#3670. Grammatical aspect and L2 learners’ online processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences in English: A self-paced reading study with German, Dutch and French L2 learners

October 2026publication date
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Journal’s subject area:
Linguistics and Language;
Education;
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Abstract:
The results of a self-paced reading study with advanced German, Dutch and French second language (L2) learners of English showed that their online comprehension of early closure (EC) sentences which are initially misanalysed by native English speakers. The English and the higher proficiency French participants showed a processing asymmetry in their online reading of the temporarily ambiguous sentences, assumed to be caused by the difference in the aspectual perspective a comprehender takes when initial verbs appear in the past simple vs. the past progressive. Despite patterning with the German learners online, the Dutch L2 learners’ offline judgments were more akin to those of the English native speakers and the French L2 learners, showing an effect of aspect, which could be argued to lend support to the idea that progressive aspect may be becoming grammaticalized in Dutch.
Keywords:
cross-linguistic influence; grammatical aspect; L2 sentence processing; online comprehension; reading comprehension; self-paced reading; subject–object ambiguities

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