Sensitivity to Verb Bias as a Continuous Variable in L1 and L2 Processing
Plenary talk presented at AMLaP 2025 (Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, September 4-6, 2025.)
Verb structural continuation bias, or how often a verb occurs with different complement types, has been shown to influence syntactic processing in L1 and in L2, though its role in L2 processing is less well understood. While previous studies have shown that the bias of L2 verbs is used in L2 processing, the potential influence of L1 verb bias during L2 processing has not been demonstrated conclusively. The existence of such influence would align with prior findings about L1 interference regarding transitivity frequency in verbs and would be expected under theories of bilingualism assuming parallel activation during processing. Prior studies have largely treated verb bias as a categorical variable, with verbs categorized as direct object (DO) biased, sentential complement (SC) biased, or equi-biased. However, these categorizations could obscure fine-grained differences in bias strength that could influence processing in a continuous manner; furthermore, they limit the detail of comparisons of a verb’s bias across languages, which is necessary to investigate the role of L1 verb bias in L2 processing. The current study aims to obtain continuous measurements of verb bias and use them in analyzing behavioral data collected by Wolford & Levinson 2022 to better understand the role of L1 and L2 verb bias in L2 processing.