Role Of Language Experience Research Articles

The Role of Language Experience in the Acquisition of Spanish Gender Agreement: A Study with Nonce Nouns

Why is learning the gender of nouns so difficult for some bilinguals? We test the hypothesis that different language learning backgrounds or life experience with Spanish determine how learners follow different morphosyntactic cues for gender assignment in Spanish by testing learners with early and late language experience in an experiment with invented nouns. A total of 44 monolingually raised native speakers, 44 heritage speakers, and 44 L2 learners of Spanish were trained to learn 24 nonce words in Spanish presented in four input conditions that manipulated the number and type of cues to gender marking (determiner, word marker, adjective). After the learning sessions, the participants completed a word naming task, an elicited production task, and a debriefing questionnaire. The L2 learners were different than native speakers and heritage speakers in learning nonce nouns. They used morphosyntactic cues differently, relying on adjectives as their most-used strategy to assign gender, unlike native speakers and heritage speakers who used all cues. Our findings confirm processing differences between L2 learners and heritage speakers and suggest language learning background determines how learners discover reliable morphosyntactic cues to the gender of nouns in the input.

The perceived value of bilingualism among U.S. parents: The role of language experience and local multilingualism.

The perceived value of bilingualism among U.S. parents: The role of language experience and local multilingualism.

Inhibitory and facilitative effects of lexical neighbors in spoken word recognition: The role of language experience

AbstractThe study evaluated whether the direction (inhibitory or facilitative) of the phonological neighborhood density effect in English spoken word recognition was modulated by the relative strength of competitor activation (neighborhood type) in two groups of English-dominant learners of Spanish who differed in language experience. Classroom learners and heritage learners of Spanish identified spoken English words from dense (e.g., BEAR) and sparse (e.g., BOAT) phonological neighborhoods presented in moderate noise. The phonological neighborhood was separately manipulated at word onset (cohort) and word offset (rhyme). Classroom learners were overall slower in recognizing spoken words from denser neighborhoods. Strongly active (onset) neighbors exerted inhibitory effects in both classroom and heritage learners. Critically, weakly active (offset) neighbors exerted inhibitory effects in classroom learners but facilitative effects in heritage learners. The results suggest that the activation of both within and cross-language neighbors should be considered in determining the direction of neighbor effects in bilingual lexical processing.

Supplemental Material for The Perceived Value of Bilingualism Among U.S. Parents: The Role of Language Experience and Local Multilingualism

Supplemental Material for The Perceived Value of Bilingualism Among U.S. Parents: The Role of Language Experience and Local Multilingualism

Bilingual acquisition of reference: The role of language experience, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects

AbstractThe present study aims to understand which factors contribute to different patterns of use of referring expressions by bilingual children, by considering the triangulation between language experience and proficiency, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects. We analyze reference use in Greek in the context of a narrative elicitation task as performed by 125 children of different language combinations, including Greek–Albanian, Greek–English and Greek–German. We calculate, for each child, an index of language experience that combines a proficiency measure with background questionnaire information. After identifying the occurrences of underinformative (underspecified) and overinformative (overspecified) referring expressions in the production of each child, we investigate to what extent each pattern of reference use is affected by language experience, cross-linguistic effects and executive functions. The study aims to shed some new light on the nature of overspecification and underspecification in bilingual reference production and, more in general, to model variation in reference use among bilingual children.

Developing incrementality in filler-gap dependency processing

Much work has demonstrated that children are able to use bottom-up linguistic cues to incrementally interpret sentences, but there is little understanding of the extent to which children’s comprehension mechanisms are guided by top-down linguistic information that can be learned from distributional regularities in the input. Using a visual world eye tracking experiment and a corpus analysis, the current study investigates whether 5- and 6-year-old children incrementally assign interpretations to temporarily ambiguous wh-questions like What was Emily eating the cake with __? In the visual world eye-tracking experiment, adults demonstrated evidence for active dependency formation at the earliest region (i.e., the verb region), while 6-year-old children demonstrated a spill-over effect of this bias in the subsequent NP region. No evidence for this bias was found in 5-year-olds, although the speed of arrival at the ultimately correct instrument interpretation appears to be modulated by the vocabulary size. These results suggest that adult-like active formation of filler-gap dependencies begins to emerge around age 6. The corpus analysis of filler-gap dependency structures in adult corpora and child corpora demonstrate that the distributional regularities in either corpora are equally in favor of early, incremental completion of filler-gap dependencies, suggesting that the distributional information in the input is either not relevant to this incremental bias, or that 5-year-old children are somehow unable to recruit this information in real-time comprehension. Taken together, these findings shed light on the origin of the incremental processing bias in filler-gap dependency processing, as well as on the role of language experience and cognitive constraints in the development of incremental sentence processing mechanisms.

