The present study aimed to explore how varied cross-linguistic differences affect late Chinese-English learners’ on-line processing of tense and aspect in English.

We used the self-paced reading task (Experiment 1) and the eye-tracking technique (Experiment 2) to test the above question.

Reading times in Experiment 1 and first-fixation duration, and gaze time in Experiment 2 in four interested positions were analysed in R by ANOVAs and t-tests.

Both high- and low-proficiency participants showed their sensitivity to the violation of progressive, which is nearly congruent between English and Chinese. Only high-proficiency participants were sensitive to the violation of past tense, which is similar but not congruent between Chinese and English. With regard to present third person singular, which is incongruent between Chinese and English, high-proficiency participants also showed their sensitivity to its violation; however, this sensitivity is only detected by the eye-tracking method (Experiment 2). These results suggested that cross-linguistic differences affect late second language learners’ on-line processing of English tense and aspect.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first one exploring varied cross-linguistic differences’ influence on late Chinese-English learners’ on-line processing of tense and aspect in English.

Our results provide new evidence to support the Performance Deficit Account.