Grammatical Predictions in Spanish-English Bilinguals and Spanish-Language Learners

Autor/inn/en	de los Santos, Guadalupe; Boland, Julie E.; Lewis, Richard L.
Titel	Grammatical Predictions in Spanish-English Bilinguals and Spanish-Language Learners
Quelle	In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46 (2020) 5, S.907-925 (19 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Boland, Julie E.) ORCID (Lewis, Richard L.)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0278-7393
DOI	10.1037/xlm0000764
Schlagwörter	Grammar; Predictor Variables; Spanish; Decision Making; Task Analysis; Nouns; Bilingualism; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Code Switching (Language); Eye Movements; Form Classes (Languages); Syntax; Language Processing; Language Proficiency; Language Tests; College Students; Visual Stimuli; Reading Rate; Advanced Students; Second Language Instruction; Native Language; Michigan + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Grammatik; Prädiktor; Spanisch; Decision-making; Entscheidungsfindung; Aufgabenanalyse; Bilingualismus; English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Augenbewegung; Analytischer Sprachbau; Sprachverarbeitung; Language skill; Language skills; Sprachkompetenz; Language test; Sprachtest; Collegestudent; Reading readiness; Reading speed; Lesegeschwindigkeit; Fortgeschrittener; Fremdsprachenunterricht
Abstract	Although bilingual individuals know 2 languages, research suggests that the languages are not separate in the mind. This is especially evident when a bilingual individual switches languages midsentence, indicating that mental representations are, to some degree, overlapping or integrated across the 2 languages. In 2 eye-tracking experiments, we investigated the nature of this integration during reading to examine whether incremental grammatical predictions generated by Spanish-English bilinguals (Experiment 1, N = 50) and Spanish-as-a-second-language learners (Experiment 2, N = 50) are language-specific or language-independent. As participants in same-language and mixed-language pairs performed a 2-string lexical-decision task, we measured eye fixation times on nouns in grammatical (determiner-noun) and ungrammatical (adverb-noun) contexts. In Experiment 1, bilingual participants read nouns faster following determiners than they read adverbs in both same- and mixed-language pairs, indicating that grammatical predictability in this context is language-independent. Surface-string bigram frequencies are unlikely to account for the results because the grammatical predictability effect was just as large for mixed-language (very low bigram frequency) as same-language (higher bigram frequency) pairs, and the effect was not modulated by the code-switching experience of participants. Experiment 2 found a similar, though nonsignificant, pattern for Spanish-language learners. When the data for Experiments 1 and 2 were combined, the effect of grammaticality did not interact with language congruency, participant group, or language proficiency, suggesting that both bilingual participants and language learners generated language-independent predictions. Our results support a bilingual model in which language-independent syntactic representations are involved in word-by-word, incremental syntactic processing, even within the most basic grammatical constituents. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01