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1. Dual-language testing improves bilinguals’ verbal scores

   https://doi.org/10.1080/13854046.2024.2353409  

   Fernandez, Mercedes; Chavez, Maria Alejandra; Cabrera Ranaldi, Erika dlRM; Ayachit, Samruddhi; Friedman, Melissa (May 2024, The Clinical Neuropsychologist)

   Objective: Research demonstrates that college educated, English language dominant bilinguals underperform relative to English speaking monolinguals on tests of verbal ability. We investigated whether accepting responses in their two languages would reveal improved performance in bilinguals, and whether such improvement would be of sufficient magnitude to demonstrate the same performance level as monolinguals. Method: Participants were college students attending the same university. Spanish-English bilinguals were compared to English speaking monolinguals on the Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVAT), which include Picture Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, and Verbal Analogies. Results: When given the opportunity to respond in Spanish to items failed in English, bilinguals obtained significantly higher scores on all three subtests, and their performance matched that of monolinguals on Oral Vocabulary and Verbal Analogies. Conclusion: An “either-language” scoring approach may enable optimal measurement of verbal abilities in bilinguals. We provide normative data for use in applying the either-language scoring approach on subtests of the BVAT. We discuss the findings in the context of clinical assessment. 

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2. Language and categorization in monolinguals and bilinguals.

   Fairchild, Sarah; Papafragou, Anna (June 2019, Bilingualism)

   People assume that objects labelled alike belong to the same category. Here we asked whether the role of labels in categorization depends on individuals’ language experience, linguistic abilities, and/or cognitive abilities. We compared monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ use of phonologically licit words (zeg), illicit words (gsz), and non-linguistic frames (in addition to a baseline condition with no additional cues) in forming novel categories. For both groups, licit words affected categorization more than frames, especially in the absence of perceptual evidence for category boundaries; illicit words also shifted categorization preferences compared to frames. Furthermore, linguistic abilities predicted reliance on both licit and illicit words, and bilingualism predicted reliance on illicit words in categorization. Thus, in both monolinguals and bilinguals, novel (and even unconventional) linguistic labels act as unique category markers but their use in categorization depends on individual language processing skills (and, in some cases, exposure to a second language). 

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3. Evidence of syntactic convergence among Russian–Sakha bilinguals

   https://doi.org/10.22210/suvlin.2019.087.05  

   Grenoble, Lenore A.; Kantarovich, Jessica; Khokholova, Irena; Zamorshchikova, Liudmial (July 2019, Suvremena lingvistika)

   This paper illustrates the implementation of two basic experiments to test word order changes in Russian and Sakha, languages in long–standing contact. We hypothesize that changes in word order may correlate with deeper structural changes and la nguage shift. The experiments show that some speakers are shifting from Sakha to Russian: 4 from a sample of 30 speakers could not produce texts in Sakha, and one third of the sample produced sentences with some errors. At the same time, there were a significant number of mistakes in the Russian production experiments, indicating interference from Sakha and/or imperfect learning. A sociolinguistic questionnaire showed a high level of accuracy between speakers’ self–assessment of their proficiency in each of the target languages as measured by the experiments shown here. Moreover, the simple experiments themselves revealed a number of other production errors and proved to be a reasonable indicator of less than fluent proficiency and of at least the initial stages of language shift. 

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4. Listening to Code-Switching: Do Bilinguals' Language Backgrounds Matter?

   Johnson, MacKenzie; Brennan, Susan E (May 2024, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language)

   conference/workshop poster 

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5. The processing of negative polarity items in Turkish-German Bilinguals

   Arslan, Seckin; Lago, Sol; Yanilmaz, Aydogan; Drury, John E; Felser, C. (January 2019, Proceedings of GALA 13: Language Acquisition and Development)

   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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