The Bilingual Native Speaker Competence: Evidence From Explicit and Implicit Language Knowledge Using Elicited Production, Sentence-Picture Matching, and Pupillometry.

Anna-Lena Scherger,Timon Ludwigs,Gianna Urbanczik,Jasmin M Kizilirmak

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717379

Abstract

The present pilot study investigated potential effects of early and late child bilingualism in highly proficient adult bilinguals. It has been shown that some early second language (eL2) speakers stagnate when it comes to complex linguistic phenomena and that they display subtle difficulties in adulthood. Therefore, we have chosen the complex structure of double object constructions. We investigate the long-term achievement in a combined-method approach using elicited production, explicit comprehension by sentence-picture matching and a measure of implicit linguistic knowledge, namely pupillometry. This eye tracking method is suitable for measuring implicit reactions of the pupils to unexpected or ungrammatical stimuli. For production, ditransitive structures were elicited by means of a game. For comprehension, a sentence-picture matching task was conducted. Two pictures were shown on a monitor that were equal with respect to the involved objects, but the thematic roles of direct and indirect objects were interchanged. Items were controlled for length, gender, animacy, semantic likelihood and word order. Reaction times and accuracy scores were analyzed. To this end, N = 18 bilingual adult speakers of German (+ another language, mean age: 26.5) with different ages of onset participated in this study and were compared to N = 26 monolingual German adult speakers (mean age 23.9). All participants had a proficiency of German above 89% correct in placement and cloze tests. Results show fully comparable productive and comprehensive competencies in monolinguals and bilinguals including the reaction times in the sentence-picture matching task and a word order effect on the reaction times in both groups. In the pupillometry task, we found monolinguals and bilinguals to be sensitive to differing conditions with respect to grammatical and ungrammatical utterances. However, we find between group differences in pupil dilations in that bilinguals react differently to strong grammatical violations than monolinguals. These results are discussed with respect to the term of native speaker competence and the variation within both groups.

Highlights

In research on bilingual language acquisition and its outcome in adulthood, it has been shown that some of the children acquiring an early second language are doing well on this acquisition task and others struggle with more complex structures at some point in their acquisition process and stagnate or fossilize (Paradis, 2016). Paradis (2019) discusses eL2 children’s outcome and ultimate attainment in adulthood
We set up a model space with all reasonable models, including a null model, just including Participant as a random intercept
To evaluate whether we should include a factor Group dissociating a) monolingual vs. bilingual participants only, b) participants according to their age of German acquisition onset: from birth as L1, from birth as 2L1, early L2 onset, late L2 onset, c) participants based on the L1 case systems similar or different to German: same, similar, different, we compared three generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) including different versions of Group as a fixed-effects factor, plus random-effects factor Participant as random intercept

Summary

Introduction

In research on bilingual language acquisition and its outcome in adulthood, it has been shown that some of the children acquiring an early second language (eL2) are doing well on this acquisition task and others struggle with more complex structures at some point in their acquisition process and stagnate or fossilize (Paradis, 2016). Paradis (2019) discusses eL2 children’s outcome and ultimate attainment in adulthood. Paradis (2019) discusses eL2 children’s outcome and ultimate attainment in adulthood While they are able to reach high proficiency, are typically indistinguishable from monolingual speakers in conversation, and score within the normal range of monolingual performance in most language tasks, there are subtle differences between monolinguals and bilinguals with respect to production and grammaticality judgement tasks regarding complex morphosyntax in adulthood. In the present pilot study, we investigated in depth highly proficient bilingual adults with various ages of onset instead of focusing on moderating factors of the ability to become highly proficient in a second language (L2) For this purpose, we performed a study with respect to the different modalities of production and comprehension and implicit grammaticality judgements, regarding ditransitive structures, a complex morphosyntactic phenomenon. The purpose of this in-depth investigation of one linguistic phenomenon was to illuminate the term “native speaker” and to evaluate whether bilinguals exhibit a level of proficiency comparable to monolinguals’ performance on production, comprehension and implicit grammaticality judgement tasks

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