An ERP Study on the Processing of Case Markers and Verbal Meaning by Advanced Chinese Learners of Korean

This study investigated how advanced L2 learners of Korean process case marking and verbal anomalies in visually situated sentence processing. Behavioral and neural responses were examined through an ERP experiment using a picture-sentence verification task with 17 advanced Chinese learners of Korean. Three conditions were compared: congruence, case-marking incongruence, and verbal incongruence. While the behavioral results showed no significant differences across conditions with high accuracy rates and similar reading times, the ERP results revealed different neural responses; case-marking anomalies elicited early negativity around 100ms post-onset of the case marker and N400 at the sentence-final verb, whereas verbal anomalies elicited N400 at the sentence-final verb with higher amplitude. The ERP results indicate that, similarly to native Korean speakers, advanced L2 learners process the two types of linguistic anomalies differently, processing case markers earlier than verbal meaning. The findings suggest that processing mechanism of L2 learners can develop to the extent that it resembles that of native speakers.