The Predictive Processing of Number Information in L1 and L2 Arabic Speakers

Prior research has shown that people can predict the syntactic features of an upcoming word during sentence comprehension. However, evidence for morphosyntactic predictive processing has been limited to gender or case marking in a small subset of Indo-European languages. In the current study, we implemented the eye-tracking visual world paradigm to investigate whether L1 (n = 18) and L2 (n = 40) Arabic speakers could extract number information from singular-marked verbs to anticipate the next noun. In a between-subject design, L1 and L2 speakers heard the singular verb in the simple past form (Exp 1) and the progressive past form (Exp 2). The effect of L2 proficiency (measured using a C-test and a receptive vocabulary test) on number prediction was also examined. L1 Arabic speakers showed earlier and stronger number prediction effects regardless of verb aspect. In contrast, L2 speakers exhibited delayed (Exp 1) or limited (Exp 2) prediction, suggesting a mediating role for verb aspect. Increased L2 proficiency did not influence anticipatory eye-movements during the verb region, and only emerged as significant during the noun region. These results confirm and extend earlier research on L1 and L2 number predictive processing.