On Korean English L2ers’ processing of wh-filler-gap dependencies: An ERP study

Abstract

This paper investigated Korean L2 learners’ wh-dependency resolution in sentence processing. To this aim we used the filled-gap effect and the actual gap integration effect, combined with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Since the (syntactic) parser guided by the active filler strategy (Stowe, 1986) favors any analysis that allows gap filling over any analysis that does not, it is predicted that the parser will experience a surprising effect when encountering a filled-gap position. In our experiment the Korean L2 learners were found to display the subject filled-gap effect, but not the object one. Instead of the latter, they were found to take the verb-driven strategy in resolving wh-dependency (Dussias and Scaltz, 2008). This means that they readily attempted to integrate a wh-filler with a lexical (transitive) verb rather than the immediately following object position. However, as the verb-driven strategy came into effect only in non-island environments, but not in island ones, it is likely that Korean L2 learners were capable of distinguishing island from non-island structure in the course of online sentence processing.