We report findings from psycholinguistic experiments investigating the detailed timing of processing morphologically complex words by proficient adult second (L2) language learners of English in comparison to adult native (L1) speakers of English. The first study employed the masked priming technique to investigate "-ed" forms with a group of…

This study reports results from four experiments investigating the perfective past tense of Greek in adult second language (L2) learners. The data come from L2 learners of Greek with intermediate to advanced L2 proficiency and different native language (L1) backgrounds, and L1 speakers of Greek. All participants were tested in both oral and…

Suggests that differences between first- and second-language learners are due to principles of universal grammar (UG) that guide first language (L1), but not second language (L2) acquisition. This view can be reconciled with the idea that L2 learners can use UG principles to some extent in evaluating target sentences. (49 references) (Author/VWL)

Reports on reaction time experiments investigating subject-verb agreement and null subjects in 33 Korean learners of German and a control group of 20 German native speakers. Results found that the two phenomena do not covary in the Korean learners, indicating that properties of agreement and null subjects are acquired separately from one another.…