German-English Bilinguals Research Articles

Syntactic priming in German–English bilinguals during sentence comprehension

A longstanding question in bilingualism is whether syntactic information is shared between the two language processing systems. We used an fMRI repetition suppression paradigm to investigate syntactic priming in reading comprehension in German–English late-acquisition bilinguals. In comparison to conventional subtraction analyses in bilingual experiments, repetition suppression has the advantage of being able to detect neuronal populations that are sensitive to properties that are shared by consecutive stimuli. In this study, we manipulated the syntactic structure between prime and target sentences. A sentence with a passive sentence structure in English was preceded either by a passive or by an active sentence in English or German. We looked for repetition suppression effects in left inferior frontal, left precentral and left middle temporal regions of interest. These regions were defined by a contrast of all non-target sentences in German and English versus the baseline of sentence-format consonant strings. We found decreases in activity (repetition suppression effects) in these regions of interest following the repetition of syntactic structure from the first to the second language and within the second language.Moreover, a separate behavioural experiment using a word-by-word reading paradigm similar to the fMRI experiment showed faster reading times for primed compared to unprimed English target sentences regardless of whether they were preceded by an English or a German sentence of the same structure.We conclude that there is interaction between the language processing systems and that at least some syntactic information is shared between a bilingual's languages with similar syntactic structures.

Task Context Effects in Bilingual Nonword Processing

To investigate the language-specific or language-integrated nature of bilingual lexical processing in different task contexts, we studied how bilinguals process nonwords that differ in their relative resemblance to the bilinguals' two languages in different versions of the lexical decision task. Unbalanced German-English bilinguals performed a pure-German, a pure-English, and a mixed lexical decision task on the same set of nonwords that were either very English-like or very German-like. Rejection latencies for these two nonword categories were reversed in the pure-English and pure-German conditions: Nonwords that were more similar to the current target language were rejected more slowly. In the mixed task, reaction times were generally slower, and nonwords resembling the participants' subdominant language (English) were harder to reject. The results suggest that task context substantially alters the criteria for the word/nonword decision in bilinguals.

Syntactic anomaly elicits a lexico‐semantic (N400) ERP effect in the second language but not the first

Recent brain potential research into first versus second language (L1 vs. L2) processing revealed striking responses to morphosyntactic features absent in the mother tongue. The aim of the present study was to establish whether the presence of comparable morphosyntactic features in L1 leads to more similar electrophysiological L1 and L2 profiles. ERPs were acquired while German-English bilinguals and native speakers of English read sentences. Some sentences were meaningful and well formed, whereas others contained morphosyntactic or semantic violations in the final word. In addition to the expected P600 component, morphosyntactic violations in L2 but not L1 led to an enhanced N400. This effect may suggest either that resolution of morphosyntactic anomalies in L2 relies on the lexico-semantic system or that the weaker/slower morphological mechanisms in L2 lead to greater sentence wrap-up difficulties known to result in N400 enhancement.

Effects of morphosyntactic gender features in bilingual language processing*,**

AbstractA central issue in bilingual research concerns the extent to which linguistic representations in the two languages are processed independently of each other. This paper reports the results of an empirical study and a model stimulation, which provide evidence for the interactive view, which holds that processing is not independent. Specifically, a reading experiment examined whether morpho‐syntactic features associated with lexical representations in a bilinguals' native language, in this case the masculine gender feature associated with the er ending of agentive nouns in German, are automatically activated by the processing of morphologically related representations in their second language, in this case English agentive nouns that end in er. Experimental findings suggest that the German–English bilinguals have a bias to interpret the referents of such nouns as male relative to English monolinguals. Subsequent computational simulation studies with an interactive activation network confirmed that this effect is due to the influence of the morphosyntactic er representation in the bilingual models that is absent in the monolingual models. The results provide evidence for an interactive view of bilingual memory and processing for language learners of age 8 and above.

