title: Clitic pronouns reveal the time course of processing gender and number in a second language.
abstract: This study investigates grammatical gender and number processing marked on clitic pronouns in native Spanish speakers and in late English-Spanish bilinguals using ERPs. Spanish clitic pronouns were chosen as a critical grammatical structure which is absent in English, and which encodes both grammatical gender and number. Number, but not grammatical gender, is present in English, making this structure a prime one to investigate second language processing. Results reveal a P600 effect in native speakers for violations of both gender and number. Late but relatively proficient English-Spanish bilinguals show a P600 effect only for number violations occurring at the clitic pronoun, but not for gender violations. However a post-hoc analysis reveals that a subset of highly proficient late bilinguals does reveal sensitivity to violations of grammatical gender marked on clitic pronouns. Taken together these results suggest that native-like processing is possible for highly proficient late second language learners for grammatical features that are not present in the speakers' native language, even when those features are encoded on a grammatical morpheme which itself is absent in the speakers' native language.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802-3104, USA; Center for Language Science, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Electronic address: exr22@psu.edu.
authors.forename: Eleonora
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802-3104, USA; Center for Language Science, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Electronic address: jfk7@psu.edu.
authors.forename: Judith F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Kroll
authors.affiliation: Center for Language Science, Pennsylvania State University, USA; Department of Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Electronic address: pdussias@psu.edu.
authors.forename: Paola E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Dussias
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D055641:Mathematical Concepts; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Bilingualism; Clitic pronouns; ERPs; Grammatical gender; Second-language processing