Does better explicit knowledge of a morphosyntactic structure guarantee more native-like electrophysiological processing? An ERP study with French learners of English

The possible transformation of the explicit knowledge developed during classroom learning of a second language into implicit knowledge of that language remains an open issue. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the explicit and implicit processing of morphosyntactic violations of English as an L2. ERP responses were obtained from 24 French learners (12 Intermediate and 12 Advanced) and 12 Native controls (NS) while participants evaluated the grammaticality of orally presented sentences containing subject-verb agreement violations. Results show that NS and Advanced speakers outperformed the Intermediate ones on the behavioural task. A P600 effect was obtained for all groups. Additionally, NS and Advanced learners exhibited an early negativity after violations while there was no significant effect in Intermediate speakers. The presence and amplitude of this early negativity was correlated with the structure-specific proficiency of Intermediate speakers and with the time of instruction of all learners. Results suggest that the superior native-likeness of the early responses obtained in Advanced learners is due more to their better proficiency and superior degree of explicit instruction than to the direct opportunity for implicit knowledge that their stay abroad represented.