Effects of morphosyntactic gender features in bilingual language processing

A central issue in bilingual research concerns the extent to which linguistic representations in the two languages are processed independently of each other. This paper reports the results of an empirical study and a model stimulation, which provide evidence for the interactive view, which holds that processing is not independent. Specifically, a reading experiment examined whether morpho-syntactic features associated with lexical representations in a bilinguals’ native language, in this case the masculine gender feature associated with the er ending of agentive nouns in German, are automatically activated by the processing of morphologically related representations in their second language, in this case English agentive nouns that end in er. Experimental findings suggest that the German–English bilinguals have a bias to interpret the referents of such nouns as male relative to English monolinguals. Subsequent computational simulation studies with an interactive activation network confirmed that this effect is due to the influence of the morphosyntactic er representation in the bilingual models that is absent in the monolingual models. The results provide evidence for an interactive view of bilingual memory and processing for language learners of age 8 and above.

A case of psychogenic fugue: I understand, aber ich verstehe nichts

Psychogenic fugue is a disorder of memory that occurs following emotional or psychological trauma and results in a loss of one’s personal past including personal identity. This paper reports a case of psychogenic fugue in which the individual lost access not only to his autobiographical memories but also to his native German language. A series of experiments compared his performance on a variety of memory and language tests to several groups of control participants including German–English bilinguals who performed the tasks normally or simulated amnesia for the German language. Neuropsychological, behavioral, electrophysiological and functional neuroimaging tests converged on the conclusion that this individual suffered an episode of psychogenic fugue, during which he lost explicit knowledge of his personal past and his native language. At the same time, he appeared to retain implicit knowledge of autobiographical facts and of the semantic or associative structure of the German language. The patient’s poor performance on tests of executive control and reduced activation of frontal compared to parietal brain regions during lexical decision were suggestive of reduced frontal function, consistent with models of psychogenic fugue proposed by Kopelman [The Handbook of Memory Disorders, 2nd ed., Wiley, Chichester, 2002, p. 451] and Markowitsch [Memory, Consciousness, and the Brain, Psychology Press, Philadelphia, 2000, p. 319].

Structural priming across languages

In structural priming, the structure of one sentence is echoed in the structure of a second sentence that may be otherwise unrelated to the first. It can occur without the intention to create syntactic parallelism and without specific pragmatic, thematic, and lexical support across utterances. To explore whether it can also occur without specific language support, when the source of priming is an utterance in a different language, we investigated structural priming in fluent German-English bilinguals. After producing a designated sentence in either their first (German) or second (English) language, speakers extemporaneously described an unrelated pictured event in the other language. The primed constructions were datives (prepositional and double-object datives) and transitives (actives and passives). The results showed that the production of German dative sentences primed the subsequent use of English datives, and the production of English datives primed German datives. German and English passives with different structures did not prime one another. The results offer evidence for a structural source of priming and suggest a common psycholinguistic scaffolding for the bilingual phenomena of codeswitching and transfer. More broadly, they support the argument for basic psycholinguistic continuities among language learning, normal and bilingual language use, and language change.

