Semantic Illusion in Sentence Processing by Korean L2 Learners of English: An ERP Study

Abstract

This paper employs the event-related potential (ERP) paradigm to examine the neural responses to semantically anomalous but syntactically well-formed sentences. In the previous studies by Kim and Osterhout (2005) and Kim and Sikos (2011), L1 native speakers were observed to register a syntactically-induced late positivity (P600) rather than a semantically-induced earlier negativity (N400) for such sentences. This is somewhat surprising, in that those sentences are apparently not syntactically but semantically inappropriate. Since it has been still a moot point whether L2 learners capitalize on syntactic processes as fully as L1 (Clahsen and Felser (2006)), we take up the same type of sentences to probe into how Korean L2 learners of English understand them. It was found in the experiment that those sentences evoked N400 and in addition,‘anterior' P600 for L2 learners. We take these components to indicate that Korean learners of English detect semantic anomaly of those sentences right away, unable to anticipate syntactic reanalysis that those sentences call for. We also suggest that‘anterior' P600 recorded for L2 learners may point to a non-syntactic process, unlike‘posterior' P600 registered for L1 speakers that is definitely known to be a reflection of a syntactic process. ,