Schedule 79. StuTS

This study investigates why L2 learners persistently produce ungrammatical structures like “explain me this” despite conflicting input. While native speakers utilize statistical preemption to favor conventional forms, L2 learners are often hindered by L1 interference. The study explores whether working memory capacity is a decisive factor, suggesting that high mental load due to L1 suppression and self-monitoring prevents effective error-driven learning and structural prediction.

Why do L2 learners of English persistently produce structures like “Explain me this,” despite never encountering them in native input? To approach the so called Explain me this puzzle proposed by Adele Goldberg 2019, a study will be conducted to explore the mechanism of statistical preemption, a cognitive process by which speakers learn the most conventional ways to express intentions based on cumulative exposure. While native speakers use vast statistical data to intuitively reject ungrammatical structures as the double object structure for verbs like explain, L2 learners often perceive these patterns as acceptable due to native language interference (Robenalt & Goldberg 2015), such as the German “Erkläre mir das”.

The central hypothesis is that the effective use of statistical preemption is heavily dependent on working memory (Green 1998). It is argued that L2 speakers fail to benefit from statistical preemption because the high mental load required to suppress their L1 and engage in constant self-monitoring hinders their ability to make real time structural predictions. Without these expectations, the error-driven learning mechanism cannot function effectively. This study proposes to investigate whether increasing cognitive load in proficient L2 speakers causes a breakdown in their statistical calculations, leading them to revert to persistent, non-preempted errors.
Goldberg, A. E. (2019). Explain Me This: Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions. Princeton University Press.
Green, D.W. (1998). Mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1(2), 67–81. doi:10.1017/S1366728998000133
Robenalt, C., & Goldberg, A.E. (2015). Nonnative Speakers Do Not Take Competing Alternative Expressions Into Account the Way Native Speakers Do. Language Learning, 66, 60-93.

Info

Day: 2026-05-14
Start time: 15:15
Duration: 01:00
Room: HDH Halle 199
Track: Psycholinguistics
Language: en

Links:

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