| The present study, through the replication and extension of Juffs's (2005) research, sought to investigate the effects of different L1 syntactic features (including two factors: lack of wh-movement, and the head-final VP feature) and different learning environment on proficient adult learners' processing of wh-filler/gap constructions in English. The three groups of English learners (Chinese ESL, Korean ESL, and Korean EFL) and a group of native English speakers as control participated in a word-by-word self-paced online reading and the consequent grammaticality judgment tasks that included three types of wh-constructions that violate Subjacency and four types of grammatical long distance (LD) wh-extraction. While all learner groups showed sensitivity to Subjacency violation, the analysis of their accuracy scores and word-level reading profiles on grammatical wh-structures showed a strong effect of L1, in which, while lack of overt wh-movement in L1 syntax was found to be disadvantageous for all learners' processing and comprehension of those structures, the head-final characteristic of L1 Korean put additional burden on L1 Korean learners' wh-filler/gap processing in English. The analysis also found a significant effect of learning environment, in which the Korean EFL learners demonstrated greater processing difficulty as compared to the Korean ESL learners especially in the extraction of wh-phrase from the finite clausal condition. |