Bilingual education/bilingualism

HTML view is not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button. 03–204Bilash, Olenka S. E. (U. of Alberta, Canada). The challenges and successes of developing a literacy community in a minority language in Western Canada: An action research study. Foreign Language Annals (New York, USA), 35, 3 (2002), 307–19.03–205Capirci, Olga (Inst. of Psychology, Nat. Research Council (CNR), Rome, Italy; Email: capirci@ip.rm.cnr.it), Iverson, Jana M., Montanari, Sandro and Volterra, Virginia. Gestural, signed and spoken modalities in early language development: The role of linguistic input. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge, UK), 5, 1 (2002), 25–37.03–206Francis, Norbert (Northern Arizona U., USA; Email: norbert.francis@nau.edu). Modular perspectives on bilingualism. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK), 5, 3 (2002), 141–61.03–207Ghadessy, Mohsen (Zhongshan U., Guangzhou, P. R. China; Email: mghadessy@hotmail.com) and Nicol, Mary. Attitude change in bilingual education: The case of Brunei Darussalam. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK), 5, 2 (2002), 113–28.03–208Gutiérrez-Clellen, Vera F. (San Diego State U., CA, USA; Email: vclellen@mail.sdsu.edu). Narratives in two languages: Assessing performance of bilingual children. Linguistics and Education (New York, USA), 13, 2 (2002), 175–97.03–209Helot, Christine and Young, Andrea (Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, France; Emails: christine.helot@alsace.iufm.fr; andrea.young@alsace.iufm.fr). Bilingualism and language education in French primary schools: Why and how should migrant languages be valued? International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK), 5, 2 (2002), 96–112.03–210Holowka, Siobhan, Brosseau-Lapré, Françoise (McGill U., Canada) and Petitto, Laura Ann (Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, USA; Email: Laura-Ann.Petitto@Dartmouth.edu). Semantic and conceptual knowledge underlying bilingual babies' first signs and words. Language Learning (Malden, MA, USA), 52, 2 (2002), 205–62.03–211Huver, Emmanuelle (Université Nancy 2, France). Quelle scolarisation pour les enfants de migrants? [What kind of schooling do immigrants' children receive?] Mélanges CRAPEL (Nancy, France), 26 (2001), 111–36.03–212Jake, Janice L. (Midlands Tech. Coll., USA; Email: jakej@midlandstech.com), Myers-Scotton, Carol and Gross, Steven. Making a minimalist approach to codeswitching work: Adding the Matrix Language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge, UK), 5, 1 (2002), 69–91.03–213Montrul, Silvina (U. of Illinois at Urbana.Champaign, USA; Email: montrul@uiuc.edu). Incomplete acquisition and attrition of Spanish tense/aspect distinctions in adult bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge, UK), 5, 1 (2002), 39–68.03–214Pavlenko, Aneta (Temple U., Philadelphia, USA). Bilingualism and emotions. Multilingua (Berlin, Germany), 21, 1 (2002), 45–78.03–215Piske, Thorsten (U. of Kiel, Germany), Flege, James Emil, MacKay, lan R. A. and Meador, Diane. The production of English vowels by fluent early and late Italian-English bilinguals. Phonetica (Basel, Switzerland), 59, 1 (2002), 49–71.03–216Silliman, Elaine R. (U. of South Florida, USA; Email: silliman@chuma1.cas.usf.edu), Bahr, Ruth Huntley, Brea, Maria R., Hnath-Chisolm, Theresa and Mahecha, Nancy R. Spanish and English proficiency in the linguistic encoding of mental states in narrative retellings. Linguistics and Education (New York, USA), 13, 2 (2002), 199–234.03–217Tse, Lucy (California State U., Los Angeles, USA; Email: ltse@calstatela.edu). Heritage language literacy: A study of US biliterates. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Clevedon, UK), 14, 3 (2001), 256–68.03–218Uribe de Kellett, Angela (U. of Newcastle, UK). The recovery of a first language: A case study of an English/Spanish bilingual child. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK), 5, 3 (2002), 162–81.03–219von Studnitz, Roswitha E. and Green, David W. (U. College, London, UK; Email: d.w.green@ucl.ac.uk). Interlingual homograph interference in German-English bilinguals: Its modulation and locus of control. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge, UK), 5, 1 (2002), 1–23.03–220Westby, Carol (Wichita State U., USA; Email: carol-westby@worldnet.at.net), Moore, Celia and Roman, Rosario. Reinventing the enemy's language: Developing narratives in Native American children. Linguistics and Education (New York, USA), 13, 2 (2002), 235–69.03–221Youssef, Valerie (The U. of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago; Email: youssef@carib-lin.net). Issues of bilingual education in the Caribbean: The cases of Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK), 5, 3 (2002), 182–93.

The cost of switching language in a semantic categorization task

German-English bilinguals decided whether a visually presented word, either German or English, referred to an animate or to an inanimate entity. Bilinguals were slower to respond on a language switch trial than on language non-switch trials but only if they had to make the same response as on the prior trial (e.g., two successive “animate” responses). If they had to change their response from the prior trial, a switch of language speeded responses. This interaction between language switching and response type was abolished for the translations of words previously presented. We consider the implications for theories of language control.

