Strength of garden-path effects in native and non-native speakers’ processing of object–subject ambiguities

Aims and objectives:Our study addresses the following research questions: To what extent is L2 comprehenders’ online sensitivity to morphosyntactic disambiguation cues affected by L1 background? Does noticing the error signal trigger successful reanalysis in both L1 and L2 comprehension? Can previous findings suggesting that case is a better reanalysis cue than agreement be replicated and extended to L2 processing when using closely matched materials?Design/methodology/approach:We carried out a self-paced reading study using temporarily ambiguous object-initial sentences in German. These were disambiguated either by number marking on the verb or by nominative case marking on the subject. End-of-trial comprehension questions probed whether or not our participants ultimately succeeded in computing the correct interpretation.Data and analysis:We tested a total of 121 participants (25 Italian, 32 Russian, 32 Korean and 32 native German speakers), measuring their word-by-word reading times and comprehension ac...