Paola E. Dussias

The effect of exposure on syntactic parsing in Spanish–English bilinguals

oa la hermana del criado que estaba enferma desde hactiempo). The results showed that whereas the Spanish monolingual speakers and the Spanish-English bilinguals with limited exposure reliably attached the relative clause to the first noun, the Spanish-English bilingual with extensive exposure attached the relative to the second noun. Results are discussed in terms of models of sentence parsing most consistent with the findings. Attachment preferences concerning sentences with a relative clause (RC) preceded by a complex noun phrase (NP) have been found to differ cross-linguistically. To illustrate, the sentence in (1) and its translated equivalent in (2), mean something very different in English and Spanish.

Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution in L2 Learners: Some Effects of Bilinguality on L1 and L2 Processing Strategies.

This study investigates whether proficient second language (L2) speakers of Spanish and English use the same parsing strategies as monolinguals when reading temporarily ambiguous sentences containing a complex noun phrase followed by a relative clause, such as Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California. Research with monolingual Spanish and English speakers (e.g., Cuetos & Mitchell, 1988) has suggested that, whereas English speakers show a bias to interpret the relative clause locally (i.e., to attach the relative clause to the noun immediately preceding it), Spanish speakers reading Spanish equivalents of English sentences attach the relative clause to the first noun in the complex noun phrase (i.e., nonlocal attachment). In this study, I assess whether speakers whose native language (L1) and L2 differ with respect to processing strategies were able to employ each strategy in the correct context. To this end, L1 Spanish–L2 English and L1 English–L2 Spanish speakers read ambiguous sentences in their L1 and L2. Data collection was carried out using a pencil-and-paper questionnaire and a self-paced reading task. Analyses of both sets of data revealed that both groups of speakers favored local over nonlocal attachment when reading in their L1 and L2. The results are discussed in the

Juggling Two Languages in One Mind: What Bilinguals Tell Us About Language Processing and its Consequences for Cognition

Psycholinguistics has traditionally focused on language processing in monolingual speakers. In the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase of research on bilingual speakers, recognizing that bilingualism is not an unusual or problematic circumstance but one that characterizes more language speakers in the world than monolingualism. Most critically, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have come to see that understanding the way that bilinguals negotiate the presence of two languages in the mind and brain may reveal processes that are otherwise obscured in monolingual speakers. In this chapter, we review the new research on language processing in bilinguals. Our starting point is the observation that both languages are active when bilinguals intend to use one language alone. The parallel activation of the two languages creates competition across the two languages, which renders the bilingual a mental juggler. Surprisingly, the resolution of cross-language competition imposes relatively few processing costs to bilinguals because they appear to develop a high level of cognitive control that permits them to switch between the two languages and, at the same time, effectively select the intended language with few errors. The expertise that bilinguals develop in juggling the two languages has consequences for language processing, because both the native and second languages change as bilingual skill is acquired, and also for domain general cognitive processes, with the result that executive function is enhanced in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. We suggest that recent research on language and cognitive processing in bilinguals requires important revisions to models of language processing based on monolingual speakers alone. In this way, bilingualism is not only an interesting phenomenon in its own right, but an important tool for cognitive and language scientists.

