title: Native language influence on the distributive effect in producing second language subject-verb agreement.
abstract: Three experiments were conducted to investigate the distributive effect when producing subject-verb agreement in English as a second language (L2) when the participant's first language either does or does not require subject-verb agreement. Both Chinese-English and Uygur-English bilinguals were included in Experiment 1. Chinese has no required subject-verb agreement, whereas Uygur does. Results showed that the distributive effect was observed in Uygur-English bilinguals but not in Chinese-English bilinguals, indicating that this particular first language (L1) syntactic feature is one significant factor affecting the distributive effect in the production of subject-verb agreement in L2. Experiment 2 further investigated the matter by choosing Chinese-English participants with higher L2 proficiency. Still, no distributive effect was observed, suggesting that the absence of distributive effect in Chinese-English bilinguals in Experiment 1 was not due to low proficiency in the target language. Experiment 3 changed the way the stimuli were presented, highlighting the singular or distributive nature of the subject noun phrases, and the distributive effect was observed in Chinese-English bilinguals. Altogether, the results show that the L1 syntactic feature of subject-verb agreement is one significant factor affecting the distributive effect in the production of subject-verb agreement in L2. More specifically, distributive effects rarely occur in L2 when L1 has no requirement on subject-verb agreement, whereas distributive effects are more likely to occur in L2 when the L1 also has required subject-verb agreement.
authors: a School of Psychology , Beijing Normal University , Beijing , China.|b Xi'an Shiyou University , Xi'An , China.
authors: Xiaoyan
authors: X
authors: Wei
authors: a School of Psychology , Beijing Normal University , Beijing , China.
authors: Baoguo
authors: B
authors: Chen
authors: c School of English and Education , Guangdong University of Foreign Studies , Guangzhou , China.
authors: Lijuan
authors: L
authors: Liang
authors: d Children's Learning Institute , University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston , Houston , TX , USA.
authors: Susan
authors: S
authors: Dunlap
mesh_terms: D003118:Color Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D019303:Multilingualism; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Distributive effect; Second language; Subject–verb agreement