Interlingual homograph interference in German–English bilinguals: Its modulation and locus of control

We used a visual lexical decision task to explore control processes in proficient German–English bilinguals. Participants pressed a “yes” button if the letter string was a word in English and a “no” button if it was not. Our critical stimuli were interlingual homographs such as the low-frequency English word TAG. In German, TAG means “day” and is a relatively high frequency word. Overall, our participants responded more slowly to an interlingual homograph than to a control word matched to its English frequency. As we expected, the size of this interference effect depended on various factors. First, including “pure” German words in the stimulus list increased interference. However, participants were able to reduce the degree of interference over time even in the presence of such words. Second, in the absence of pure German words, informing participants about the presence of interlingual homographs from the start of the experimental trials allowed them to reduce interference. We examined the locus of these control effects by analysing carry-over, i.e., reaction times on word trials immediately following an interlingual homograph or its matched control. We inferred from the patterns of interference and carry-over that the primary locus for reducing interference is external to the bilingual lexico-semantic system. We consider the implications of these data for theories of control.

Identifying German–English cognates, false cognates, and non-cognates: methodological issues and descriptive norms

We investigated 563 German–English nouns for the purposes of identifying cognates, false cognates and non-cognates. Two techniques for identifying cognates were used and compared: (i) De Groot and Nas's (1991) similarity-rating technique and (ii) a translation-elicitation task similar to that of Kroll and Stewart (1994). The results obtained with English-speaking participants produced 112 cognates, 94 false cognates, and 357 non cognates and indicated that the two techniques yielded similar findings. Rated similarity of German–English translation pairs and translation accuracy were positively correlated. We also investigated whether the presence of German-specific characters and the availability of German pronunciation information influenced similarity ratings and translation accuracy. Ratings for translation pairs in which the German word contained a language-specific character were lower and the word was translated less accurately. Participants provided with pronunciation information rated German–English translation pairs as being more similar and translated German words correctly more often than participants who did not receive pronunciation information. We also report the relationships among word frequency, rated imageability and the performance measures. The resulting database of information is intended to be a resource for researchers interested in cognitive processing in German–English bilinguals.

Quels changements linguistiques dans l’attrition de la L1 chez le bilingue tardif?

This article reports on some data of a psycholinguistic study of first language attrition in german first generation immigrants. On the basis of the individual variation in performance evidenced by the data, I claim that L1 attrition in late bilinguals is not only the consequence of lack of L1 use. A comparison of the performance of three selected German-English bilinguals rather suggests that, among other factors, contact with other immigrants – as is the case in immigrant communities – might generate changes in linguistic competence. In this case it would be necessary to distinguish to types of intra-generational L1 attrition: (a) attrition in isolated immigrants who never use L1 in the host country, which mainly yields processing difficulties and problems in lexical retrieval, and (b) attrition in members of immigrant communities where changes of the linguistic norm within the community can take place, resulting in modifications of linguistic competence.

Lexical Decision and Language Switching

Previous research has suggested that there is a cost in switching between language in a lexical decision task. This paper reports two studies exploring its basis. Experiment 1 confirmed such a cost in a lexical decision task in which the target language for a trial is specified. German-English bilinguals were slower on switch trials compared to nonswitch trials. Experiment 2 changed the task to one in which a word response could be given independent of language. In this case, there was still a cost of switching between languages but it was much reduced. We propose that in bilingual lexical decision a cost arises because of the process of testing the output of the lexico-semantic system. Different lexical decision tasks induce different output tests. We also outline a mechanism that could give rise to these effects based on the notion of competition between language schemas.

Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens

Part 1 Bilingualism: what is it? is it an advantage or disadvantage? Part 2 Establishing bilingualism in the family: motives for creating bilingualism infant bilingualism. Part 3 Communication in the family - how it works: stages of linguistic development the children's communication strategies the children addressing both parents simultaneously addressing father plus monolingual child to child and brother to sister communication private speech dreams communication with animals and toys. Part 4 Departures from normal language choice in the family: role play the mother's knowledge of German privacy storytelling by the parents code switching and triggering quotational switching - in storytelling. Part 5 Influences from outside the immediate family: attitudes of monolingual English speakers peer group pressure German-English bilinguals. Part 6 Further problems: reluctance to speak the home language effect of the father's not being a native speaker of German. Part 7 Measuring proficiency in both languages: vocabulary, fluency, accuracy, storytelling syntactic, lexical, phonological and semantic transference. Part 8 Biliteracy. Part 9 How the children view bilingualism. Part 10 Two varieties of German meet - a family language and a national language. Part 11 Other aids to the development of bilingualism: books, magazines, records, games, outings, shops etc schools and playgroups camps and clubs visits to and from the linguistic homeland language maintenance for parents.

