Linguistics Commons^™

Association Strength Between Concepts As The Origin Of The "Foreign Language Effect", Emilia Ezrina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilinguals sometimes make decisions in verbal tasks differently in their first (L1) and second (L2) language. This phenomenon is known as the foreign language effect (FLE), and it suggests strong connections between language and cognition. On the one hand, it is possible that L2 “blunts” emotional language. However, the FLE can be observed in non-emotional tasks. Therefore, it is possible that L2 requires more deliberate processing due to increased cognitive load, leading to more rational decisions. The support for each explanation is mixed.

In this thesis we propose looking for a single explanation for all instances of the FLE. After …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Inner Speech Between Monolingual And Bilingual Speakers, Thomas Sears

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Inner speech is an individual’s silent, inner monologue; a growing amount of evidence indicates that inner speech is very common among both monolingual and multilingual speakers. Studies have shown that important cognitive functions are involved in inner speech pertaining to psychological development, however connections between inner speech and language acquisition/usage across speakers have been less of a focus. This study investigates the frequency and degree to which inner speech is used between monolingual English speakers and early-onset bilingual English/Spanish speakers by using a survey called the Revised-Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire (VISQ-R) by Alderson-Day et al. (2018). The aim of …

Language Switch Costs In Urdu-English Bilinguals : A Behavioral Study, Ranjeeta Mahraj

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study examines language switch costs, as there is a recent body of work showing that there are behavioral "costs" involved when bilinguals switch between their two languages. A particular point of debate concerns symmetry, regarding whether it is more costly (i.e., takes longer) to switch from one of a bilinguals’ languages to the other, or vice versa. In the current study, a partial replication of (Struck & Jiang, 2022), data was collected online from 90 Urdu- English bilinguals living in the US and Pakistan on a language background questionnaire, and a Lexical Decision Task (LDT), designed to measure the …

The Influence Of Native Language And Sentence Form On Memory Of Motion Events, Stephanie L. Lopez

LSU Master's Theses

This study utilized four experiments to investigate the extent to which native language influences memory in accordance with linguistic relativity. In Experiment 1, monolingual English speakers and Spanish/English bilinguals were divided into a verbal encoding condition and a verbal suppression encoding condition and watched motion events of low or high physical salience. Participants engaged in a recognition memory task followed by an event memory similarity judgment task. In Experiment 2, native monolingual English speakers were divided into an English-like (or manner-on-verb) description group, a Spanish-like (or path-on-verb) description group, mimicking the language groups of Experiment 1 respectively, and a verbal …

Agreement In Languages That Do Not Agree: The Processing Of Accented Speech In Chinese-English Bilinguals, Stanley Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Speech produced with an unfamiliar accent is quite commonly encountered, especially in higher education settings, in which a large number of international students are found. As a result, it is inevitable for students and teachers alike to be exposed to different varieties of English across multiple settings. The current study examines the effects of such accents on grammatical processing in bilinguals.

English requires grammatical agreement between the subject and the verb (e.g., the 3rd person singular “s” on the verb in The dog jumps); that is, subject-verb (S-V) agreement is obligatory. S-V agreement must hold even in …

Turkish-German Heritage Speakers’ Predictive Use Of Case: Webcam-Based Vs. In-Lab Eye-Tracking, Onur Özsoy, Büsra Çiçek, Zeynep Özal, Natalia Gagarina, Irina A. Sekerina

Publications and Research

Recently, Özge et al. have argued that Turkish and German monolingual 4-year- old children can interpret case-marking predictively disregarding word order. Heritage speakers (HSs) acquire a heritage language at home and a majority societal language which usually becomes dominant after school enrollment. Our study directly compares two elicitation modes: in-lab and (remote) webcam- based eye-tracking data collection. We test the extent to which in-lab e��ects can be replicated in webcam-based eye-tracking using the exact same design. Previous research indicates that Turkish HSs vary more in the comprehension and production of case-marking compared to monolinguals. Data from 49 participants–22 Turkishmonolinguals and …

Multilingualism And Memory: Investigating Possible Differences In The Abilities Of Monolingual And Multilingual College Students, Clara E. Barned

Honors Projects

This study investigated whether there is a difference in the memories of monolingual and multilingual undergraduate students using simple memorization tasks. There were 46 participants, 30 of which were monolingual (only knew one language) and 16 of which were multilingual (knew two or more languages). There was found to be no significant difference between the performance of the two groups, with the data generating a p-value of 0.557. This study further suggests related avenues of research and ways in which the study could be improved in the future.

