Late Bilinguals Are Sensitive to Unique Aspects of Second Language Processing: Evidence from Clitic Pronouns Word-Order.

In two self-paced reading experiments we asked whether late, highly proficient, English-Spanish bilinguals are able to process language-specific morpho-syntactic information in their second language (L2). The processing of Spanish clitic pronouns' word order was tested in two sentential constructions. Experiment 1 showed that English-Spanish bilinguals performed similarly to Spanish-English bilinguals and revealed sensitivity to word order violations for a grammatical structure unique to the L2. Experiment 2 replicated the pattern observed for native speakers in Experiment 1 with a group of monolingual Spanish speakers, demonstrating the stability of processing clitic pronouns in the native language. Taken together, the results show that late bilinguals can process aspects of grammar that are encoded in L2-specific linguistic constructions even when the structure is relatively subtle and not affected for native speakers by the presence of a second language

Trilingual conversations: a window into multicompetence

A recurrent theme in the literature on trilingual language use is the question of whether there is a specific “trilingual competence.” In this paper we consider this question in the light of codeswitching patterns in two dyadic trilingual conversations between a mother and daughter conducted in (Lebanese) Arabic, French, and English. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of codeswitching in both conversants shows that, despite the fact that both subjects are fluent in all three languages, uses of switching are significantly different for mother and daughter across a number of features, including relative frequency of different switch types, and the incidence of hybrid constructions involving items from two or more languages. The subjects appear to display qualitatively distinct profiles of competence in the trilingual mode. This in turn leads to the conclusion that the facts of trilingual language use are best characterized in terms of “multicompetence” (Cook, 1991). The paper concludes with some further reflections on the uniqueness of trilingual language use (an “old chestnut” in trilingualism research, cf. Klein, 1995)

Syntactic development in early foreign language learning: Effects of L1 transfer, input and individual factors

This study explores parallels and differences in the comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses between early foreign-language (FL) learners and monolingual children. We test for (a) effects of syntactic first-language (L1) transfer, (b) the impact of input on syntactic development, and (c) the impact of individual differences on early FL syntactic development. We compare the results to findings in child second language (L2) naturalistic acquisition and adult FL acquisition. Following work on adult FL acquisition, we carried out a picture-based interpretation task with 243 child FL learners in fourth grade at different regular, partial, and high-immersion schools in Germany plus 68 monolingual English children aged 5 to 8 years as controls. The child FL learners display a strong subject-first preference but do not appear to use the L1 syntax in comprehension. Input differences across different schools affect overall accuracy, with students at high-immersion FL schools catching up to monolingual performance within 4 years of learning. Finally, phonological awareness is implicated in both early FL learning and naturalistic child L2 development. These findings suggest that early FL development resembles child L2 acquisition in speed and effects of individual factors, yet is different from adult FL acquisition due to the absence of L1 transfer effects.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Contributions to the functional neuroanatomy of morphosyntactic processing in L2

Studies about bilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA) have a long tradition within linguistic and psycholinguistic research. With the global population becoming more and more multilingual and the recent proliferation of research in cognitive neuroscience, an increasing number of studies examining the way our brain is able to learn, represent, and handle more than one language at the same time are currently available. However, few attempts have been made to transpose psycholinguistic models of SLA into functional neuroanatomic models. An important problem that arises when pursuing this goal is partially due to the delay in the development of cognitive neuroscience of language compared to psycholinguistics. In general, neurolinguistic models focus on very broad and general questions about bilingualism, whereas psycholinguistic research is already at the stage of addressing more specific and fine-tuned questions. This Granularity Mismatch Problem (Poeppel & Embick, 2005) in the degree of zooming into this research topic is not exclusive of L2 research, but it is present in language research in general (Hauser & Bever, 2008). In either case, it often becomes difficult to put together the results from these different perspectives into one integrated model

Experimental methods to study atypical language development

In this chapter we present current issues on experimental methods in the study of atypical language development with a focus on developmental language disorders (DLD). We first present a short history of terminology surrounding DLD and follow this with a discussion of critical topics related to DLD assessment including cross-linguistic research, multilingualism, persisting disorders in teenagers, age-differences (pre-school, school age, adolescence, and adults) in manifestations and domains studied, language comprehension versus production, and cognitive assessment. We also bring focus to the question of matching control groups in the study of atypical language development. We present the most common methods used in the investigation of language impairments from the behavioural and neurocognitive perspectives. We provide an overview of the issues related to establishing equivalence between groups with and without language impairments. We conclude with recommendations for practice and future directions in the study of atypical language development

