Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Online First

A developmental account of how bilinguals organise syntactic knowledge is crucial to understanding their mental representations. While adult studies suggest that syntactic representations can be shared across languages, evidence from child and adolescent heritage speakers remains limited and mixed. We conducted two syntactic priming experiments with adolescent heritage speakers of Polish in the UK (N = 35, mean age = 15;3) to test whether they would produce (1) relative clauses (RCs) instead of adjectival phrases for attributive relationships, and (2) possessor-second structures for possessive relationships with referential possessors, following cross-linguistic priming. A third experiment tested first-generation Polish-speaking adult immigrants in the UK (N = 32) on the same tasks. Adolescents were resistant to priming for RCs, whereas adults showed bidirectional priming. Both groups were primed to produce possessor-second structures only in Polish, where this is the canonical word order. Results indicate that increased proficiency and language experience facilitate priming for less frequent, complex structures like RCs, supporting shared syntax only in adults. For highly frequent constructions like possessives, where Polish and English differ in word order, priming occurred only when consistent with the language-specific preference. This underscores the role of frequency, canonicity, and complexity in shaping bilingual syntactic representations across development.

This epistemological article explores the phenomena of language attrition and stabilization in returnees — bilinguals who spent formative years abroad and later returned to their parents’ homeland. Drawing on empirical and longitudinal research, the paper distinguishes between two returnee profiles: heritage speakers returning to their parents’ country of origin and children who temporarily lived abroad due to parental relocation. Both groups experience a drastic shift in linguistic input, offering a unique window into mechanisms of language development, decline, and re-stabilization. The focus lies on the attrition of early-acquired L2s following return, under conditions of input loss. Studies reviewed here demonstrate how age of return, L2 proficiency, literacy, and continued exposure modulate the rate and depth of attrition. Evidence from case studies — such as German-speaking children returning to Turkey or Portugal — shows that children who return before puberty are especially vulnerable to rapid attrition. In contrast, Japanese–English returnees often retain aspects of their L2, attributed to more consistent post-return input. We support a multidimensional approach to language attrition that integrates linguistic, cognitive, and environmental variables. Returnees serve as a crucial population for refining theories of bilingual development, revealing how input shifts, maturation, and individual differences interact to shape language trajectories.

Research investigating the psycholinguistic foundations of contact-induced grammatical language change suggests that new structures may enter a language through cross-linguistic priming in bilinguals. However, this assumes that priming effects can emerge even for structures which are ungrammatical in the target language. In the present study, we test this assumption by investigating cross-linguistic ungrammatical priming for analytic comparatives between Turkish and German. In a self-paced reading experiment, Turkish–German bilinguals read German target sentences with grammatically incorrect analytic comparatives (e.g., *mehr interessant). These were preceded by a Turkish prime sentence which included a Turkish analytic comparative (daha konforlu) or an otherwise identical indicative control prime (konforlu). The results showed significantly faster reading times for ungrammatical German comparatives following Turkish comparative primes than following indicative primes. In an additional grammaticality-judgement task, Turkish–German bilinguals rated sentences with ungrammatical German analytic comparatives as significantly more acceptable than monolingually-raised German participants. These results suggest that cross-linguistic priming can even occur for ungrammatical structures. We conclude that cross-linguistic ungrammatical priming constitutes a candidate for a mechanism driving contact-induced language change in bilingual individuals.

Bilingualism has sometimes been associated with cognitive boosts, particularly in working memory (WM). However, it remains unclear whether such benefits extend to the comprehension of syntactically complex structures. We investigated this through a gamified character-selection task assessing comprehension of subject-relative clauses and object-relative clauses among monolingual (n = 31) and bilingual (n = 28) French-speaking children, as well as monolingual (n = 45) and bilingual (n = 43) German-speaking children aged 3 to 12. We examined whether comprehension correlated with verbal WM, measured through a nonword repetition task, and interference resolution ability, assessed through a Simon task and an analysis of comprehension errors. The results indicated no bilingual advantage: object-relative clauses were more difficult than subject-relative clauses across all groups and languages. While interference-related errors — misinterpreting object-relative clauses as subject-relative clauses more frequently than vice versa — surfaced in all groups, verbal WM correlated with object-relative comprehension only in French. These findings are discussed in relation to current theories of bilingualism and WM in language comprehension.

This paper explores the concept of multiple grammars (MGs) and their implications for linguistic theory, language acquisition, and bilingual language knowledge. Drawing on evidence from phenomena such as scope interactions, verb raising, and agreement patterns, I argue that seemingly identical surface structures can be undergirded by different grammatical analyses that may compete within speaker populations. I then propose a typology of MG distributions, including shared MGs, competing MGs, and partial MGs, each with distinct consequences for acquisition and use. Contrary to expectations of simplification, bilingualism can sometimes lead to an expansion of grammatical analyses and does not always lead to the elimination of MGs. The paper discusses methods for predicting environments conducive to MGs, considering factors such as structural ambiguity and silent elements. The examination of MGs compels us to explore how learners navigate underdetermined input, especially in bilingual contexts, and to examine the interplay between gradient acceptability judgments and categorical grammatical distinctions. The study of MGs offers valuable insights into language variation, change, and the nature of linguistic competence.

Language contact can lead to short-term effects like cross-linguistic influence but might also contribute to long-term processes such as contact-induced language change. Recent studies suggest that structural priming may serve as a cognitive mechanism linking synchronic and diachronic outcomes in contact-induced language change since it occurs across languages and persists over time. Heritage language speakers, immersed in extreme language contact situations and often presenting an innovative language use, provide a valuable testing ground of the possible agents that produce and transmit these changes. Moreover, age is also thought to influence speakers’ tendencies to adopt innovative constructions with younger speakers being more accepting than older ones. In this study, we investigate whether priming serves as a mechanism underlying language change and its impact on speakers’ long-lasting linguistic choices. We conducted within and across languages priming experiments on motion event constructions focusing on the differences in the distribution of framing patterns between Italian (verb-framed language) and German (satellite-framed language), testing younger and older Italian HLS living in Germany. Our findings contribute to understanding the mechanisms underlying cross-linguistic influence and its role within language change and identifying its agents, bridging the gap between historical linguistics and psycholinguistic research on bilingual populations.