The Relative Cost Of Codeswitching: An Electrophysiological Study Contrasting Language Switching Versus Lexical Predictability, Iris Strangmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Neurophysiological sentence processing studies are inconsistent about the additional costs that language switching within sentences (i.e., codeswitching) may bring about (cf. Valdés Kroff et al., 2020; Yacovone et al., 2021). There is discussion about whether there are, in fact, additional costs and, if so, about the origins of those costs, since some findings are consistent with effortful processing when comprehending single-language (not switched) words observed in monolingual studies. Specifically, studies are divided on whether codeswitched words are more difficult to lexically access than single-language equivalents of similar semantic predictability, as indexed by an increased N400 effect. The same studies, however, …

El Uso Del Espanglish En Escuelas Como Una Expresión De La Identidad De La Tercera Cultura, Isabella N. Yeager

Global Tides

Este artículo analiza la conexión entre el fenómeno lingüístico del “espanglish” y el concepto sociológico de la identidad de la tercera cultura en el contexto del uso del cambio de código y el translenguaje por parte de los estudiantes de primaria. Busca demostrar que el espanglish es una expresión única de una identidad cultural híbrida, así como un léxico híbrido. Aunque la pedagogía convencional a veces puede buscar compartimentar cada idioma, la investigación que presenta este estudio demuestra que el contacto lingüístico entre el inglés y el español en el aula y más allá a menudo sirve no como una …

Language-Internal Reanalysis Of Clitic Placement In Heritage Grammars Reduces The Cost Of Computation: Evidence From Bulgarian, Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan, Irina A. Sekerina, Davood Tofighi, Maria Polinsky

Publications and Research

The study offers novel evidence on the grammar and processing of clitic placement in heritage languages. Building on earlier findings of divergent clitic placement in heritage European Portuguese and Serbian, this study extends this line of inquiry to Bulgarian, a language where clitic placement is subject to strong prosodic constraints. We found that, in heritage Bulgarian, clitic placement is processed and rated differently than in the baseline, and we asked whether such clitic misplacement results from the transfer from the dominant language or follows from languageinternal reanalysis. We used a self-paced listening task and an aural acceptability rating task with …

Finding The Means : The Bilingual Disparity In Semantic Context Use For Processing, Iyad Ghanim

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Early and late bilinguals both differ in the speed with which they comprehend language or in their processing of sentences compared to monolinguals. This is possibly a result of crosslanguage interference, differential allocation of cognitive resources, or some other difference in language-dependent processes. This dissertation presents research and review focusing on one such language dependent process — the use of sentential context and lexical-associative semantic information — to process sentences. In a series of studies, 34 bilinguals and 28 monolinguals complete a retroactive masked priming task, which provides an isolated measure of the use of semantic information to backwards recognize …

Phonetic Contrast In New York Hasidic Yiddish Vowels: Language Contact, Variation, And Change, Chaya R. Nove

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the acoustic correlates of the length contrast in New York Hasidic Yiddish (HY) peripheral vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/, and compares them across four generations of native speakers for evidence of change over time. HY vowel tokens are also compared to English vowels produced by the New York-born speakers to investigate the influence of language contact on observed changes. Additionally, the degree to which individual speakers orient towards or away from the Hasidic community is quantified via an ethnographically informed survey to examine its correlation with /u/-fronting, a sound change that is widespread in the non-Hasidic English-speaking …

Cross-Linguistic Morphosyntactic Influence In Bilingual Speakers Of Jamaican Creole And Jamaican English, Taryn R. Malcolm

