Dividing attention by loading working memory is an effective method of probing the declarative and procedural underpinnings of linguistic knowledge. The current study explores WM/DA effects on four specific L2 domains: morphology (aspect versus case), syntax and semantics (collocations). We contrast performance of 68 learners of Polish as a foreign language (L1 Chinese) in a grammaticality judgement task in baseline and divided attention conditions. We found corroborating evidence for heightened dependency on declarative memory in early (A2) L2 learners across all linguistic categories and in both experimental conditions. While the lexical judgement of more advanced (B1) learners also proved vulnerable to secondary-task interference, introduction of additional cognitive load had a positive effect on participants’ grammatical judgement, yielding more accurate responses in the aspect category. These results point towards the need for pursuing a new line of inquiry into a potentially facilitative role of cognitive load on L2 learners’ grammatical processing.

Non-native speakers have been found to be penalized for their accent and grammatical errors. However, little is known about whether and how accent and grammaticality interact to influence native listeners’ perception of non-native speech, and whether listeners’ personality plays a role in this. We examined these questions by relating the acceptability scores of 40 English speech stimuli rated by 60 British listeners (30 female; 30 unfamiliar with accented speech) to factors including speech accent (British vs. Polish), grammaticality (well-formed vs. error-filled) and listener personality. The results suggest that non-native accent “protects” the speaker from being penalized for grammatical errors unless the listener has a certain personality profile: compared to non-native accented speech, the acceptability ratings of native accented speech showed a larger decrease when grammatical errors were present, yet listeners who were more conscientious, extravert or agreeable tended to give lower acceptability ratings to non-native accented speech, regardless of grammaticality.

A central goal of typological research is to characterizelinguistic features in terms of both their functional role andtheir fit to social and cognitive systems. One longstandingpuzzle concerns why certain languages employ grammaticalgender. In an information theoretic analysis of German nounclassification, Dye et al. (2017) enumerated a number ofimportant processing advantages gender confers. Yet thisraises a further puzzle: If gender systems are so beneficial toprocessing, what does this mean for languages that make dowithout them? Here, we compare the communicative functionof gender marking in German (a deterministic system) to thatof prenominal adjectives in English (a probabilistic one),finding that despite their differences, both systems act toefficiently smooth information over discourse, making nounsmore equally predictable in context. We examine whyevolutionary pressures may favor one system over another,and discuss the implications for compositional accounts ofmeaning and Gricean principles of communication.

A central goal of typological research is to characterize linguistic features in terms of both their functional role and their fit to social and cognitive systems. One longstanding puzzle concerns why certain languages employ grammatical gender, which assigns nouns to distinct classes and marks neighboring words for agreement. While historically noun classification has been viewed as a useless ornament with little apparent rhyme or reason, there is an accumulating body of evidence that native speakers use determiners to guide lexical access. Here, we compare the communicative function of gender marking in German (a deterministic system) to that of prenominal adjective use in English (a probabilistic one), finding that despite their differences, both systems efficiently smooth information over discourse, making upcoming nouns more equally predictable in context. We hypothesize that evolutionary pressures may favor one system over another on account of how easy they are for children and adults to acquire.