Development of fricative sound perception in Korean infants: The role of language experience and infants’ initial sensitivity

In this paper, we report data on the development of Korean infants’ perception of a rare fricative phoneme distinction. Korean fricative consonants have received much interest in the linguistic community due to the language’s distinct categorization of sounds. Unlike many fricative contrasts utilized in most of the world’s languages, Korean fricatives (/s*/-/s/) are all voiceless. Moreover, compared with other sound categories, fricatives have received very little attention in the speech perception development field and no studies thus far have examined Korean infants’ development of native phonology in this domain. Using a visual habituation paradigm, we tested 4‒6-month-old and 7‒9-month-old Korean infants on their abilities to discriminate the Korean fricative pair in the [a] vowel context, /s*a/-/sa/, which can be distinguished based on acoustic cues, such as the durations of aspiration and frication noise. Korean infants older than 7 months were able to reliably discriminate the fricative pair but younger infants did not show clear signs of such discrimination. These results add to the growing evidence that there are native sound contrasts infants cannot discriminate early on without a certain amount of language exposure, providing further data to help delineate the specific nature of early perceptual capacity.

First Language Attrition Induces Changes in Online Morphosyntactic Processing and Re‐Analysis: An ERP Study of Number Agreement in Complex Italian Sentences

First language (L1) attrition in adulthood offers new insight on neuroplasticity and the role of language experience in shaping neurocognitive responses to language. Attriters are multilinguals for whom advancing L2 proficiency comes at the cost of the L1, as they experience a shift in exposure and dominance (e.g., due to immigration). To date, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying L1 attrition are largely unexplored. Using event‐related potentials (ERPs), we examined L1‐Italian grammatical processing in 24 attriters and 30 Italian native‐controls. We assessed whether (a) attriters differed from non‐attriting native speakers in their online detection and re‐analysis/repair of number agreement violations, and whether (b) differences in processing were modulated by L1‐proficiency. To test both local and non‐local agreement violations, we manipulated agreement between three inflected constituents and examined ERP responses on two of these (subject, verb, modifier). Our findings revealed group differences in amplitude, scalp distribution, and duration of LAN/N400 + P600 effects. We discuss these differences as reflecting influence of attriters’ L2‐English, as well as shallower online sentence repair processes than in non‐attriting native speakers. ERP responses were also predicted by L1‐Italian proficiency scores, with smaller N400/P600 amplitudes in lower proficiency individuals. Proficiency only modulated P600 amplitude between 650 and 900 ms, whereas the late P600 (beyond 900 ms) depended on group membership and amount of L1 exposure within attriters. Our study is the first to show qualitative and quantitative differences in ERP responses in attriters compared to non‐attriting native speakers. Our results also emphasize that proficiency predicts language processing profiles, even in native‐speakers, and that the P600 should not be considered a monolithic component.

The effect of language experience on perceptual normalization of Mandarin tones and non-speech pitch contours.

Context-dependent pitch perception helps listeners recognize tones produced by speakers with different fundamental frequencies (f0s). The role of language experience in tone normalization remains unclear. In this cross-language study of tone normalization, native Mandarin and English listeners were asked to recognize Mandarin Tone 1 (high-flat) and Tone 2 (mid-rising) with a preceding Mandarin sentence. To further test whether context-dependent pitch perception is speech-specific or domain-general, both language groups were asked to identify non-speech flat and rising pitch contours with a preceding non-speech flat pitch contour. Results showed that both Mandarin and English listeners made more rising responses with non-speech than with speech stimuli, due to differences in spectral complexity and listening task between the two stimulus types. English listeners made more rising responses than Mandarin listeners with both speech and non-speech stimuli. Contrastive context effects (more rising responses in the high-f0 context than in the low-f0 context) were found with both speech and non-speech stimuli for Mandarin listeners, but not for English listeners. English listeners' lack of tone experience may have caused more rising responses and limited use of context f0 cues. These results suggest that context-dependent pitch perception in tone normalization is domain-general, but influenced by long-term language experience.

