Bilingual Processing of Comparative Structures in Spanish

Abstract

Previous studies have focused on the access of content words to investigate the cognitive strategies used in bilingual processing (e.g., Fernández 2003), but less is known about functional words. In this study, I assess (i) whether three groups of bilingual speakers of Spanish (native, heritage, and second language (L2) speakers) access the lexically-encoded information of the quantifier más 'more' to activate a comparative structure interpretation, and (ii) what processing strategies are used to resolve a temporary semantic ambiguity that surfaces upon accessing that interpretation. Using a self-paced reading task, three groups of Spanish speakers living in the United States read comparative sentences, which allowed for two possible continuations at the subordinate clause: a subject continuation (e.g., El cantante obtiene más premios que el pianista en el festival 'The singer gets more awards than the pianist at the festival') or an object continuation (e.g., El cantante obtiene más premios que críticas en el festival 'The singer gets more awards than criticism at the festival'). Results revealed longer reading times for the subject comparison compared to the object comparison structures, and no significant differences between the three groups, suggesting that participants in all groups followed similar processing strategies and preferences in the reading of comparative structures.

Current Trends and Emerging Methodologies in Charting Heritage Language Bilingual Grammars

“…Without doubt, there are very carefully designed studies tapping into HL comprehension that are not easily affected by the above factors and/or production-based work showing clear patterns of underlying HL competence. However, efforts in recent years to assess HL knowledge while bypassing some of the above concerns have turned the field more and more to online research methods, such as self-paced reading tasks, masked priming tasks, eye-tracking, and the electroencephalography (EEG) methodology (e.g., self-paced reading task : Foote, 2011;Jegerski, 2018aJegerski, , 2018bKeating, Jegerski, & VanPatten, 2016;Puig-Mayenco, et al, 2018;Villegas, 2018;eye-tracking: Arslan, Bastiaanse, & Felser, 2015;Jegerski & Sekerina, 2019;Sekerina & Sauermann, 2015;Sekerina & Trueswell, 2011;van Rijswijk, Muntendam & Dijkstra, 2017;Villegas, 2014;masked priming task: Jacob & Kırkıcı, 2016;Jacob, Şafak, Demir & Kırkıcı, 2019;EEG methodology: Martohardjono, Phillips, Madsen & Schwartz, 2017;van Rijswijk, 2016).…”