Dataset for Aperiodic Dynamics for L1 and L2 Processing of French Wh-Dependencies

The stimuli consisted of 200 items, among which 100 critical items included 25 quadruples as in (1a-d), with 50 more English-like items in which the gender of the clitic or strong pronoun reflected the gender of the antecedent (1a, b), and 50 less English-like items in which the genitive pronoun agreed in gender with the head noun of the genitive structure rather than with the antecedent (1c, d). Of these second 50 items, 25 had a female antecedent in the matrix clause as in (1c), and 25 had a male antecedent as in (1d). Similarly, half of the more English-like items (1a, b) involved masculine pronouns le and lui ‘3p.sing.masc’ and half involved feminine pronouns la and elle ‘3p.sing.fem’. Crucially, antecedent-gender-specified pronouns la and elle and antecedent-gender-unspecified pronoun son all allow the retrieval of the matrix subject as the antecedent. The 100 distractor items involved complex interrogative structures and permutations like target items, counterbalanced so that no grouping stood out. (1a) Quelle décision le concernant est-ce que Paul a dit t que Lydie avait rejetée t which decision him regarding is-it that Paul has said that Lydie had rejected sans hésitation ? without hesitation ‘Which decision regarding him did Paul say that Lydie had rejected without hesitation?’ (1b) Quelle décision à propos de lui est-ce que Paul a dit t que Lydie avait rejetée t which decision about him is-it that Paul has said that Lydie had rejected sans hésitation ? without hesitation ‘Which decision about him did Paul say that Lydie had rejected without hesitation?’ (1c) Quelle décision à son sujet est-ce que Paul a dit t que Lydie avait rejetée t which decision about him/her is-it that Paul has said that Lydie had rejected sans hésitation ? without hesitation ‘Which decision regarding him did Paul say that Lydie had rejected without hesitation? (1d) Quelle décision à son sujet est-ce que Lydie a dit t que Paul avait rejetée t which decision about him is-it that Lydie has said that Paul had rejected sans hésitation ? without hesitation ‘Which decision about him did Lydie say that Paul had rejected without hesitation?’ E-Prime delivered the stimuli in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) reading task. The stimuli appeared word by word at the center of the screen in 36-point Consolas font, using normal orthographic conventions. They appeared in four blocks presented in random order. Within each block, stimuli were also presented in random order. Participants sat in a chair facing a computer monitor at a distance of approximately four feet. A fixation cross at the center of the screen preceded each item, lasting 700ms. The task was found to be hard but manageable to advanced L2 speakers in stimuli preparation. Due to the time required for E-prime to load each word and for the monitor’s refresh rate, the total presentation time per word was 566ms (300ms presentation, 250ms interstimulus interval, and a 16ms refresh rate between words) accommodating L2 speakers without being unnaturally slow for L1 speakers. Respondents were trained to read questions like the stimuli and then accept or reject follow-up comprehension statements, which were presented in their entirety for a maximum of 3500ms. These comprehension checks were of several types: Some examined the propensity for an anaphoric interpretation, while others queried other aspects of the sentences. Participants quickly responded to the statements by pressing the left arrow key for ‘Yes/True’ and the right arrow key for ‘No/False.’ There was a training session of six items, which could be repeated before moving on to the experiment. In the training, all items were followed by a comprehension statement; in the task, only two thirds were. However, L1 and L2 speakers alike interpreted the pronoun as referring to the gender-matched noun phrase 70% of the time in critical stimuli. Naturally, a set of questions like our stimuli seems plausible in only a limited set of situations. Thus, respondents were introduced to a context involving two characters who were devoted followers of a television series. One of the characters, however, had missed some episodes and asked the other character questions to catch up.