Sensitivity to syntactic dependency formation in child second language processing: a study of numeral quantifiers in Korean

Abstract This study investigates whether child second language (L2) learners can use syntactic information during the processing of sentences involving unbounded dependencies and how their patterns compare to those monolinguals adult L2 learners. Through a self-paced reading experiment numeral quantifier (NQ) construction in Korean, we tested participants’ sensitivity agreement violations between noun phrase (NP) an NQ local nonlocal conditions. The results showed that subset who demonstrated target-like knowledge NP-NQ offline task spent longer time mismatch than match condition, both contexts. These learners’ were comparable observed findings suggest rely on same system representations mechanisms guide first processing.