Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Online First

Adopting a usage-based perspective, the present study assesses the mental lexicon of Turkish heritage speakers in the UK (HSs, n = 31) regarding the productive use of formulaic inflectional suffix templates and the level of sophistication of the lemmas produced in free speech. We additionally explore input-related predictors of this performance by comparing HS performance to that of a group of previous generation immigrant bilinguals (IBs, n = 61), who are representative input providers, and of a group of monolinguals (n = 44). The results show that overall, both the HSs and IBs diverge from the monolinguals in that they use nominal suffix sequences less productively and rely on less sophisticated nominal lemmas. Their verbal productivity performance, however, remains intact. We argue that altered input results in a performance which diverges from that of the monolinguals but converges on the immigrant variety. The individual variability is partly explained by the amount of L1 passive exposure, indicating that the HSs are not sensitive only to the changes in the input available to them but also to the amount of it. These findings provide new insights into the line of research that describes HSs as incomplete due to their L1-divergent skills in comparison to a monolingual baseline.

Previous studies have observed different gender assignment strategies for English nouns in Spanish-English code-switching (CS). However, these studies have not investigated the role of noun gender canonicity of the Spanish equivalent, they have only examined participants in bilingual speaker mode, and most studies have not explored the role of bilingual language experience. The current study compares gender assignment by heritage speakers of Spanish in a monolingual speaker mode and a bilingual speaker mode, considering the role of noun gender canonicity and CS experience. Results revealed a language mode effect, where participants used significantly more masculine determiners with the same feminine nouns in the CS session than those in the Spanish monolingual session where they used a feminine determiner. Further evidence of a language mode effect was found in the effect of noun canonicity and bilingual language experience. Noun canonicity was only significant in the Spanish monolingual session, where participants used significantly more masculine determiners with non-canonical nouns. Bilingual language experience was only significant in the CS session, where regular codeswitchers used more masculine default determiners than infrequent codeswitchers and non-codeswitchers, while in Spanish-only, all these groups behaved similarly.

This study deals with the syntactic (non-)derivational relationship of English dative alternation (DA) –double object constructions (DOCs) and to/for-datives–, as seen in the spontaneous production of English-Spanish bilinguals when compared to English monolinguals. While a chronological progression and a difference in use between the two English DA constructions could suggest a syntactic-derivational relationship between DOCs and to/for-datives, a fairly similar emergence and a possibly similar rate of use could point to the two constructions not displaying a syntactic-derivational status. We also explore whether English-Spanish bilinguals show divergent developmental paths when compared to English monolinguals. To address these issues, we analyze data from nine English-Spanish bilingual children and twelve English monolingual children, along with the adults interacting with them. The analysis shows that both DA structures emerge at a similar age, which suggests they are not syntactically derived from one another. Despite these differences, the later onset and the lower incidence of to/for-datives could be associated with the case and theta role mediated properties of prepositions as well as with the frequency of exposure to DA in the adults’ speech. As no differences appear between bilinguals and monolinguals, transfer from Spanish does not seem to be an issue.

The contrast between /ʎ/ and /ʝ/ has been lost in most Spanish varieties. This merger (yeísmo) has also been claimed to have spread to Basque. I study the palatal merger in Azpeitia Basque and Spanish, where simultaneous (2L1 Basque, Spanish) and early-sequential (L1 Basque, L2 Spanish) groups were tested in both languages. Comparing the two bilingual groups, this study found that, as a group, early-sequential bilinguals do not merge the phonemes in either of the two languages. However, while simultaneous bilinguals maintain the distinction in Basque, they tend to merge the phonemes in Spanish. Inter-speaker variation is found within each group and individual reports do not confirm global results. This study has also encountered different types of speakers as far as the palatal merger is concerned in Basque and Spanish: (1) non-mergers in any of the languages, (2) mergers in both languages, (3) mergers only in Spanish, and (4) mergers only in Basque.

Definite and demonstrative determiners in English share the same central semantics of uniqueness (e.g., Hawkins, 1991 ; Ionin, Baek, Kim, Ko, & Wexler, 2012 ; Wolter, 2006 ), but the computation of the semantics is constrained by different discourse conditions and determined by pragmatic knowledge, which pertains to the interface between semantics and pragmatics. This paper investigates whether L2 learners may have persistent difficulty in acquiring properties involving the semantics-pragmatics interface, by exploring the acquisition of L2 English definite and demonstrative determiners by advanced and near-native L1 Chinese learners of English. It also examines whether acquisition results are influenced by the learners’ L1 Chinese, which lacks an article system but allows demonstrative determiners. The results from a forced-choice written task show that advanced learners were unable to distinguish between the two determiners in different discourse conditions; near-native-level L1 Chinese learners displayed a native-like preference for the definite determiner, but not for the demonstrative determiner. It is argued that convergence at the semantics-pragmatics interface is not impossible for L2 learners, but (un)acquirability may be constrained by asymmetries in the L1–L2 realizations of semantics-pragmatics mappings. The findings raise interesting questions for future research into factors that can influence the acquisition of external interfaces.