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilingualism in Jamaica is of considerable consequence, as most individuals are early bilinguals, speaking both a variety of Jamaican Creole (JC) from birth and having standardized English (sE) as the language of instruction in education. Immigrants from Jamaica to the United States are an ideal population to examine how cross-linguistic influence (CLI) impacts morphosyntax as JC and sE differ in morphosyntactic constructions, including verb tense- marking, subject-verb agreement, and copula use. While much of the work in the field of CLI has examined spoken language pairs with varying degrees of similarity (or difference) between the languages, examining CLI in a …

Acquiring English Then Reacquiring Indonesian: A Study Of Family Language Policy, Aris Bahari Rizki, Muchamad Sholakhuddin Al Fajri

The Qualitative Report

This study investigates how family language policies are shaped and developed in five Indonesian scholars’ families who live in England. More specifically, it analyses parents’ attitudes towards children’s bilingualism and second language development focusing on the investigation of factors that can influence parental language ideologies and the patterns of language practices within the families. Data were obtained from participant observations, fieldnotes, and semi-structured interviews. All the data were then analysed using inductive analysis approaches proposed by Cohen et al. (2011) and Thomas (2006) which include reading the transcripts several times, identifying the texts related to the purpose of the study, …

Bilingual Language Stimulation Strategies: Recasting And Expansion: A Creative Research Based Product, Merri Lindsey

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

The purpose of this research-based creative product was to provide a workshop to parents of toddlers providing information on preventative language stimulation strategies, specifically recasting and expansion. The original proposed study intended to analyze outcomes based on a pretest/posttest design, but due to recruitment challenges, it changed. Four remote synchronous workshops were planned: one for hearing parents of children acquiring ASL, one for hearing parents of children acquiring spoken English, one for deaf parents of children acquiring spoken English and ASL, and one for deaf parents of children acquiring ASL. Due to struggles with participant recruitment, I instead developed a …

Language Co-Activation In Novice And Intermediate L2 Learners, Nicholas Sulier

Linguistics ETDs

One of the most intriguing aspects of bilingual speakers and signers is their ability to access both languages simultaneously. Though much research has been dedicated to understanding how two languages interact, or co-activate, within proficient bilinguals, less is understood about how and when novice and intermediate learners develop similar cross-language interactions. Thus, the current study aimed to uncover at what stages during novice and intermediate L2 development co-activation can be detected. It also investigated possible mechanisms behind co-activation. Specifically, the study attempted to clarify if any detected co-activation amongst L2 learners is dependent on associations between lexical and conceptual representations, …

The Shape Of The Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Testing The Cognate Continuum, Danielle Kristine Fahey

Theses and Dissertations

Items in the mental lexicon have three storage and processing strata, the concept, lemma, and lexeme, which equate to semantic, syntactic and phonological information. Lexical items relate to each other at each stratum. Bilingual lexicons, which contain items from all languages, may contain cognates, items sharing concepts and with overlapping lexemes. Because cognates likely relate at the lemma level also, this research proposed the Cognate Continuum, a categorization of cognates and noncognates in the bilingual mental lexicon. The Cognate Continuum includes three sets of cognates:

(i) true cognates have the closest phonology and syntax.

(ii) lemma cognates have close syntax …

Automaticity Of Lexical Access In Deaf And Hearing Bilinguals: Cross-Linguistic Evidence From The Color Stroop Task Across Five Languages, Rain G. Bosworth, Sarah C. Tyler, Eli M. Binder, Jill P. Morford

Articles

The well-known Stroop interference effect has been instrumental in revealing the highly automated nature of lexical processing as well as providing new insights to the underlying lexical organization of first and second languages within proficient bilinguals. The present cross-linguistic study had two goals: 1) to examine Stroop interference for dynamic signs and printed words in deaf ASL-English bilinguals who report no reliance on speech or audiological aids; 2) to compare Stroop interference effects in several groups of bilinguals whose two languages range from very distinct to very similar in their shared orthographic patterns: ASL-English bilinguals (very distinct), Chinese-English bilinguals (low …

