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.

Keywords:

• Subject–verb agreement
• Distributive effect
• Second language

This research was supported by the National Social Science Fund [grant number 11BYY039]; the Open Fund of the State Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning [grant number CNLYB1309]; and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents of the Ministry of Education in China [grant number NECT-11-0028].