Gaps in Second Language Sentence Processing

Four groups of second language (L2) learners of English from different language backgrounds (Chinese, Japanese, German & Greek) and a group of native speaker controls participated in an on-line reading-time experiment with sentences involving long-distance wh-dependencies. While the native speakers showed evidence of making use of intermediate syntactic gaps during processing, the L2 learners appeared to associate the fronted wh-phrase directly with its lexical subcategoriser, regardless of whether or not the subjacency constraint was operative in their native language. This finding is argued to support the hypothesis that L2 learners under-use syntactic information in L2 processing, which prevents them from processing the L2 input in a native-like fashion.