ABSTRACT
Several studies have indicated that learners of morphologically rich languages with morphologically poor L1s fail to show the same sensitivity to incongruencies in verbal inflection as native speakers or learners with morphologically rich L1s. The present study considers whether this apparent lack of sensitivity holds in cases in which the verbal morphology is more salient, as is the case in the Italian compound past tense consisting of an auxiliary and past participle (e.g., ha mangiato, ‘has eaten’). In this eye-tracking study, 23 English-speaking learners of Italian in their fourth semester read sentences that contained congruent and incongruent verb-adverb combinations. Early processing measures for interest areas on verbs indicated that learners spent more time on past verbs than present verbs, and late processing measures indicated that learners fixated more on verbs in incongruent than in congruent sentences, suggesting that learners are sensitive to incongruencies and that salience plays a role in that sensitivity.
