation has also been suggested as a conditioning factor in processing (e.g., van Hell & Tanner, 2012), but it has not been clearly defined; only language proficiency is a more reliable predictor (e.g., Schremm et al., 2016). Here, we explore how language proficiency interacts with language use in an L2 speaker’s ability to predict verb tense cued by lexical stress. In Spanish, a lexically stressed syllable cues present tense (FIRma ‘signs’), and a lexically unstressed syllable cues past tense (firMÓ ‘signed’). In English, lexical stress also distinguishes words, but it is not as typical and in Spanish and it is realized acoustically differently. English learners of Spanish at different levels of proficiency completed a visual-world paradigm where they predicted verb tense in a sentence they heard in Spanish. Preliminary results suggest that the higher the proficiency, the more frequent and faster the prediction, and when proficiency is neutralized, the more frequent the use, the likelier the prediction, making both language proficiency and use good predictors of anticipation performance. These findings inform L2 acquisition and processing models in regard to individual differences, and the larger debate of what language activation is.

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