Earlier work indicates that bilingualism may positively affect statistical learning, but leaves open whether a bilingual benefit is (1) found during learning rather than in a post-hoc test following a learning phase and (2) explained by enhanced verbal short-term memory skill in the bilinguals. Forty-one bilingual and 56 monolingual preschoolers completed a serial reaction time task and a nonword repetition task (NWR). Linear mixed-effect regressions indicated that the bilinguals showed a stronger decrease in reaction times over the regular blocks of the task than the monolinguals. No group differences in accuracy-based measures were found. NWR performance, which did not differ between the groups, did not account for the attested effect of bilingualism. These results provide partial support for effects of bilingualism on statistical learning, which appear during learning and are not due to enhanced verbal short-term memory. Taken together, these findings add to a growing body of research on effects of bilingualism on statistical learning, and constitute a first step towards investigating the factors which may underlie such effects.

It has been suggested that bilingualism is beneficial for executive control and could have positive long-term effects by delaying the onset of symptoms of degenerative diseases. This research investigates, for the first time, the impact of bilingualism on executive control (monitoring and inhibitory control) in individuals with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a neurodegenerative disease which commonly causes deficiencies in the cognitive system. Bilingual and monolingual adults, with and without an MS diagnosis, performed a flanker task with two degrees of monitoring demands (high monitoring vs. low monitoring). Results showed that bilingual MS patients had inhibitory control and monitoring abilities that were similar to healthy bilingual controls. In contrast, monolingual MS patients showed similar inhibitory control but significantly worse monitoring abilities compared to monolingual healthy controls. We propose that the similar behaviour between bilingual groups suggests that bilingualism might counteract cognitive deficits related to MS, especially with respect to monitoring. The high monitoring cost observed in monolingual patients seems related to underlying deficits in monitoring and possibly switching, executive control abilities commonly impaired in MS patients from early stages. Our findings provide some preliminary evidence for the cognitive reserve hypothesis in bilingual MS patients.

Child-level factors such as input quantity and quality have received little attention by studies of bilingual language acquisition in situations of societal bilingualism. The present study addresses this gap by investigating the acquisition of quantified partitivity in Catalan-Spanish bilingualism. The two languages present different licensing conditions for noun ellipsis in quantified partitive objects: Catalan requires quantitative clitic en whereas Spanish requires only the quantifier. Bilingual participants (N = 338), ages 4–9, were administered two Oral Production Tasks, one for each language. Analyses of participants’ responses showed that a different combination of child-level factors accounted for their performance in each language, revealing dominance effects. Once participants were classified into three groups (Catalan-dominant, Balanced bilingual, and Spanish-dominant) according to their language dominance, between-group differences were found in each language with respect to the acquisition timeline of the respective structure.

Although SLA research has extensively investigated the role of lexical aspect in L2 acquisition of tense-aspect marking, the role of L1 is not yet fully understood. This paper investigates the effect of cross-linguistic variation in lexical aspect and explores how the learning of lexical aspect interacts with the acquisition of aspectual morphology, using oral picture-description and written judgment tasks. 391 learners of Japanese (L1 English, Chinese, and Korean) participated in the study. The results show that L2 learners have problems in rejecting incorrect L2 aspectual structures (but not in accepting correct ones) when such structures involve L1–L2 discrepancy in lexical aspect. The results also confirmed a strong L1 effect at the level of surface inflected verbal form, showing significantly higher accuracy for items for which direct translation yields correct meaning than those that do not. It is argued that L1 transfer may be playing an important role in the L2 acquisition of aspect in that both positive and negative transfer collectively determine the order of acquisition predicted by the Aspect Hypothesis.

This study investigated the extent to which phonological and orthographic overlap between the two languages of bilinguals predicts word processing abilities in their dominant and non-dominant languages. Forty-four English-dominant L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers and Spanish-dominant Spanish heritage speakers performed a lexical decision task while reading words in English and Spanish. We calculated orthographic and phonological similarity of cognate and noncognate words using the Levenshtein distance measure. Results showed that both bilingual groups benefited from orthographic similarity when reading Spanish and English words, whereas a facilitative effect was restricted to Spanish words that shared phonology across languages. These findings suggest a different contribution of phonological and orthographic similarity in bilingual word recognition, independently of language dominance.