Linguistic Experience Research Articles

The operationalization of bilingual linguistic experience and its relationship with executive function

Research of the relation between linguistic experiences and the executive function have been a hot topic in the field of psycholinguistics for over two decades. Considerable body of studies have provided both supporting and challenging evidence for the existence of such relation. The final answer about the relation between the linguistic experiences and the executive function has not been obtained yet, due to reconsiderations of the established methodological approaches and new theories still being developed, which challenge the validity of earlier findings. This article is an attempt to summarize and explain current trends in this line of studies, specifically focusing on the issue of operationalization of linguistic experiences. Bilingualism and multilingualism are complex constructs, composed of multiple elements that can have unique, independent effects on cognition, including language proficiency, manner and duration of language acquisition, current tendencies of language use. Earlier studies had a tendency to focus on a single element of language experience for categorical distinction between monolinguals and bilinguals, converging the great variability in the latter under a single category. Each element of linguistic experience has to be accounted for and carefully operationalized in a way that would allow reasonable comparison between different research on the topic. In addition to exploring the effects of various elements of linguistic experiences on cognitive control, interactions between those experiences also demand attention, which have been largely overlooked. Finally, each study has to be backed up by a solid theoretical background, which was argued to be a problem for the research of the relation between the linguistic experiences and the executive function, but has great potential for resolving the inconsistencies in research findings. Not all experiences with languages require effortful cognitive processing and adaptations, and even if some might, a comprehensive theory is required to explain how cognitive adaptations for language use can be generalized for other domains of cognition.

The combined effects of bilingualism and musicianship on listeners’ perception of non-native lexical tones

Non-native lexical tone perception can be affected by listeners’ musical or linguistic experience, but it remains unclear of whether there will be combined effects and how these impacts will be modulated by different types of non-native tones. This study adopted an orthogonal design with four participant groups, namely, Mandarin-L1 monolinguals and Mandarin-L1 and Cantonese-L2 bilinguals with or without musical training, to investigate effects of bilingualism and musicianship on perception of non-native lexical tones. The closely matched four groups, each encompassing an equal number of 20 participants, attended a modified ABX discrimination task of lexical tones of Teochew, which was unknown to all participants and consists of multiple tone types of level tones, contour tones, and checked tones. The tone perceptual sensitivity index of d’ values and response times were calculated and compared using linear mixed-effects models. Results on tone sensitivity and response time revealed that all groups were more sensitive to contour tones than level tones, indicating the effect of native phonology of Mandarin tones on non-native tone perception. Besides, as compared to monolinguals, bilinguals obtained a higher d’ value when discriminating non-native tones, and musically trained bilinguals responded faster than their non-musician peers. It indicates that bilinguals enjoy a perceptual advantage in non-native tone perception, with musicianship further enhancing this advantage. This extends prior studies by showing that an L2 with a more intricate tone inventory than L1 could facilitate listeners’ non-native tone perception. The pedagogical implications were discussed.

The perception of emotional prosody in Mandarin Chinese words and sentences

Emotional prosody refers to the ways in which the tone of voice can be modulated to convey emotions, feelings, and attitudes. Previous studies have explored the perception of emotional prosody and whether native speakers (L1) have an in-group advantage in recognizing the emotional prosody of their own cultural groups over non-native speakers. However, little is known about whether these findings in non-tonal languages can be generalized to tonal languages. Mandarin Chinese uses the tone of voice to encode word meanings in addition to emotional prosody. This study investigates the perception of emotional prosody in Mandarin Chinese using an emotion judgment task, focusing on the effects of emotion type (e.g., neutral, joy, anger, sadness) and syllable length (e.g., monosyllable, disyllable, trisyllable, and sentence). Three groups were included, consisting of 20 native Chinese speakers (native group), 20 L1-English L2-Chinese learners (second language group), and 20 native English speakers without Chinese learning experience (non-native group). The results revealed that all three groups can identify emotional prosody well above the chance level in Mandarin Chinese words and sentences. Moreover, the native group and the second language (L2) group showed an in-group advantage in recognizing emotional prosody compared to the non-native group, highlighting the impact of linguistic experience in addition to cultural backgrounds on the perception of emotional prosody. Notably, the effects of emotion type and syllable length differed across the three groups in terms of their perception of emotional prosody. The native group had difficulty identifying positive emotional prosody, whereas both the L2 group and the non-native group showed a pattern of improved accuracy as syllable length increased, with an interaction effect with emotion type.

EPS mid-career prize: An integrated framework for the learning, recognition and interpretation of words.

