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- Volume 8, Issue, 2018
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2018
Volume 8, Issue 1, 2018
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Code-switching attitudes and their effects on acceptability judgment tasks
Author(s): Lucia Badiola, Rodrigo Delgado, Ariane Sande and Sara Stefanichpp.: 5–24 (20)More LessThe present study examines the effects of code-switching (CS) attitudes in Acceptability Judgment Tasks (AJTs) among early Spanish/English bilinguals in the United States. In doing so, we explore whether negative attitudes towards CS result in lower/degraded ratings, and, likewise, whether positive attitudes result in higher acceptability ratings. Fifty Spanish/English bilinguals completed a survey that comprised a linguistic background questionnaire and a set of monolingual and code-switched sentences featuring two sets of stimuli, pro-drop ( Sande, 2015 ) and pronouns ( Koronkiewicz, 2014 ), that they rated on a 1–7 Likert scale; additionally, the survey included a final component that gathered information about the speakers’ attitudes towards CS. The pro-drop and pronouns code-switched stimuli gave rise to a total of four conditions. Results from a Linear Mixed Model revealed that all participants, regardless of attitude, distinguished between all Conditions. Furthermore, an effect for attitude was found for two of the conditions, such that the more positive the attitude, the higher the rating given on the AJT. In fact, these two conditions were composed of the CS structures that were rated higher by participants in Sande (2015) and Koronkiewicz (2014) . No effect for attitude was found for CS structures that were rated low in the original studies. Thus, this investigation suggests that the attitudes that bilingual speakers have towards CS play a role in the ratings that they provide in AJTs, but in a manner that highlights, rather than obscures, the rule-governed nature of CS.
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Monolingual stimuli as a foundation for analyzing code-switching data
Author(s): Shane Ebert and Bryan Koronkiewiczpp.: 25–66 (42)More LessAmong methodological concerns specific to code-switching (CS) research is the design of the target stimuli used in experiments with an acceptability judgment task. We argue here that research which makes use of CS data of this type must also incorporate monolingual stimuli into the experimental design, specifically monolingual stimuli judged by the same bilingual participants who judge the code-switched stimuli. We do so by reviewing two sets of experimental CS data we collected and exploring the role that monolingual stimuli can play in the analysis of that data. In each experiment, an analysis based solely on acceptability judgments of the CS stimuli leads to one interpretation, while incorporation of results from the monolingual stimuli leads to a distinct interpretation. We show that it is the interpretation integrating the monolingual acceptability judgments which is more valid, thereby arguing for the value of monolingual stimuli in design and analysis.
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Using two-alternative forced choice tasks and Thurstone’s law of comparative judgments for code-switching research
Author(s): Hans Stadthagen-González, Luis López, M. Carmen Parafita Couto and C. Alejandro Párragapp.: 67–97 (31)More LessThis article argues that 2-alternative forced choice tasks and Thurstone’s law of comparative judgments ( Thurstone, 1927 ) are well suited to investigate code-switching competence by means of acceptability judgments. We compare this method with commonly used Likert scale judgments and find that the 2-alternative forced choice task provides granular details that remain invisible in a Likert scale experiment. In order to compare and contrast both methods, we examined the syntactic phenomenon usually referred to as the Adjacency Condition (AC) (apud Stowell, 1981 ), which imposes a condition of adjacency between verb and object. Our interest in the AC comes from the fact that it is a subtle feature of English grammar which is absent in Spanish, and this provides an excellent springboard to create minimal code-switched pairs that allow us to formulate a clear research question that can be tested using both methods.
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Experimental contributions of eye-tracking to the understanding of comprehension processes while hearing and reading code-switches
Author(s): Jorge R. Valdés Kroff, Rosa E. Guzzardo Tamargo and Paola E. Dussiaspp.: 98–133 (36)More LessResearchers who study code-switching using lab-based approaches face a series of methodological challenges; these include, but are not limited to, using adequate techniques and tasks that allow for processing that reflects real-language usage and selecting stimuli that reflect the participants’ code-switching community norms. We present two illustrative eye-tracking studies that consider these challenges. Study 1 tests whether experience with code-switching leads to differential processing of Spanish determiner-English noun code-switches (e.g., una cookie ‘a cookie’). Study 2 examines auxiliary-verb code-switches involving the progressive structure (e.g., están cooking ‘are cooking’) and perfect structure (e.g., han cooked ‘have cooked’) while participants read either for comprehension or provide grammaticality judgments. The results of both studies highlight the advantages that eye-tracking provides when its use is accompanied by an appropriate bilingual sample, by stimuli that reflect actual bilingual language use, and by secondary tasks that do not invoke metalinguistic processes.
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Electrophysiological and experimental-behavioral approaches to the study of intra-sentential code-switching
pp.: 134–161 (28)More LessA hallmark of bilingual language processing is intra-sentential code-switching. An emergent body of research seeks to understand the intricate neural and cognitive mechanisms that underlie this seemingly effortless skill. In this paper, we discuss electrophysiological and experimental-behavioral research approaches that have been used to study intra-sentential code-switching, and illustrate the use of these techniques by discussing a select number of empirical studies. More specifically, we discuss electrophysiological approaches that are used to study the comprehension of visually and auditorily presented code-switched sentences, including the Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) method, time-frequency analysis, and approaches to study inter-individual variation in electrophysiological response profiles. This is followed by a discussion of experimental-behavioral techniques to study the comprehension and production of code-switched sentences, including self-paced reading, shadowing, and confederate scripting.
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