Looking at the evidence in visual world: eye-movements reveal how bilingual and monolingual Turkish speakers process grammatical evidentiality.

Seçkin Arslan,Claudia Felser,Roelien Bastiaanse

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01387

Seçkin Arslan, Claudia Felser + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01387

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Abstract

This study presents pioneering data on how adult early bilinguals (heritage speakers) and late bilingual speakers of Turkish and German process grammatical evidentiality in a visual world setting in comparison to monolingual speakers of Turkish. Turkish marks evidentiality, the linguistic reference to information source, through inflectional affixes signaling either direct (-DI) or indirect (-mIş) evidentiality. We conducted an eye-tracking-during-listening experiment where participants were given access to visual ‘evidence’ supporting the use of either a direct or indirect evidential form. The behavioral results indicate that the monolingual Turkish speakers comprehended direct and indirect evidential scenarios equally well. In contrast, both late and early bilinguals were less accurate and slower to respond to direct than to indirect evidentials. The behavioral results were also reflected in the proportions of looks data. That is, both late and early bilinguals fixated less frequently on the target picture in the direct than in the indirect evidential condition while the monolinguals showed no difference between these conditions. Taken together, our results indicate reduced sensitivity to the semantic and pragmatic function of direct evidential forms in both late and early bilingual speakers, suggesting a simplification of the Turkish evidentiality system in Turkish heritage grammars. We discuss our findings with regard to theories of incomplete acquisition and first language attrition.

Highlights

Evidentiality refers to the linguistic encoding of the type of information source an event description is based on, such as whether or not the event has been witnessed directly by the speaker (Aikhenvald, 2004)
Our results show that both early and late Turkish/German bilinguals differed from Turkish monolinguals in their processing of direct evidentiality
We have argued that our findings can be accounted for by assuming that the bilinguals take the direct evidential to be the ‘unmarked’ default form for referring to past events, in line with what has previously been reported by Arslan and Bastiaanse (2014) and Arslan et al

Summary

Introduction

Evidentiality refers to the linguistic encoding of the type of information source an event description is based on, such as whether or not the event has been witnessed directly by the speaker (Aikhenvald, 2004). We provide pioneering data on how grammatical evidentiality is processed by adult Turkish monolinguals, early bilinguals (i.e., heritage speakers of Turkish), and late bilinguals (i.e., L2 learners of German) in an eye-tracking-during-listening experiment. A possible consequence of bilingualism is the selective loss of properties of an individual’s first language. In early bilinguals (in particular, ‘heritage speakers’), properties of the first language have instead been argued to be prone to disrupted acquisition processes during childhood (e.g., Montrul, 2002, 2008, 2009; Polinsky, 2006; Albirini et al, 2011, 2013). Early bilinguals are often assumed to not have reached full acquisition of several properties of the heritage language, due to reduced input conditions

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