In this article, I review the evidence on the involvement of sleep and consolidation in word learning and processing during language comprehension, focusing on implications for theory. The theoretical basis for the review is a complementary systems account of word learning involving flexible (hippocampal) and stable (cortical) pathways to lexical knowledge. I argue that the accumulated data are consistent with a role for both pathways in both learning and recognition of lexical items, with sleep and consolidation supporting the transfer of recent experience between the pathways. The level of involvement of each pathway is dependent on key factors, such as consistency with prior knowledge in the case of learning, and reliance on context and/or automaticity in the case of recognition. As a consequence, the notion of a mental lexicon cannot really be restricted to just the listener's stable knowledge about words: flexible knowledge and recent experiences are also important. Furthermore, I argue that the flexible pathway plays a critical role even in the absence of new lexical items. The available evidence suggests that this pathway encodes (and potentially consolidates) recent linguistic experiences, providing potential benefits to interpretation of subsequent language and the long-term retention of knowledge. In conclusion, I propose that a dual-pathway account incorporating both flexibility and stability is necessary to explain the learning, recognition, and interpretation of words.

Characterizing English Preposing in PP constructions

The English Preposing in PP construction (PiPP; e.g., Happy though/as we were) is extremely rare but displays an intricate set of stable syntactic properties. How do people become proficient with this construction despite such limited evidence? It is tempting to posit innate learning mechanisms, but present-day large language models seem to learn to represent PiPPs as well, even though such models employ only very general learning mechanisms and experience very few instances of the construction during training. This suggests an alternative hypothesis on which knowledge of more frequent constructions helps shape knowledge of PiPPs. I seek to make this idea precise using model-theoretic syntax (MTS). In MTS, a grammar is essentially a set of constraints on forms. In this context, PiPPs can be seen as arising from a mix of construction-specific and general-purpose constraints, all of which seem inferable from general linguistic experience.

Is dialect proficiency associated with improved executive function?

Abstract A broad and extensive literature has investigated the cognitive consequences of bilingualism on cognitive control. Results from these studies, while controversial, support the conclusion that speaking a second language confers non-linguistic benefits. Whether other related linguistic experiences, such as dialect use, confer similar benefits remains an underexplored and open question. The common use of a diverse range of local dialects across China provides ideal conditions under which to explore this question. Using a dialectally heterogeneous sample of Mandarin-English bilingual young adults (n = 74), the present study investigated whether differences in dialect proficiency impacted on inhibition and attentional control while accounting for variation in language experience. Dialect proficiency was not associated with improved performance on the Simon task, Attention Network Test, or Flanker task, suggesting no benefits in inhibition or attentional control. Considerations for future studies investigating the influence of Chinese dialect experience on cognitive control are discussed.

Variation in VOT in English child-directed speech of English-Mandarin and English-Malay early bilinguals in Singapore

ABSTRACT Variability has been observed in the phonetic/phonological properties of child-directed speech from late-second language bilingual caregivers, but less is known about input variation among early bilinguals in multi-dialectal/multilingual contexts. This study examined English stop voicing contrasts in the adult-directed and child-directed speech of 30 Singaporean early bilingual mothers who differed in their other language (Mandarin/Malay) and language dominance. Results showed that, while Malay and Chinese mothers used similar voice onset time (VOT) for voicing contrast, they differed in where on the VOT continuum these contrasts were made, regardless of speech style and dominance. Compared to their English-dominant peers, Malay/Mandarin-dominant mothers also produced smaller contrasts overall. These patterns could be attributed to cross-linguistic influence, as well as effects of long-term language contact and the mothers’ linguistic experiences. Sub-phonemic variation adds complexity to child bilingual phonological acquisition, emphasising the need to consider input properties in sociolinguistically complex contexts.

German infants’ discrimination of the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast: Evidence from a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study

