Processing of tense and aspect manipulations on-line in the first and second language: a self-paced reading study with Russian advanced learners of English.

Abstract: The present study investigates how native speakers of British English (n=12) and advanced Russian learners of English (n=24) handle two types of tense-aspect mismatches: present perfect mismatches, where the present perfect form does not match the preceding adverbial (e.g. 'Last year, Kate has studied French…), and past simple mismatches, where the past simple form does not match the preceding adverbial (e.g. 'Since last year, Kate studied French…). The study also investigates whether the telicity of the verbs has any effects on the participants’ processing behavior. Native English speakers and Russian learners of L2 English all judged the mismatch items as less acceptable than the match items in an off-line judgment task in the present perfect. In the past simple condition, only advanced learners showed a sensitivity. In an on-line self-paced reading task, the native speakers showed a similar sensitivity to present perfect mismatches, but not to past simple mismatches. In contrast, the learners showed no sensitivity to mismatches in any condition on-line. Importantly, however, they showed an effect of telicity. The results for native speakers support corpus findings suggesting that there is a tendency for the present perfect to move away from its resultative sense (Yao, 2014). The results for learners suggest that, contrary to Roberts & Liszka (2013), the presence of grammaticalized aspect in the L1 does not lead to a native-like sensitivity to tense-aspect violations, but may affect their interpretation of English present perfect and past simple on-line and off-line.