Language Reversion Revisited

In the 1970s, Clyne conducted linguistic research on German-English and Dutch-English bilinguals in Australia. In the course of the study, he found evidence for second language attrition and first language reversion among his elderly informants (Clyne, 1981). In 1987, some 40 of the 200 Dutch informants tested in 1971 were retested in order to get longitudinal data on language maintenance and loss. The data show surprisingly little loss of proficiency in both Dutch and English over the years. This calls for a revision of the language reversion hypothesis as stated by Clyne in 1981. In the present article the hypothesis is modified to the extent that there seems to be some kind of “critical threshold” (Neisser, 1984) that has to be reached in order to retain the second language. First language reversion seems to be a common phenomenon among those immigrants who did not reach this threshold, but not among immigrants who did.

Sentence processing by non-native speakers of English: Evidence from the perception of natural and computer-generated anomalous L2 sentences

The present study was undertaken in order to evaluate the intelligibility of semantically anomalous natural and computer-generated (synthetic) sentences presented to native and non-native listeners. Subjects included 24 German-dominant German English bilinguals and 24 English monolinguals. Detailed analyses of subjects' orthographic transcriptions of the sentences revealed that: (1) the non-native listeners made far more errors than did the native listeners in response to natural and computergenerated speech; (2) for both groups and in both listening conditions, the largest number of errors were phonemic substitutions; (3) the non-native listeners had a significantly lower percentage of morpho-syntactic errors and a significantly higher percentage of lexico-semantic errors than did the native listeners; and (4) the non-native listeners had a significantly larger number of “other” (including explicable) errors than did the native listeners. In addition, there was evidence that the non-native listeners' responses were, in part, characterized by transfer from their L1. Both a language competence account and an information-based theory of L2 sentence processing are considered in the discussion of differences between the native and non-native listeners' responses to this task.

Memory for concrete and abstract words in bilingual speakers

The dual-code hypothesis of Paivio was taken to imply that bilingual speakers should show poorer memory for the language in which concrete words appeared than the language in which abstract words appeared. The results of two experiments with German-English bilinguals, one using a recognition memory procedure and the other using the free recall task, found the opposite state of affairs. Semantic recognition, free recall, and memory for language of occurrence were all found to be superior for concrete words. Two hypotheses were advanced. One, called the "cultural imagery hypothesis," assumes that images may be culture specific, while the other hypothesis interprets the outcome in terms of the relations between stored attributes. An analysis of the experiment as an attribute-memory procedure is presented.

How does language familiarity influence stuttering under delayed auditory feedback?

The purpose of the experiment was to determine how language familiarity affects stuttering under delayed auditory feedback (DAF). In one condition we compared DAF interference in German-English bilinguals speaking their more and less familiar languages. A language familiarity effect was found: the bilinguals spoke faster and stuttered less under DAF when speaking their more familiar language. This effect was independent of both delay time and language spoken. Moreover, the slower rate in the less familiar language could not explain the language familiarity effect since instructing Ss to slow down their rate of speech decreased rather than increased their stuttering. A second condition showed that the language familiarity effect was not due to paying more attention to feedback in the less familiar language. Rather, practice or experience in producing the motor organization of speech seemed to underlie the effect of language familiarity.

Sentence construction in German-English bilinguals.

The characteristics of the sentence production systems of German-English bilinguals were investigated using a sentence completion technique in which either the first or the second half of a sentence was deleted. It was found that the results for bilinguah matched the results obtained for separate groups of German and English speakers, provided that the bilinguals were highly fluent in both languages.