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Title: Linking frequency to bilingual switch costs during real-time sentence comprehension
Bilinguals experience processing costs when comprehending code-switches, yet the magnitude of the cost fluctuates depending on numerous factors. We tested whether switch costs vary based on the frequency of different types of code-switches, as estimated from natural corpora of bilingual speech and text. Spanish–English bilinguals in the U.S. read single-language and code-switched sentences in a self-paced task. Sentence regions containing code-switches were read more slowly than single-language control regions, consistent with the idea that integrating a code-switch poses a processing challenge. Crucially, more frequent code-switches elicited significantly smaller costs both within and across most classes of switch types (e.g., within verb phrases and when comparing switches at verb-phrase and noun-phrase sites). The results suggest that, in addition to learning distributions of syntactic and semantic patterns, bilinguals develop finely tuned expectations about code-switching behavior – representing one reason why code-switching in naturalistic contexts may not be particularly costly.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2020813
PAR ID:
10547918
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Cambridge University Press
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
Volume:
27
Issue:
1
ISSN:
1366-7289
Page Range / eLocation ID:
25 to 40
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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