Grammaticality of Preschoolers in Narratives: Considering the Influences of Bilingualism and Daycare Participation: A Retrospective and Exploratory Study

Purpose: The current retrospective and exploratory study aimed to identify the role of language experience for monolingual and bilingual preschool age children who did and did not attend daycare on...

Handshape monitoring: Evaluation of linguistic and perceptual factors in the processing of American Sign Language

We investigated the relevance of linguistic and perceptual factors to sign processing by comparing hearing individuals and deaf signers as they performed a handshape monitoring task, a sign-language analogue to the phoneme-monitoring paradigms used in many spoken-language studies. Each subject saw a series of brief video clips, each of which showed either an American Sign Language (ASL) sign or a phonologically possible but nonlexical “nonsign,” and responded when the viewed action was formed with a particular handshape. Stimuli varied with respect to the factors of Lexicality, handshape Markedness, and Type, defined according to whether the action is performed with one or two hands and for two-handed stimuli, whether or not the action is symmetrical. Deaf signers performed faster and more accurately than did hearing nonsigners, and effects related to handshape Markedness and stimulus Type were observed in both groups. However, no effects or interactions related to Lexicality were seen. A further analysis restricted to the deaf group indicated that these results were not dependent upon subjects’ age of acquisition of ASL. This work provides new insights into the processes by which the handshape component of sign forms is recognised in a sign language, the role of language experience, and the extent to which these processes may or may not be considered specifically linguistic.

Is phonological context always used to recognize variant forms in spoken word recognition? The role of variant frequency and context distribution.

Several mechanisms have been proposed to account for how listeners accommodate regular phonological variation in connected speech. Using a corpus analysis and 5 cross-modal priming experiments, the authors investigate phonological variant recognition for the American English word-final flap. The corpus analysis showed that the flap variant occurs relatively frequently compared with the citation form [t] variant and is only probabilistically constrained by prosodic and phonemic context. The experienced distribution of the flap production is reflected in lexical processing: 4 cross-modal priming experiments demonstrated that lexical activation is not influenced by contextual constraints (inappropriate phrase boundary or phonemic contexts). A 2nd finding was a smaller priming effect for the less frequent flap as compared with the more frequent [t] variant. The contrasts between these findings for the flap and other context conditioned variants are discussed in terms of their implications for models of phonological variation recognition and in terms of the role of language experience.

Coarticulatory influences on the perception of nasal vowel height and the role of language experience.

That a listener’s first language affects the perception of a second language is generally undisputed. In addition to linguistic experience, acoustic effects of coarticulation have been shown to influence speech perception [Abramson et al. (1981); Krakow et al. (1988); Mann (1986) and others]. For example, nasalization of vowels has been shown to affect the perception of vowel height due to its spectral consequences in the region associated with vowel height [Beddor and Strange (1982); Krakow et al. (1988); Ohala (1986); Wright (1975)]. While some effects of coarticulation appear to produce the same perceptual shifts crosslinguistically [Mann (1986)], it is not clear that all coarticulatory influences are language independent [Krakow et al. (1988)]. The current study seeks to investigate the relationship between acoustic effects of coarticulation and linguistic experience. Since Portuguese has allophonic and (surface) contrastive nasalization [Wetzels (1997)] and Spanish does not have phonological nasalization in any context [Sole (1992)], adult speakers of these languages were tested, using synthetic stimuli, for perception of contextualized nasal vowels (i.e., nasal vowels adjacent to tautosyllabic nasal consonants) and noncontextualized nasal vowels (i.e., nasal vowels with no adjacent nasal consonant). Results indicate that coarticulatory influences of nasalization are language dependent.

