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Park, Myung-Kwan & Na, Yoonjoo. 2011. A Neurolinguistic Study of Syntax-Semantics Dynamics: ERP Evidence from the Processing of 'Semantically Coerced Complement' by L2 English Learners. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 36-4, 925-951. This paper investigates, by using the event-related potentials (ERP) paradigm, how Korean L2 learners of English process complement coercion as an instance of semantic coercion. It has recently been reported by Pylkkänen and McElree (2006) and Kuperberg et al. (2010) that when a verb and its complement mismatch apparently in terms of semantics, it incurs a processing cost. In particular, in Kuperberg et al.'s (2010) ERP-based study of complement coercion, the complement in question elicited N400 as an index of semantic anomaly. This response is contrasted with the other response from the complement that violates the Ɵ-role requirement; it evokes both N400 and P600. We replicated this experiment for Korean L2 learners of English with a view to examining how they process complement coercion and the Ɵ-role requirement. It was found that for Ɵ-role violations the L2 learners elicited N400, but they didn't elicit P600 as an index of syntactic processing. However, for complement coercion, they didn't elicit N400. In conclusion, our experiment shows that Korean L2 learners of English cannot process syntactic information needed for Ɵ-role violations nor more sophisticated semantic information of complement coercion. (Dongguk University)