To observe and document SES-related individual differences in L1 ultimate attainment

This project seeks to observe and document SES-related individual differences in L1 ultimate attainment, by recording adult native speakers' grammatical competence in online reading and comprehension tasks and exploring the potential relationship between SES-related correlates and lateacquired, syntactically complex constructions. A growing body of research has demonstrated that some native speakers do not fully master basic grammatical constructions in childhood (or even by adulthood), challenging the widely held assumptions of Chomskyan L1 acquisition device (see most recent review in Kidd et al., 2017). It has also been extensively evidenced that individual variation in ultimate L1 attainment is related to socioeconomic status (SES) (Warren, 2015; Greenfield and Moorman, 2018). Low SES has been shown to restrict access to a high-quality education and other non-linguistic variables such as exposure to print, potentially having a negative effect on later life chances (Field, 2010; Koster et al., 2006; Dabrowska, 2018).