Empty Category and the Effect of Teaching in Sentence Processing

Different syntactic frameworks have different ways to deal with dislocation constructions. One major disagreement is whether or not empty categories should be assumed. Researchers have been working on this issue on the ground of "psychological reality" (of empty categories), yet have not come to an agreement. The first aim of this paper is to propose an experimental scheme to settle the issue of empty categories. Our second aim is to propose that the application of the experiment to L2 is beneficial to see the teaching effect in L2 acquisition. If native speakers' result supports no-empty-category analysis, yet, L2 learners exhibit the different result, L2 teaching of "wh-movement" created a category which is not in native speakers' mental grammar.