Young infants can discriminate many non-native sounds, but the discrimination ability is thought to decrease within the first year of life due to perceptual attunement. However, most studies tested infants’ perception cross-sectionally, without examining within-group change. To this end, the current study tested German infants’ discrimination of the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast both cross-sectionally and longitudinally using the visual habituation technique. In Experiment 1, 96 German-learning infants were tested cross-sectionally at 5–6, 8–9 and 12–13 months. Linear mixed-effects models revealed that while the 5–6-month-olds did not discriminate the contrast, the 8–9- and 12–13-month-olds showed signs of discrimination only when they were habituated with /ɛ/, in line with previous findings suggesting that changes from central to peripheral vowels in the F1/F2 vowel space are more noticeable than in the reverse direction. Moreover, the 8–9-month-olds showed a novelty preference, while the 12–13-month-olds showed a familiarity preference. In Experiment 2, the infants tested at 5–6 months in Experiment 1 were tested again at 8–9 and 12–13 months. Fifteen infants completed the three experiments. Here, only the 12–13-month-olds discriminated the contrast by showing a novelty preference but only when habituated with /æ/. Overall, both experiments showed gradual development of discrimination ability across the first year, which challenges the assumptions of perceptual attunement. We propose that the perceptual sensitivity for a non-native vocalic contrast can improve during development. The change in perceptual asymmetry tells us that the direction of asymmetry is not universal and can be altered by linguistic experience. The change from novelty to familiarity preference may be due to the emerging preference for the more native-like vowel as well as the effect of repeating experiments with the same infants. In sum, our cross-sectional and longitudinal results overlap broadly, but the potential effect of repeating experiments must be considered when interpreting longitudinal studies.

The (re)construction of the multilingual identity of a Chilean graduate student in South Korea: a narrative inquiry

ABSTRACT A growing number of students studying abroad in Asian countries face a common linguistic experience: the language of instruction in the courses they follow is English, which is not the language of the host country and international students whose L1 is neither English nor Korean must thus need to (re)construct their academic and personal identities in various multiple second languages (L2). This study presents the narrative of a Chilean student who had recently completed postgraduate studies in an English-taught programme at a South Korean university. It explores how she constructed a life for herself in South Korea and built a multilingual identity. It highlights in particular the tension she experienced between the two L2s involved: English and Korean. The participant was interviewed four times, and her answers were reconstituted into a narrative. Analysis of the narrative highlights four key themes: language learning enthusiasm, the learner’s investment in language learning, the process of identity reconstruction, and maintaining multilingualism.

A Study of Selected Racialised Linguistic Experience among International Students in the United Kingdom

The presence of linguistic diversity in many societies is widely acknowledged, yet it is often linked to various social challenges that must be addressed. These challenges are increasingly causing concern, particularly based on the experiences of immigrants from linguistically diverse backgrounds in western societies. Given the noticeable lack of discussions on the experiences of linguistic diverse groups, this study aims to investigate the experiences of linguistic diverse immigrants in Scotland. The study utilises interviews to extract responses from three immigrant international students. The interview consisted of 6 carefully crafted open-ended questions, employing a qualitative analytical approach. In the data analysis, Piller's (2016) theory of linguistic diversity was utilised. The research findings indicate that all three participants have experienced instances of linguistic discrimination due to their diverse backgrounds. Although linguistic diversity is acknowledged globally, it often leads to inequality rather than equality, as demonstrated in this study. This is because language is always assessed in relation to the speaker's skin colour and idea that only the western society has a standard mastery of English language.

The Image of a Kind Person in Russian and Kyrgyz Phraseological Units

Phraseological units are one of the unique sources of information about the historical, cultural and linguistic experience of any nation. The study of phraseological units, which reflect the idea of a kind person is a fundamental link for understanding the individual characteristics and behavior of a person. The article demonstrates a comparative analysis of Russian and Kyrgyz phraseological units, which represent the image of a kind person in two cultures. The comparison of Russian and Kyrgyz phraseological units describing the image of a kind person contributes to understanding the national and cultural values of the two nations. Based on the analysis, some similarities and differences in the content of phraseological units have been identified.

Neural correlates of phonetic categorization under auditory (phoneme) and visual (grapheme) modalities.

We tested whether the neural mechanisms of phonetic categorization are specific to speech sounds or generalize to graphemes (i.e., visual letters) of the same phonetic label. Given that linguistic experience shapes categorical processing, and letter-speech sound matching plays a crucial role during early reading acquisition, we hypothesized sound phoneme and visual grapheme tokens representing the same linguistic identity might recruit common neural substrates, despite originating from different sensory modalities. Behavioral and neuroelectric brain responses (ERPs) were acquired as participants categorized stimuli from sound (phoneme) and homologous letter (grapheme) continua each spanning a /da/ - /ga/ gradient. Behaviorally, listeners were faster and showed stronger categorization of phoneme compared to graphemes. At the neural level, multidimensional scaling of the EEG revealed responses self-organized in a categorial fashion such that tokens clustered within their respective modality beginning ∼150-250 ms after stimulus onset. Source-resolved ERPs further revealed modality-specific and overlapping brain regions supporting phonetic categorization. Left inferior frontal gyrus and auditory cortex showed stronger responses for sound category members compared to phonetically ambiguous tokens, whereas early visual cortices paralleled this categorical organization for graphemes. Auditory and visual categorization also recruited common visual association areas in extrastriate cortex but in opposite hemispheres (auditory = left; visual=right). Our findings reveal both auditory and visual sensory cortex supports categorical organization for phonetic labels within their respective modalities. However, a partial overlap in phoneme and grapheme processing among occipital brain areas implies the presence of an isomorphic, domain-general mapping for phonetic categories in dorsal visual system.