National-Specific And Universal Means Of Expressing The Concepts "Winter" And "Summer” In The Russian And Uzbek Language Pictures Of The World, Otabek Timurovich Nosirov

Scientific reports of Bukhara State University

Background. In this article, Russian will be the source language, and Uzbek will be the language of comparison. Because, despite the structural differences between the Russian and Uzbek languages, our countries have a historical experience of social, cultural, and of course, linguistic interaction. Methods. Given that the language projections of the collective unconscious, in this case the conceptual opposition "winter-summer", do not have blood and racial inheritance, but belong to humanity as a whole, we can conclude that the deep or basic cognitive layers of the concepts of winter and summer in both the Russian and Uzbek languages contain a …

Public Perceptions Of Language Education In Taiwan: English In A Multilingual Context, Isabel Eliassen

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Language policy in Taiwan has been a focus of the government since the days of the Kuomintang (KMT) dictatorship, when languages other than Mandarin were ruthlessly suppressed. After democratization, local languages were allowed again, but soon English became Taiwan’s top language education priority. However, not all Taiwanese agree with the decision to prioritize English. Despite claims that English is important for economic and diplomatic reasons, my survey found that most Taiwanese did not support English education when it threatened local Taiwanese languages. The survey also found that despite a significant amount of debate in academic literature about the role of …

1.5 Generation Korean-American Young Adults' Bilingualism And Their Identity In The U.S., Hanna Kim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 20th century, particularly post-1965, there has been rapid growth in the Korean-American population in the U.S. The number of 1.5 generation Korean-Americans has also increased. 1.5 generation Korean-Americans can take advantage of learning both languages and cultures in the two countries which can help them become bilingual and bicultural individuals. However, previous studies about the language experience and identity of Korean-Americans have mainly focused on the first or second-generations (Kang, 2013; M. Park, 2005) rather than 1.5 generations. Some of these studies have focused more on children at an early age (E. S. Park, 2005; Zhou, 1997) instead …

Developing Consecutive Interpreter’S Communicative Skills Of Emotive-Empathic Interaction, Jameela Abduganieva Researcher

Philology Matters

Consecutive interpretation is a special form of oral communication between people speaking different languages, representing different cultures, and it is carried out in any situation of intercultural communication in order to exchange thoughts, information, knowledge, labor results, products, emotions, values, relationships in the process of interaction.
A consecutive interpreter is a mediator of intercultural communication, and the development of emotive-empathic interaction skills of an interpreter promotes the successfullness of such communication.
Interpreters’ communicative skills of emotive-empathic interaction within consecutive interpretation may be defined as a communicative and speech act in a foreign language communication implemented independently and in an optimal …

Researching Paraguayan Guarani: The Minoritized Language Of The Majority, Josefina Bittar Phd Candidate

LAII Events

Paraguayan Guarani, one of the native languages of Paraguay, is spoken by more than 80% of the country’s population. However, despite government and societal efforts, Spanish remains the language of prestige, required for education opportunities and social mobility. In this presentation, Josefina Bittar will discuss the characteristics of Guarani-Spanish bilingualism in Paraguay, the importance of documenting linguistic practices in the country, and the role of researchers in challenging the population’s internalized prejudices about languages and their speakers.

Cross-Modal Distraction On Simultaneous Translation: Language Interference In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Violet Young

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Bilingualism has been studied extensively in multiple disciplines, yet we are still unsure how exactly bilinguals think. Though the existence of a bilingual advantage is debated, this effect has been shown in tasks using selective attention. These tasks study the effects of language interference, where two types of interference are observed: interlingual (between-languages) and intralingual (within one language). This study examines language interference in Spanish-English bilinguals using an auditory-visual simultaneous translation experimental setup. Sixteen college English monolinguals and 17 college Spanish-English bilinguals were tested. Participants translated or repeated words displayed on a screen while ignoring distractor words played through headphones. …

