Abstract
Although native speakers (NSs) of English make plural agreement in preverbal-subject sentences (e.g., A pen and eraser *is/are…), previous studies have demonstrated that they prefer singular – not plural – agreement between verbs and conjoined noun phrases (NPs) in expletive there constructions (e.g., there is/are a pen and an eraser…), showing efficiency-driven processing prioritization of agreement between nearest constituents. This paper assesses whether Japanese L2 learners of English (JLE) show this tendency. The results of two self-paced reading experiments together indicated that even though efficiency-driven processing was available to L2 learners, their use was unstable due to the repeated exposure to there are NPpl- and NPpl-type sentences during the task. It seems possible that repeated exposure triggered learners’ knowledge that conjoined NPs are always plural. Hence, it could conceivably be hypothesized that a learner’s specific knowledge intervenes the efficiency-driven processing strategy.
Funding source: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Award Identifier / Grant number: JP2013123
All the stimuli are available at the following URL: https://osf.io/gz6q8/.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2021-0156).
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