WHEN GENDER AND LOOKING GO HAND IN HAND

In a recent study, Lew-Williams and Fernald ( 2007 ) showed that native Spanish speakers use grammatical gender information encoded in Spanish articles to facilitate the processing of upcoming nouns. In this article, we report the results of a study investigating whether grammatical gender facilitates noun recognition during second language (L2) processing. Sixteen monolingual Spanish participants (control group) and 18 English-speaking learners of Spanish (evenly divided into high and low Spanish proficiency) saw two-picture visual scenes in which items matched or did not match in gender. Participants’ eye movements were recorded while they listened to 28 sentences in which masculine and feminine target items were preceded by an article that agreed in gender with the two pictures or agreed only with one of the pictures. An additional group of 15 Italian learners of Spanish was tested to examine whether the presence of gender in the first language (L1) modulates the degree to which gender is used during L2 processing. Data were analyzed by comparing the proportion of eye fixations on the objects in each condition. Monolingual Spanish speakers looked sooner at the referent on different-gender trials than on same-gender trials, replicating results reported in past literature. Italian-Spanish bilinguals exhibited a gender anticipatory effect, but only for the feminine condition. For the masculine condition, participants waited to hear the noun before identifying the referent. Like the Spanish monolinguals, the highly proficient English-Spanish speakers showed evidence of using gender information during online processing, whereas the less proficient learners did not. The results suggest that both proficiency in the L2 and similarities between the L1 and the L2 modulate the usefulness of morphosyntactic information during speech processing.

Effects of reading span and plausibility in the reanalysis of wh-gaps by Chinese-English second language speakers:

This study utilizes a moving window technique to investigate how individual cognitive resources (operationalized in terms of reading span scores) might modulate the extent to which native English speakers and Chinese second language (L2) learners of English utilize plausibility information to recover from an initial misparse in the processing of long-distance wh-questions. Consistent with findings in the previous literature, both groups postulated a filler-gap dependency at the earliest possible position. This was evidenced by subject—object extraction parsing asymmetries that were indicative of an initially incorrect filler-gap analysis. Additionally, it was found that plausibility did not prevent initial misparses, but affected how fast participants recovered from misanalysis, with implausible analyses facilitating recovery. However, only the English L2 participants in the higher span group resembled English native readers in their ability to exploit plausibility information in this way. We conclude that the individual cognitive resources of the learner are an important factor in determining the extent to which sentence processing might be qualitatively similar or different in a first language (L1) and a second language.

Parsing a first language like a second: The erosion of L1 parsing strategies in Spanish-English Bilinguals

Past research suggests that parsing processes in a bilinguals first language (L1) can undergo changes as a function of exposure to a second language (L2). Evidence for this claim comes from studies that have examined how Spanish-English bilinguals resolve temporarily ambiguous sentences containing a complex noun phrase followed by a relative clause, as is the case in “Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California.” Previous studies indicate that whereas monolingual Spanish speakers attach the relative clause to the first noun in the complex noun phrase (non-local attachment), monolingual English speakers interpret the relative clause locally (i.e., attach the relative clause to the noun immediately preceding it). With respect to bilinguals, recent research with Spanish-English bilinguals and professional translators (e.g., Dussias 2001, 2003; Parede, 2004) have shown that bilinguals attach the relative clause to the second noun in the complex noun phrase, when reading in Spanish, their first language. The differences observed between monolingual and bilingual speakers have been attributed to experience in a second language immersion environment. For example, Dussias (2003) argues that extensive exposure to a preponderance of English constructions resolved in favor of local attachment can render this interpretation more available, resulting in the low attachment preference observed in Spanish-English bilinguals. Of interest in the present paper is to assess whether speakers with fewer years of immersion experience in the L2 environment than those reported in previous studies employ the correct strategy in each of their languages. To this end, eye-movement data was collected while proficient L1 Spanish/L2 English speakers read ambiguous sentences of the type described above, in their first language, and their performance was compared to a monolingual Spanish group. Analyses revealed that the L1 Spanish speakers of English favored local over non-local attachment when reading in their first languages. The results are most congruent with exposure-based or parallel interactive models of sentence parsing as postulated by Brysbaert & Mitchell (1996), Mitchell & Cuetos (1991) and Mitchell, Cuetos, Corley & Brysbaert (1995), given the assumption within these models that frequency-based exposure affects parsing decisions.

Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain

The use of two or more languages is common in most of the world. Yet, until recently, bilingualism was considered to be a complicating factor for language processing, cognition, and the brain. The past 20 years have witnessed an upsurge of research on bilingualism to examine language acquisition and processing, their cognitive and neural bases, and the consequences that bilingualism holds for cognition and the brain over the life span. Contrary to the view that bilingualism complicates the language system, this new research demonstrates that all of the languages that are known and used become part of the same language system. The interactions that arise when two languages are in play have consequences for the mind and the brain and, indeed, for language processing itself, but those consequences are not additive. Thus, bilingualism helps reveal the fundamental architecture and mechanisms of language processing that are otherwise hidden in monolingual speakers.

Cross-Linguistic Differences and Their Impact on L2 Sentence Processing.

Using a self-paced reading task, the present study investigates how highly proficient second language (L2) speakers of German with English as their native language process unambiguous wh-subject-extractions and wh-object-extractions in German. Previous monolingual research has shown that English and German exhibit different processing preferences for the type of wh-question under investigation, due in part to the robust case-marking system in German – a morphosyntactic feature that is largely absent in English (e.g., Juffs and Harrington, 1995; Fanselow, Kliegl and Schlesewsky 1999; Meng and Bader, 2000; Juffs, 2005). The results revealed that the L2 German speakers utilized case-marking information and exhibited a subject-preference similar to German native speakers. These findings are discussed in light of relevant research regarding the ability of L2 speakers to adopt native-like processing strategies in their L2.

When language switching has no apparent cost: lexical access in sentence context

We report two experiments that investigate the effects of sentence context on bilingual lexical access in Spanish and English. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences in Spanish and English that included a marked word to be named. The word was either a cognate with similar orthography and/or phonology in the two languages, or a matched non-cognate control. Sentences appeared in one language alone (i.e., Spanish or English) and target words were not predictable on the basis of the preceding semantic context. In Experiment 1, we mixed the language of the sentence within a block such that sentences appeared in an alternating run in Spanish or in English. These conditions partly resemble normally occurring inter-sentential code-switching. In these mixed-language sequences, cognates were named faster than non-cognates in both languages. There were no effects of switching the language of the sentence. In Experiment 2, with Spanish-English bilinguals matched closely to those who participated in the first experiment, we blocked the language of the sentences to encourage language-specific processes. The results were virtually identical to those of the mixed-language experiment. In both cases, target cognates were named faster than non-cognates, and the magnitude of the effect did not change according to the broader context. Taken together, the results support the predictions of the Bilingual Interactive Activation + Model (Dijkstra and van Heuven, 2002) in demonstrating that bilingual lexical access is language non-selective even under conditions in which language-specific cues should enable selective processing. They also demonstrate that, in contrast to lexical switching from one language to the other, inter-sentential code-switching of the sort in which bilinguals frequently engage, imposes no significant costs to lexical processing.

Chapter Seven – Juggling Two Languages in One Mind: What Bilinguals Tell Us About Language Processing and its Consequences for Cognition

Psycholinguistics has traditionally focused on language processing in monolingual speakers. In the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase of research on bilingual speakers, recognizing that bilingualism is not an unusual or problematic circumstance but one that characterizes more language speakers in the world than monolingualism. Most critically, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have come to see that understanding the way that bilinguals negotiate the presence of two languages in the mind and brain may reveal processes that are otherwise obscured in monolingual speakers. In this chapter, we review the new research on language processing in bilinguals. Our starting point is the observation that both languages are active when bilinguals intend to use one language alone. The parallel activation of the two languages creates competition across the two languages, which renders the bilingual a mental juggler. Surprisingly, the resolution of cross-language competition imposes relatively few processing costs to bilinguals because they appear to develop a high level of cognitive control that permits them to switch between the two languages and, at the same time, effectively select the intended language with few errors. The expertise that bilinguals develop in juggling the two languages has consequences for language processing, because both the native and second languages change as bilingual skill is acquired, and also for domain general cognitive processes, with the result that executive function is enhanced in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. We suggest that recent research on language and cognitive processing in bilinguals requires important revisions to models of language processing based on monolingual speakers alone. In this way, bilingualism is not only an interesting phenomenon in its own right, but an important tool for cognitive and language scientists.