BUCLD 38 Proceedings To be published in 2014 by Cascadilla Press Rights forms signed by all authors A same-system view of L2 processing: Evidence from long-distance syntactic dependencies in L2 Spanish Tania Leal Méndez, a Thomas A. Farmer, b and Roumyana Slabakova c 1. Introduction * It is generally agreed upon that the outcomes of first (L1) versus second (L2) language acquisition are remarkably different, and that these differences must be accounted for by any theory of second language acquisition (SLA). Historically, differences in the linguistic knowledge possessed by L1 vs. L2 speakers have been assessed with off-line tasks (e.g. grammaticality judgments), providing evidence for “lack of convergence” across multiple linguistic domains including phonology (e.g. Munro, Flege & MacKay, 1996) and morpho-syntax (e.g. Hyltestam & Abrahamsson, 2003). One influential account, the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 1990), proposes that these differences are due to core differences in the grammatical representations of L1 and L2 speakers. The Fundamental Difference Hypothesis has earned support from many empirical studies (e.g. Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2006), although across-group differences are not always insurmountable (Leal Méndez & Slabakova, 2012; Iverson, Rothman & Kempchinsky, 2008; Montrul & Slabakova, 2003). More recently, explanations for native vs. learner ultimate-attainment differences have focused more prominently on processing-based differences, producing a spate of demonstrations that the moment-to-moment processing of an unfolding linguistic signal differs between the two groups (e.g. Dussias, 2001; Frenk-Mestre, 2002). Although these processing-centric accounts vary from one to another across a wide variety of dimensions, they can be roughly categorized into two groups, based upon the degree to which they propose that the processes driving on-line L2 comprehension are the same as, rather than different from, those responsible for L1 comprehension. “Different-system” accounts of L2 processing propose (obviously, based on the name that we’ve given them) that L2 processing does not rely on the same processing systems that are responsible for L1 comprehension (i.e. L1 and L2 processing are qualitatively different). One of the most well articulated examples of a different-system account is the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH; Clahsen & Felser, 2006; but see for example Ullman, 2001, for another *a Tania Leal Méndez, University of Iowa, tania-lealmendez@uiowa.edu; b Thomas A. Farmer, University of Iowa, thomas-farmer@uiowa.edu; c Roumyana Slabakova, University of Iowa and University of Southampton, roumyana-slabakova@uiowa.edu