Shrinking Your Deictic System: How Far Can You Go?

Mila Vulchanova,Jacqueline Collier,Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes,Valentin Vulchanov

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575497

Abstract

Languages around the world differ in terms of the number of adnominal and pronominal demonstratives they require, as well as the factors that impact on their felicitous use. Given this cross-linguistic variation in deictic demonstrative terms, and the features that determine their felicitous use, an open question is how this is accommodated within bilingual cognition and language. In particular, we were interested in the extent to which bilingual language exposure and practice might alter the way in which a bilingual is using deictic demonstratives in their first language. Recent research on language attrition suggests that L2 learning selectively affects aspects of the native language, with some domains of language competence being more vulnerable than others. If demonstratives are basic, and acquired relatively early, they should be less susceptible to change and attrition. This was the hypothesis we went on to test in the current study. We tested two groups of native Spanish speakers, a control group living in Spain and an experimental group living in Norway using the (Spatial) Memory game paradigm. Contra to our expectations, the results indicate a significant difference between the two groups in use of deictic terms, indicative of a change in the preferred number of terms used. This suggests that deictic referential systems may change over time under pressure from bilingual language exposure.

Highlights

Demonstratives are function words typically used to refer to physical, concrete entities in a realworld speech situation
In line with the hypothesis about time spent living in Norway as a predictor for different use of Spanish demonstratives, the use of este at 275 or 300 cm was tabulated alongside time living in Norway
Initial inspection of the data suggests longer exposure to the L2 measured in terms of length living in Norway was not associated with this different use of este by these two individuals

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Demonstratives are function words typically used to refer to physical, concrete entities in a realworld speech situation. Other parameters affecting the choice of demonstratives may refer to perspective-taking (e.g., for Turkish, Küntay and Özyürek, 2005), sociocentric proximity (Stevens and Zhang, 2013, 2014; Peeters et al, 2015), semantic features (Rocca et al, 2019), ownership, visibility, and familiarity of referent (Coventry et al, 2014), and proximity/distance of referent in relation to both speaker and hearer (i.e., Spanish, Catalan, and Japanese, Diessel, 1999; Jungbluth, 2003; Coventry et al, 2008) Given these considerations, the difference between the Spanish and Norwegian adnominal/pronominal demonstrative systems mainly lies in the morpho-lexical choice of demonstrative term, and the number of such terms, while both systems might well reflect other semantic distinctions, as documented in extant research. In line with Coventry et al (2008) we expected position of hearer to influence participants’ responses

Participants

Procedure and Design

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

DISCUSSION AND FINAL