Eye-Movement Benchmarks In Heritage Language Reading, Olga Parshina, Anna K. Laurinavivhyute, Irina A. Sekerina

Publications and Research

This eye-tracking study establishes basic benchmarks of eye movements during reading in heritage language (HL) by Russian-speaking adults and adolescents of high (n = 21) and low proficiency (n = 27). Heritage speakers (HSs) read sentences in Cyrillic, and their eye movements were compared to those of Russian monolingual skilled adult readers, 8-yearold children and L2 learners. Reading patterns of HSs revealed longer mean fixation durations, lower skipping probabilities, and higher regressive saccade rates than in monolingual adults. High-proficient HSs were more similar to monolingual children, while low-proficient HSs performed on par with L2 learners. Low-proficient HSs differed from high-proficient …

Testing The Perceptual Magnet Effect In Monolinguals And Bilinguals, Michael C. Stern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous research has demonstrated an apparent warping of the perceptual space whereby the best exemplars or ‘prototypes’ of speech sound categories minimize the perceptual distance between themselves and neighboring stimuli in the same category. This phenomenon has been termed the ‘perceptual magnet effect’ (PME). The present study extends work on the PME to a speech sound category previously unstudied in this paradigm (American English /æ/), and to bilingual speech sound representation and perception. American English monolinguals and Turkish-English bilinguals completed identification tasks, category goodness rating tasks, and same-different discrimination tasks with synthesized vowel sounds from the American English /æ/ category—not …

La Complementariedad De Las Lenguas En El Code Switching: Un Principio Clave En El Bilingüismo, Noura El Sayed Rodríguez

Al-Kīmiyā

Complementarity is a principle and a sine qua non condition in code switching or in the bilingual communication process and is governed by its conditions, factors and components. The classic definition of code switching is the perfect switching of languages within the same communicative act. Bilinguals who have language skills in both languages often change code, those who speak one language much better than another, change less frequently. Such switching requires a high command of both languages as well as a complementarity between them. Something completely opposite to borrowing of words, where you really don’t have to master the language …

Language Transfer Between English And German: A Phonetics-Based Study Of Interactions Between Speakers' Native And Second-Language Vowel Systems, Emelia Bensonmeyer

Scripps Senior Theses

The present study addresses language contact processes in which the phonetic systems of the languages that bilinguals speak interact. Specifically, language transfer with respect to English and German was examined, focusing on native German speakers (L1) who learned English as a second language (L2). It employed as its central method an analysis of their vowel systems, both language-specifically and cross-linguistically. Extralinguistic variables were also considered, ranging from speakers’ age of acquisition (AOA) of English to their length of residence in an English-speaking environment to their consideration of home. Results indicated statistically significant differences between speakers’ production of /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ …

Some Methods Of Teaching Consecutive Interpreting In The Situational Conditions, Djamilya Abduganieva Researcher

Philology Matters

The article analyses the game method, as a method of teaching consecutive interpretation of senior students of a language university. At present, the role of the interpreter as an intercultural intermediary is growing, that implies the mastery of students’ skills in interpretation activities in various communication situations. The exercises-games presented in the article allow teachers to model different types of interpretation situations in the classroom and promote the willingness of future interpreters to carry out interpretation activities in real conditions of intercultural communication.The relevance of the purposeful formation of students' skills in consecutive interpreting is caused, on the one hand, …

Heritage Speaker And Late Bilingual L2 Relative Clause Processing And Language Dominance Effects, Leeann S. Stevens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traditionally, heritage speakers are recognized as a heterogeneous group whose skills in their heritage language are unlike those of monolinguals or L2 learners of that language. Indeed, much evidence confirms the cognitive and linguistic uniqueness of this population. However, highly proficient heritage speakers may pattern more similarly to another bilingual population than typically assumed: first-generation late bilinguals.

The present study examines group-level processing differences between Spanish heritage speakers and Spanish-English late bilinguals in English, the second-learned and current societal majority language of these populations. Dominance is also analyzed as a possible effect of group processing differences, since traditionally and definitionally …