Cross-linguistic differences in predicting L2 sentence structure: The use of categorical and gradient verb constraints

Abstract This study investigates whether cross-linguistic differences affect how adult second language (L2) learners use different types of verb subcategorization information for prediction in real-time sentence comprehension. Using visual world eye-tracking, we tested if first language (L1) German and L1 Turkish intermediate-to-advanced learners of L2 English make use of categorical and gradient probabilistic selectional information of ditransitive verbs to predict whether the verbs would be followed by prepositional-object or double-object dative constructions. L1 German learners used both categorical (“pay/*donate the woman the money”) and gradient (“pay/#send the woman the money”) constraints for prediction in a target-like manner. In contrast, L1 Turkish learners were delayed in recruiting categorical verb information and were only selectively sensitive to gradient verb information. We argue that target-like predictive processing across categorical and gradient verb information is attainable for L2 learners, but differences in L1-L2 word order may curtail the utility of prediction by verb subcategorization information in L2 processing.