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Abstract Bilingual speakers are prompted to remain in a single language, switch between languages, or codeswitch by regulating the concurrent activation of their language systems and adapting to the demands of the communicative context. Unlike studies that compare language switching in bilinguals in distinct interactional and geographical contexts, this study investigates heritage bilinguals who may be required to manage their home and societal languages differently within the course of a day. We examined how this variation affects linguistic and cognitive factors in spoken production. Critically, picture naming in Spanish and English appeared to rely on different mechanisms of cognitive control: greater reliance on proactive control led to decreased performance in Spanish picture naming but increased performance in English. Although convergent with findings that L2-immersed bilinguals prefer proactive control strategies, the findings with heritage bilinguals suggest that recruitment of cognitive control during speech planning is more dynamic than has been previously reported.
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The processing of negative polarity items in Turkish-German Bilinguals
This study investigates the processing of Turkish negative polarity items (NPIs) using a self-paced reading experiment with end-of-sentence acceptability judgements. Our participants included adult Turkish monolinguals, as well as Turkish-German early (i.e. heritage speakers) and late bilinguals. We explored whether intrusion effects from illusory NPI licensors extended to bilingual Turkish speakers who had acquired German either early or late in their lives. Stimuli included 30 sets of sentences in six experimental conditions, with the presence of both an NPI and of a suitable licenser (verb negation) systematically manipulated. Our results indicate that bilingual Turkish readers show intrusion effects in their processing of NPIs. Our findings suggest that the structural conditions for NPI licensing in Turkish might be degraded or less stable in heritage bilinguals.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1730289
- PAR ID:
- 10131048
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of GALA 13: Language Acquisition and Development
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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