The Processing Mechanism Of Counterfactuals And Predictive Conditionals By Chinese English Learners At Different Levels Of Proficiency:An ERP Study

The present study used Event-related Potentials and Grammaticality Judgment Task(GJT)to explore the features of syntactic processing from Chinese English learners and the influence of different verb-tenses on L2 processing.The present experiment aims to solve two questions:What's the processing mechanism of verb-tense in counterfactuals and predictive conditionals;What's the difference between L2 learners with high proficiency and L2 learners with low proficiency in processing counterfactuals and predictive conditionals?Participants in this experiment were divided into two groups.One group was L2 learners with high proficiency(L2-high group),who were English majors with TEM-8(Test for English Majors-8)certificates.The other group was non-English majors,who passed CET-4(College English Test-4)failed CET-6(College English Test-6).They were called L2 learners with low proficiency(L2-low group).The experiment adopted a violation paradigm.Each experimental sentence consisted of two parts,if-clause and main clause.Each sentence had four versions,respectively counterfactual control and violated sentences as well as predictive conditional control and violated sentences.Each control sentence was violated in the phrase structure of tense.Each participant saw only one version of the story.They were required to make judgments on whether the sentence was acceptable or unacceptable as quickly and accurately as possible.The behavioral and electrophysiological data were recorded by E-prime 2.0 and Brain Product software respectively.Then these data were analyzed with SPSS 20.0 software.The result of the present study was consistent with the Shallow Structure Hypothesis(SSH).According to the behavioral result,the L2-high group outperformed the L2-low group in accuracy,and no significant difference existed in reaction time.Based on the ERP data,neither L2 learners at a high proficiency level nor L2 learners at a low proficiency level demonstrated P600 effect which represented the syntactic processing.Instead,P200,N400 and N600 were observed both in L2-high group and L2-low group.P200 at the early stage was related to attention resources distribution and semantic information processing.N400 and N600 were both the representation of semantic processing.When facing counterfactuals,both L2 learners with high proficiency and L2 learners with low proficiency demonstrated significant N600,but the latency of L2-high group was earlier than that of L2-low group.Faced with predictive conditionals,both groups demonstrated significant N400 with a latency from 300ms to 650ms.And the amplitude of low-group subjects was smaller than that of high-group subjects.The experiment reached the following conclusions:Two types of conditionals were both difficult for Chinese English learners,and the processing of counterfactuals was harder than that of predictive conditional.Chinese English learners at different proficiency levels reflected reliable ERP components of P200,N400 and N600 in processing counterfactuals and predictive conditionals,but with partial differences in distribution and latency.In summary,Chinese English learnets failed to approach the native speakers'syntactic level,evidenced by the lack of syntactic components.