Can Heritage Speakers Predict Lexical and Morphosyntactic Information in Reading?

Irina A Sekerina,Olga Parshina,Anastasiya Lopukhina

doi:10.3390/languages7010060

Abstract

Ample evidence suggests that monolingual adults can successfully generate lexical and morphosyntactic predictions in reading and that correct predictions facilitate sentence comprehension. In this eye-tracking corpus reading study, we investigate whether the same is true for reading in heritage language. Specifically, we ask whether heritage speakers (HSs) of Russian are able to anticipate lexical and/or morphosyntactic information of the upcoming words in the sentence and whether they differ in the predictions from monolingual children and L2 learners. We are also interested in whether the literacy level (i.e., Russian literacy experience or reading fluency in English) influences lexical and morphosyntactic prediction. Our results indicate that HSs as well as other groups were able to anticipate the specific lexical item, and the ability was contingent on the Russian literacy experience and reading fluency in dominant English as evident in some of the early and late eye-tracking measures. Similar to children and L2 learners, the word class and the verb number predictability affected reading times in HSs, but HSs were the only group to anticipate the number of the upcoming noun. We discuss findings in respect to the utility account of the bilingual prediction and divergent attainment trajectory of the heritage language development.

Highlights

Research on language prediction in monolinguals has provided ample evidence that monolingual adults can predict the upcoming information in listening and reading
The results indicate that the morphosyntactic information was much more predictable than the lexical information
Our findings support the predictions of the utility account (Kaan and Grüter 2021), according to which the bilinguals who have more non-dominant language experience and for whom the reading task is not too resource-demanding, should ‘opt’ to engage in lexical prediction while reading, starting from the early stages of the word recognition

Summary

Introduction

Research on language prediction in monolinguals has provided ample evidence that monolingual adults can predict the upcoming information in listening and reading (see Pickering and Gambi 2018, for review). When monolingual adults read, they can successfully generate both lexical (i.e., activation of a specific lexical item and its grammatical form) and morphosyntactic predictions (i.e., activation of morphosyntactic features such as word class, noun gender, number, person and verb tense) from the context of the sentence These predictions greatly facilitate language comprehension (Balota et al 1985; Boston et al 2008; Demberg and Keller 2008; Huettig 2015). With the onset of this switch, the amount of heritage language input and output typically plummets, resulting in the developmental ‘freeze’ of the heritage language abilities In the literature, such developmental outcome is termed as ‘divergent attainment’ and it predicts that adult HSs would resemble young school-age monolingual children in language abilities (Polinsky and Scontras 2020), including reading skills (Parshina et al 2021a, 2021b) and likely including prediction abilities in reading

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