Doctoral Dissertation Research: Testing the Limits of Adult SLA: A Psycholinguistic Study of Near-Native Sentence Processing

成人学习者能否用第二语言习得与本族语相近的知识和能力一直是二语习得领域的一个重要问题。以往对这一问题的研究大多采用传统的笔和纸的方法，遵循正式语言学的传统，并得出了相互矛盾的结论。很少有研究使用现代心理语言学技术来探讨如何近母语的语法知识可以应用于在线句子处理。另一方面，第二语言句子（L2）处理这一迅速发展的新领域，主要是继现有的第一语言研究之后，刚刚开始回答第二语言习得特有的问题。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，在Bill VanPatten博士的指导下，Jill Jegerski女士将进行一项论文研究，解决以下研究问题：成年第二语言学习者能否获得类似母语的句法处理行为？这个项目将借鉴二语习得和心理语言学的研究成果，从句子加工的角度探讨语言学习的上限。具体而言，表现的西班牙语，筛选本地人一样的熟练程度和长期沉浸在墨西哥和独立测试离线语法能力，近母语的人将进行比较，母语的四个自定进度的阅读实验。每一个都将检验浅层结构假说的不同预测。不同类型的句子处理将被测量在一个单一的，受试者内的设计和阅读时间将被报告和分析统计为个人近母语的参与者以及组-这些都是方法的创新，因为没有被采用在以前的研究句子处理。因此，本研究的设计和结果将推动当前的知识，并促进未来的语言习得，语言处理和人类语言能力的实证研究。

The question of whether adult learners can acquire native-like knowledge and ability with a second language has long been of fundamental importance in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Much previous investigation of this issue has employed traditional pen-and-paper measures, following the formal linguistics tradition, and has yielded conflicting findings. Few studies have used modern psycholinguistic techniques to explore how near-native knowledge of grammar can be applied in online sentence processing. The rapidly growing new area of second language sentence (L2) processing, on the other hand, has mostly followed existing first language research and is just now beginning to answer questions unique to SLA. With support from the National Science Foundation and under the direction of Dr. Bill VanPatten, Ms. Jill Jegerski will conduct a dissertation study that addresses the following research question: Can adult second language learners acquire native-like syntactic processing behavior? The proposed project will draw on previous research from both SLA and psycholinguistics, examining the upper limits of language learning from a sentence processing perspective. Specifically, the performance of near-native speakers of Spanish, screened for native-like proficiency and long-term immersion in Mexico and independently tested for offline grammatical competence, will be compared to that of native speakers in four self-paced reading experiments. Each will test a different prediction of the shallow structure hypothesis. The different types of sentence processing will be measured in a single, within-subjects design and reading times will be reported and analyzed statistically for individual near-native participants as well as for the group--these are methodological innovations as neither has been employed in previous study of sentence processing. Thus, the design and outcome of this investigation will both advance current knowledge and facilitate future empirical research on language acquisition, language processing, and the human language capacity in general.