Department of Second Language Studies

I am interested in second language learners' knowledge of the interpretations available to a sentence that are not grammatical in the learner's native language and in the precise manner in which second language learners interpret sentences of the target language input, with special interest in the integration of information from context, pragmatics, prosody, semantics and syntax.

Not all ways of combining words together have the same interpretive consequences.Aspects of one's semantic intuitions results from the way in which one goes about building the sentence. A string of experiments suggests that second language acquisition is channeled by the type of constraints that determine interpretation in native systems.The reason for the focus on processing is that not all ways of combining information together have the same consequences for language understanding.

In a string of experiments, I have investigated the extent to which context can override syntactic information in the manner in which second language learners perceive sentences. Results so far suggest a deep structural reflex in second language acquirers of French. This threatens the notion that second language learners do not process sentences as deeply as natives, relying on lexical and contexual information instead.

Articles

Frimu, Rodica and Laurent Dekydtspotter. (2021) On feature-based vocabulary selection mechanisms in late insertion: third person number agreement in the French future tense. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6(1): 121, pp. 1–31.

Dekydtspotter, L and A. Kate Miller, Mike Iverson, Yanyu Xiong, Kyle Swanson, Charlène Gilbert. (2021) Minimal brain adaptation for representational prioritization in non-native parsing: Evidence from a time-frequency analysis of recursion in Wh-dependencies in French. Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 59, 101002

Xiong, Y., Dekydtspotter, L. and Newman, S. (2019) When Embeddedness Matters: Electrophysiological Evidence for the Role of Head Noun Position in Chinese Relative Clause Processing. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 51, 236-257.

Dekydtspotter, L. and Seo, H-K. (2016) Transitivity in the processing of intransitive clauses: a category-based prediction in low-intermediate learners of English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

Dekydtspotter, L. and Renaud, C. (2014) On second language processing and grammatical development: The parser in second language acquisition. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4(2), 131–165.

Dekydtspotter, L. and A. K. Miller. (2013) Inhibitive and facilitative priming induced by traces in the processing of wh-dependencies in a second language. Second Language Research, 29

Dekydtspotter, L. Wang, Y.-T. Kim, B., Kim, H-J., Kim, H.-K. and Lee, J.-K. (2012) Anaphora under Reconstruction during Processing in English as a Second Language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34, 561–590.

Darcy, I., Dekydtspotter, L., Sprouse, R. A., Scott, J. H.G., Glover, J., McGuire, M., and Kaden, C. (2012) Direct Mapping of Acoustics to Phonology: On the lexical encoding of front round vowels in L1 English-L2 French acquisition. Second Language Research, 28, 1–36.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent (2009) Second Language Epistemology, Take Two. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31,291-321.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent and Claire Renaud. (2009) On the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition: Uninterpretable gender on past participles in English–French processing. Second Language Research, 25, 251–263.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent, Bryan. Donaldson, Amanda. C. Edmonds, Audrey Liljestrand Fultz and Rebecca A. Petrush (2008) Syntax and prosodic computations in the resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguity by English-French learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 453–480.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent and Jon Hathorn (2005) Quelque chose (...) de remarquable in English-French Acquisition: Mandatory, Informationally Encapsulated Computations in Second Language Interpretation. Second Language Research, 21, 291-323.

Dekydtspotter, Laurent and Samantha Outcalt (2005) A Syntactic Bias in Scope Ambiguity Resolution in the Processing of English-French Cardinality Interrogatives: Evidence for Informational Encapsulation. Language Learning,1, 1-37.

Teaching Excellence Recognition Award (TERA), 1999