Neural correlates of speech and non-speech processing: Role of language experience in brain activation

In adults, neural responses to the acoustic properties of native and non-native speech sounds differ. Recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies indicate that two regions of the brain, the superior temporal area and inferior parietal area (Broca's), in both the left and right hemispheres, may contribute to how the adult brain responds to the acoustic properties of speech. The aim of the present study was to investigate neural activation in adults when listening to native and non-native speech, and to non-speech analogs of speech. We used MEG to examine activation of the superior temporal and inferior parietal areas. Native speakers of Finnish were presented with Finnish (/pa/ and /ta/) and Chinese (/t "looped c" "superscript h" i/ and /"looped c" i/) syllables, and sine-wave replicas of /pa/ and /ta/, in a passive oddball paradigm. Our analysis examines the properties of localized neural activities to determine how activation of sensory and motor speech areas differs for speech and non-speech, and the role of language experience in brain activation.

ERP indices of speech processing in bilinguals

The specific aim of this project was to examine perceptual differentiation of the vowel contrast [I-E] by early versus late bilingual Spanish–English speakers, compared to monolingual English speakers. Neither of these phonetic segments occur as phonemes in Spanish while they constitute phonemic contrast in English. For Spanish listeners, these vowels may be heard as variants of the Spanish phonemes [i] and [e], respectively. The formation of perceptual categories may be affected by exposure to two languages in which the phonemic status of phonetic segments differs. In the current study, electrophysiological measures (mismatched negativity—MMN) and behavioral measures (AX discrimination and identification) were employed to examine perception of a nine-step continuum resynthesized from natural tokens. Preliminary results indicate that early bilinguals show somewhat more categorical perception than monolinguals (i.e., sharper identification boundaries) of the nine-step continuum. MMN results, obtained during a task in which subjects were not attending to the auditory input, show clear MMNs for monolinguals for both cross- and within-category pairs. To date, results for early bilinguals show less clear indication of preattentive discrimination. The role of language experience and the relationship between the behavioral performance and the electrophysiological measures will be discussed.

The role of language experience in word segmentation: A comparison of English, French, and bilingual infants

English-learning and French-learning 7.5-month-old infants were tested using the headturn preference procedure on their ability to segment bisyllabic words in both English and French. In the English condition infants were familiarized with trochaic bisyllables, the predominant stress pattern found in English, and then presented English passages with and without the familiarized words. In the French condition, infants were familiarized with iambic bisyllables, the characteristic word stress pattern found in French, and were then presented French passages with and without the familiarized words. Findings indicate that by 7.5 months of age, infants’ learning either a syllable-timed (French) or a stressed-timed language (English) can segment bisyllabic words with the predominant stress pattern of their native language. However, French infants fail to segment English trochaic words from English passages; data on English infants’ segmentation in the French condition are forthcoming. If both groups fail to segment in a rhythmically different non-native language, it will confirm that word segmentation abilities of 7.5-month-old infants are influenced by the prosodic structure of the native language. Preliminary results obtained from infants who are regularly exposed to both languages will also be reported.

Native and non-native phonetic speech perception of American and Finnish listeners

Research by Kuhl and colleagues suggests that linguistic experience affects the internal organization of vowel and consonant categories. The present cross-language experiments test the role of language experience on the internal structure of American English and Finnish phonetic categories. Adult native listeners of Finnish and American English were tested with both native and non-native stimulus sets. The synthesized stimulus sets included a contrast that was phonemic in both languages (/r/–/l/) as well as one that was phonemic in only one language (/v/–/w/). Stimuli were modeled after native speakers of the respective language. The stimuli were: a grid of American English /r/–/l/ tokens varying in F2 and F3; a grid of Finnish /r/ tokens varying in aspiration and trill amplitude; a grid of Finnish /l/ tokens varying in F1 transition length and F2; and an American English /v/–/w/ continuum varying in F2. Listeners gave category goodness and identification judgments for individual stimuli based on their native categories, and then rated the similarity of stimulus pairs. Multidimensional scaling analyses were employed to model the internal structure of these categories. The results suggest that internal structure is dependent on language experience. [Work supported by NIH.]