Exposure to Language in Video and its Impact on Linguistic Development in Children Aged 3-11: A Scoping Review.

Early exposure to books can benefit language acquisition by expanding children's linguistic experience and engaging them in a shared activity (Nation et al. 2022; Dowdall et al., 2020). Video media (including television) could potentially fulfil a similar role by exposing children to new linguistic phenomena in an engaging setting. However, while many studies have examined the impact of screen-time on cognitive development (for a review see Kostyrka-Allchorne et al., 2017), the findings relating specifically to language remain unclear. The aim of this review is to understand how encountering language content in video media might impact a variety of language skills in children aged 3-11. This review maps the methods and findings of 93 studies that met preregistered criteria with the goal of understanding which factors impact learning outcomes following video exposure. Results from observational (N = 31) and experimental (N = 62) studies reveal a divided literature in which video viewing is linked to short-term benefits for learning specific linguistic structures from high-quality video media, as well as having negative or null long-term associations with standardised language measures. Results highlight various methodological difficulties and limitations faced by experimental and observational approaches and reveal the importance of video quality and viewing context for language learning.

A rudimentary analogy-based model of how syntactic constructions emerge from linguistic experience

AbstractThis paper highlights theoretical issues in construction grammar and presents a simple computational language model as a preliminary solution to these issues. The specific issues dealt with are the lack of explicit definition of syntactic categories and the lack of explicit proposals regarding how constructions can be learned from linguistic experience. The proposed language model, called the “analogical path model”, learns two-word syntactic patterns from sentences by finding distributional analogies between word pairs. The theoretical relevance and implications of the analogical path model are discussed at the end of the paper.

Linguistic Analysis of the Names of Indian Mammals in «Baburnama»: Etymology, Semantics

In history, Zahir ad-din Muhammad Babur is known not only as a king and poet, but also as a geographer, ethnographer, and historian. Proof of this is his autobiographical work «Baburnama», which occupies a worthy place in world literature. «Baburnama» in the Chagatai language tells about the events that took place in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries. The Baburnama is a treasure trove of natural science terms that provides a unique linguistic perspective on the historical and natural conditions of the era. The description of flora and fauna in «Baburnama» is an important linguistic resource for understanding the linguistic experience of Z.M. Babur. This article analyzes in detail the names of mammals living in India, recorded in the Baburnama. The study focuses on the etymology and semantics of these terms. The author suggests that the names of Indian mammals may be words borrowed from the languages of the peoples living in those regions. The authors suggest that the names of Indian mammals may be borrowed from the languages of the peoples living in the specified region. The article uses descriptive and comparative methods of linguistics to study etymology and semantics of 12 terms: bāndar, fīl, gaynī uy, gilāhrī, hāti, kalahara, karg, kūtahpāy, mūš-i xurmā, nawal, nīlagāv, ṣaḥrā’ī gāvmeš

Cross-linguistic perception of Spanish intonation by Chinese speakers: Effects of linguistic experience and prosodic features

This study aims to explore the cross-linguistic perception of Spanish intonation patterns and the role of linguistic experience and prosodic features in identifying the question-statement contrasts. To this end, 43 Spanish native listeners and 75 Chinese learners of Spanish were presented with auditory stimuli in a gating paradigm for the recognition of sentence types. The results showed that listeners’ perception of target intonational contours was highly dependent on their language experience. Although Spanish listeners outperformed Chinese learners in perceiving different intonational cues, most Chinese learners were able to correctly identify sentence types after hearing the initial F0 peak due to the positive transfer of their tonal processing ability in their native language. In addition, our data revealed that the position of the final stressed syllable might also be a relevant factor for discriminating the sentence type depending on the length of the utterance. Overall, the findings seem to suggest a complex integration mechanism for cross-linguistic intonation perception, in which listeners’ language specificity and the prosodic structures of the materials should be accounted for evaluating non-native auditory performance.

