Bilingualism: Language and Cognition最新文献

We investigate agreement attraction effects in the L2 English of native speakers of Czech, a language that has little-to-no evidence of attraction effects. Our experiments involve two groups of participants. The first group (N = 415) participated in an L2 English-only experiment, and the second group (N = 183) participated in both L2 English and L1 Czech versions of the experiment (in a randomized order with a two-week interval). Standard attraction effects were observed in L2 English, contrasting with the absence of such effects in L1 Czech. Our results provide unique evidence that an L2 can significantly attract, even when the L1 does not. However, our results also revealed that the attraction effect in L2 English disappeared when the L1 Czech version was completed first. These findings are discussed in relation to the Unified Competition Model and the effects of L2-induced increases in working memory demands.

Bilingual adults use semantic context to manage cross-language activation while reading. An open question is how lexical, contextual and individual differences simultaneously constrain this process. We used eye-tracking to investigate how 83 French–English bilinguals read L2-English sentences containing interlingual homographs (chat) and control words (pact). Between subjects, sentences biased target language or non-target language meanings (English = conversation; French = feline). Both conditions contained unbiased control sentences. We examined the impact of word- and participant-level factors (cross-language frequency and L2 age of acquisition/AoA and reading entropy, respectively). There were three key results: (1) L2 readers showed global homograph interference in late-stage reading (total reading times) when English sentence contexts biased non-target French homograph meanings; (2) interference increased as homographs’ non-target language frequency increased and L2 AoA decreased; (3) increased reading entropy globally facilitated early-stage reading (gaze durations) in the non-target language bias condition. Thus, cross-language activation during L2 reading is constrained by multiple factors.

We investigated which objective language proficiency tests best predict the language dominance, balance, English and Spanish proficiency scores relative to Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) scores (averaged across 5–6 raters). Eighty Spanish–English bilinguals completed OPIs, picture naming, semantic and letter fluency, lexical decision tests and a language history questionnaire. Except for letter fluency, objective measures explained more variance than self-report variables, which seldom and negligibly improved proficiency prediction beyond objective measures in forward regression models. Picture naming (the Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) Sprint 2.0) was the strongest predictor for most purposes. Lexical decision and category fluency were next best predictors, but the latter was time-consuming to score, while the former was easiest to administer (and does not require bilingual examiners). Surprisingly, self-rated proficiency better predicted the OPI scores when averaged across modalities (i.e., including reading/writing instead of just spoken proficiency), and lexical-decision (a written test) was as powerful as picture naming for predicting spoken Spanish (but not language dominance).

Code-blending is the simultaneous expression of utterances using both a sign language and a spoken language. We expect that like code-switching, code-blending is linguistically constrained and thus we investigate two hypothesized constraints using an acceptability judgment task. Participants rated the acceptability of code-blended utterances designed to be consistent or inconsistent with these hypothesized constraints. We find strong support for the proposed constraint that each modality of code-blended utterances contributes content to a single proposition. We also find support for the proposed constraint that – at least for American Sign Language (ASL) and English – code-blended utterances make use of a single derivation which is realized using surface forms in the two languages, rather than two simultaneous derivations, one for each language. While this study was limited to ASL/English code-blending and further investigation is needed, we hope that this novel study will encourage future research comparing linguistic constraints on code-blending and code-switching.

We investigate the processing of scalar inferences in first language (L1) and second language (L2). Expanding beyond the common focus on the scalar inference from ‘some’ to ‘not all’, we examine six scalar expressions: ‘low’, ‘scarce’, ‘might’, ‘some’, ‘most’ and ‘try’. An online sentence-picture verification task was used to measure the frequency and time course of scalar inferences for these expressions. Participants included native English speakers, native Slovenian speakers and Slovenian speakers who spoke English as their L2. The first two groups were tested in their L1, while the third group was tested in their L2. Results showed that the English-L2 group resembled the Slovenian-L1 group more than the English-L1 group in terms of inference frequency. The time course for scalar inference computation was similar across all groups. These findings suggest subtle pragmatic transfer effects from L1 to L2, varying across different scalar expressions.

We examined the morphosyntactic prediction ability of child heritage speakers and the role of reading skills and language experience in predictive processing. Using visual world eye-tracking, we focused on predictive use of case-marking cues in Turkish with monolingual (N = 49, MAGE = 83 months) and heritage children, who were early bilinguals of Turkish and Dutch (N = 30, MAGE = 90 months). We found quantitative differences in the magnitude of the prediction ability of monolingual and heritage children; however, their overall prediction ability was on par. The heritage speakers’ prediction ability was facilitated by their reading skills in Dutch, but not in Turkish, as well as by their heritage language exposure, but not by engagement in literacy activities. These findings emphasize the facilitatory role of reading skills and spoken language experience in predictive processing. This study is the first to show that in a developing bilingual mind, effects of reading on prediction can take place across modalities and across languages.

Many bilinguals speak both languages proficiently and habitually; however, the contexts in which the languages are used can vary. The present study examined the effects of context variation on emotions, comparing a national language used everywhere to a regional language spoken only among family and friends. We found a higher sensitivity to disgust (Experiment 1), a greater enjoyment of humor (Experiment 2) and stronger emotions in response to endearments, reprimands and insults (Experiment 3) with the regional language. The regional language induced stronger emotional responses, even though it was used less frequently than the national language. The effects of the regional language varied depending on the frequency of its use. We propose that these effects on emotions reflect the different opportunities to use the language among family and friends, contexts critical for the acquisition and regulation of emotions and in which emotions are expressed quite vividly.