The present study uses self-paced reading as a measure of online processing and an acceptability judgement task as a measure of offline explicit linguistic knowledge, to understand L2 learners’ comprehension processes and their awareness of subtle differences between the modal auxiliaries may and can. Participants were two groups of university students: 42 native speakers of English and 41 native speakers of Croatian majoring in L2 English. The study is part of a larger project that has provided empirical evidence of the two modals, may and can, being mutually exclusive when denoting ability (can) and epistemic possibility (may) but equally acceptable in pragmatic choices expressing permission. The present results revealed that L1 and L2 speakers rated the acceptability of sentences in offline tasks similarly; however, L2 learners showed no sensitivity to verb–context mismatches in epistemic modality while demonstrating sensitivity when processing modals expressing ability. Implications for L2 acquisition of modals and future research are discussed.

中文翻译：

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解开二语显性语言知识和在线处理英语情态可能并且可以：可接受性判断和自定进度阅读的比较

本研究使用自定进度的阅读作为在线处理的衡量标准，并使用可接受性判断任务作为离线显性语言知识的衡量标准，以了解二语学习者的理解过程以及他们对情态助剂之间细微差异的认识可能和能。参与者是两组大学生：42 名母语为英语的学生和 41 名母语为克罗地亚语的二语英语专业学生。该研究是一个更大项目的一部分，该项目提供了两种模式的经验证据，可能和能，在表示能力时是互斥的（能）和认知可能性（可能）但在表达许可的务实选择中同样可以接受。目前的结果表明，L1 和 L2 使用者对离线任务中句子的可接受性的评价相似；然而，第二语言学习者对认知情态中的动词-语境不匹配表现出不敏感，但在处理情态表达能力时表现出敏感性。讨论了二语习得模态和未来研究的意义。