First language attrition: state of the discipline and future directions

The overwhelming bias for investigations of bilingualism is to focus on the increase of knowledge and crosslinguistic traffic from the L1 to the L2. Developments which concern loss, deterioration or reduced accessibility of knowledge and traffic from the L2 to the L1 are much less well-studied and understood, and are usually treated as a somewhat marginal issue. The present contribution provides an overview of research in first language attrition and argues that changes to the first language system are part and parcel of the development of bilingual knowledge and processing. As such, they can help provide additional insight into controversial issues, such as questions about the existence of maturational constraints in L2 learning, and potentially help resolve these matters

Language processing in bilingual children and adults: evidence from filler-gap dependencies and garden path sentences

The present thesis examines morphosyntactic processing in bilingual children and adults. It bridges gaps in the existing literature in three ways. Firstly, previous work on bilingual children has focused on inflectional morphology but has not examined the timecourse of processing in terms of misinterpretation and real time reanalysis or use of information of different sources to aid disambiguation. Second, it extends the use of the visual world eye-tracking paradigm to research in morphosyntactic processing in bilingual children. Third, for the adults, it compares early/native bilinguals to monolinguals and late bilinguals / L2 learners. Two linguistic phenomena were investigated with adults and children; which-questions and garden-path sentences in English. Overall, both bilingual children and adults showed qualitatively similar patterns of processing to their monolingual counterparts. All groups experienced greater difficulty with structures where there was ambiguity and a need for syntactic reanalysis, i.e. object which-questions and garden-path sentences, suggesting incremental processing. The main difference between monolinguals and bilinguals is that of speed; bilinguals appeared to process sentences slower than monolinguals even when their comprehension accuracy was equally as high. This difference was found for both children and adults, as evidenced by the reaction times or changes in the gaze data, and was generally not more pronounced in sentences where reanalysis is required. With regards to the bilingual adults, the early/native bilinguals clustered with the L2 learners in terms of processing speed but more so with the monolingual adults in terms of accuracy. The bilingual groups showed a reduced utilisation of information from various sources to aid processing. Bilingual adults and children made use of number mismatch between the two noun phrases in the study on which-questions to facilitate disambiguation; however, they showed this effect just for off-line comprehension accuracy and not for real time processing, i.e. in the gaze data. The bilinguals also did not show consistent use of referential context to disambiguate in the study on garden path sentences, although this was also the case for the monolingual adults and children. In sum, the results from the studies in this thesis suggest the both bilingual adults and children were equally as able as their monolingual counterparts at an end stage but differed to the monolinguals on more fine-grained measures of real time processing. These measures point to qualitatively similar but more protracted over time processing for bilinguals and with more limited use of facilitatory information to disambiguate

Interference in native and non-native sentence processing

The primary aim of my target article was to demonstrate how careful consideration of the working memory operations that underlie successful language comprehension is crucial to our understanding of the similarities and differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing. My central claims were that highly proficient L2 speakers construct similarly specified syntactic parses as L1 speakers, and that differences between L1 and L2 processing can be characterised in terms of L2 speakers being more prone to interference during memory retrieval operations. In explaining L1/L2 differences in this way, I argued a primary source of differences between L1 and L2 processing lies in how different populations of speakers weight cues that guide memory retrieval

The brain signature for reading in high-skilled deaf adults: behavior and electrophysiological evidence

327 p.La presente tesis investiga cómo se da el procesamiento de la información sintáctica y semántica en lectores sordos competentes. En primer lugar, investigamos qué similitudes y/o diferencias comparten los lectores sordos con los lectores oyentes nativos. En segundo lugar, puesto que sabemos que la experiencia lingüística impacta el procesamiento del lenguaje en el cerebro, también comparamos el mismo grupo de lectores sordos con un grupo de bilingües tardíos del español. Para tanto, evaluamos estas propuestas a través de la técnica de electroencefalograma (EEG) y de los Potenciales Evocados Relacionados a Eventos (ERP) para comprender cómo es la respuesta fisiológica de lectores sordos durante una tarea de lectura de frases. Las respuestas a estas preguntas aportarán conocimiento sobre los mecanismos cognitivos de los buenos lectores sordos, y conllevan implicaciones prácticas respecto a la creación de nuevos métodos de enseñanza