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Category: Project

Description: Is negation more difficult to process than affirmation? If it is, does processing negation in a second language (L2) compound the difficulty compared to the first language (L1)? This article addresses the issues of difficulties in processing different types of negation in the L1 and L2 by looking at the differences in the ways in which comprehenders anticipate upcoming information during sentence processing. We recorded eye fixations of Croatian learners of English while they were anticipating matching or mismatching pictures to sentences with various types of negation in their L1 (Croatian) and L2 (English). Using a fully crossed within-participant design, we manipulated sentence polarity (affirmative vs negative), negation type (sentential vs null-quantifier), and language (L1 Croatian and L2 English) so that we could observe potential anticipation effects varying as a function of the three predictors. In line with previous studies, affirmation in the L1 was easier to process than negation, and learners were able to anticipate sentence-picture matches in both of their languages. Intriguingly, anticipatory looks varied across negation types in Croatian, corresponding to the number of structural cues, but not in English, where both negation types rely on a single cue. These findings go against the view that comprehension in L2 comes with a reduced ability to generate expectations.