Speaking in Two Tongues:

The Philippines comprises 7, 641 islands and with it, an approximately 170 languages spoken by almost 104 million Filipinos. Because of this, Filipinos are naturally bi/multilingual. Bilingualism is also a widely studied topic in the field of language education. In this study, however, a narrative inquiry is used to determine the advantages, disadvantages, strategies and views of the subject towards bilingualism. The subject’s life narrative being bilingual was written based on the result of the interview and an unstructured questionnaire. From the data, codes were extracted and were discussed in the paper. The experience of the participant is a mirror of the linguistic experience of Filipinos where children acquire their mother tongue used in their communities. Then at a very young age, they also learn another language, almost always Filipino because this is what is used in Philippine schools. A conscious effort is then used to learn English, the second language of the country. Other languages learned are either for personal or practical reasons. It is indeed very difficult for the general public to get by without knowing English these days.

Academic work demands and the primacy of English: an additional burden for non-native English speakers

ABSTRACT For some time, academics have reported the increasing complexity and demands of work (Clegg, S. 2008. “Academic Identities Under Threat?” British Educational Research Journal 34 (3): 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701532269), including the difficulty of gaining permanence (Taylor, A. 2018. Scientists Don’t Stay for Long in Their Jobs Anymore: Study. Accessed July 20, 2023. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/scientists-dont-stay-for-long-intheir-jobs-anymore--study-65200) and the constant expectation, even if permanent, to publish as first author in high-impact journals (usually English) – where success rates are dropping due to this high demand. Even as native-English speakers, these expectations can be challenging and stressful. However, for non-native speakers, there is an additional demand given the primacy of English: using English as their language of publication. Prior studies suggest two clusters of factors at play: structural (e.g. university publication requirements for permanence) and individual (e.g. career motivation) which interact. But, broader work and life experiences are rarely addressed. So, this study asked: Within the context of their broader lives, what structural and individual factors do 31 LAC researchers perceive and negotiate in making LoP decisions? Furthermore, how do combinations of these interacting factors lead to different LoP decisions? This broader lens offered many insights with implications for researching academic work (e.g. incorporating prior life and work linguistic experiences in LoP decision-making), and native English academics' publishing practices (e.g. as journal editors and reviewers structures).

Visual scanning patterns of a talking face when evaluating phonetic information in a native and non-native language.

When comprehending speech, listeners can use information encoded in visual cues from a face to enhance auditory speech comprehension. For example, prior work has shown that the mouth movements reflect articulatory features of speech segments and durational information, while pitch and speech amplitude are primarily cued by eyebrow and head movements. Little is known about how the visual perception of segmental and prosodic speech information is influenced by linguistic experience. Using eye-tracking, we studied how perceivers' visual scanning of different regions on a talking face predicts accuracy in a task targeting both segmental versus prosodic information, and also asked how this was influenced by language familiarity. Twenty-four native English perceivers heard two audio sentences in either English or Mandarin (an unfamiliar, non-native language), which sometimes differed in segmental or prosodic information (or both). Perceivers then saw a silent video of a talking face, and judged whether that video matched either the first or second audio sentence (or whether both sentences were the same). First, increased looking to the mouth predicted correct responses only for non-native language trials. Second, the start of a successful search for speech information in the mouth area was significantly delayed in non-native versus native trials, but just when there were only prosodic differences in the auditory sentences, and not when there were segmental differences. Third, (in correct trials) the saccade amplitude in native language trials was significantly greater than in non-native trials, indicating more intensely focused fixations in the latter. Taken together, these results suggest that mouth-looking was generally more evident when processing a non-native versus native language in all analyses, but fascinatingly, when measuring perceivers' latency to fixate the mouth, this language effect was largest in trials where only prosodic information was useful for the task.

The case for Contextual Linguistic Diversity in bilingualism research

The language sciences have made concerted efforts to emphasize the impact of sociolinguistic context on shaping a person’s language repertoire and associated (neuro)cognitive adaptations, largely propelled by WEIRD-centric research and perspectives. Active engagement with known languages is necessary for acquisition, but input from the ambient environment is typically not addressed, or is considered noise. While irregular and transient linguistic information may indeed be noise, there is a missing middle-ground pertaining to language knowledge that falls between explicit input and linguistic noise, primarily observed in highly linguistically diverse contexts. I consider this missing form of input by making a case for Contextual Linguistic Diversity, the view that one’s linguistic repertoire is not solely constituted by the active use of, or intentional engagement with, languages but also by passive and regular exposure to ambient linguistic input. I offer a theoretical foundation and appeal to existing evidence supporting the view that passive exposure to multiple languages may systematically affect linguistic and (neuro)cognitive abilities, even in the absence of proficiency in or awareness of ambient languages. Adopting a holistic view of contextually influenced linguistic experiences is essential to fairly representing all individuals in their respective sociolinguistic contexts and consequently advancing the field.