Focus in Dutch reading: an eye-tracking experiment with heritage speakers of Turkish

Abstract

This study examines whether heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands interpret focus in written Dutch sentences differently from L1 speakers of Dutch (controls). Where most previous studies examined effects from the dominant L2 on the heritage language, we investigated whether there are effects from the weaker heritage language on the dominant L2. Dutch and Turkish differ in focus marking. Dutch primarily uses prosody to encode focus, whereas Turkish uses prosody and syntax, with a preverbal area for focused information and a postverbal area for background information. In written sentences no explicit prosody is available, which possibly enhances the role of syntactic cues in interpreting focus. An eye-tracking experiment suggests that, unlike the controls, the bilinguals associate the preverbal area with focus and the postverbal area with background information. These findings are in line with transfer from the weaker L1 to the dominant L2 at the syntax-discourse interface.ARTICLE HISTORY

Current Trends and Emerging Methodologies in Charting Heritage Language Bilingual Grammars

“…The authors found a difference in the total fixation durations between the HSs and controls. This result is in contrast with a previous study (van Rijswijk, Muntendam & Dijkstra, 2017) that investigated focus marking in Dutch involving the same type of Turkish-Dutch HSs using an offline production task that revealed no difficulties in the HSs using prosody to mark focus. The differences in interpretations between HSs and controls in the eye-tracking experiment suggest that HSs relied on word order cues from their L1 (Turkish) to determine focus structure.…”

“…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).…”

“…The main aim of the thesis is to shed some light on the processing mechanisms that underlie the specific interactions between the HL and the dominant L2. The author used a production task to investigate prosody in the speaking modality, an eye-tracking experiment focused on prosody at the sentence level monitoring reading behavior (see above van Rijswijk, Muntendam & Dijkstra, 2017), and finally an auditory lexical decision task with reaction times (RTs) and EEG to measure prosody at the word level studying the process of listening. In the auditory lexical decision experiments with RTs and EEG, van Rijswijk investigated various factors that might play a role in auditory cognate processing and the role of stress position in Turkish-Dutch cognates in Turkish HSs.…”

Modelling bilingual lexical processing: A research agenda and desiderabilia

“…As suggested by Li and Grant (2018), and Jiang (2018), simulating lexical processing in heritage speakers also requires a close consideration of their mental lexicon architecture and processing aspects. In our own work (e.g., van Rijswijk, 2016, with Muntendam and Dijkstra), we saw some evidence that in heritage speakers the very first language (learned only one or two years earlier than the second) dominated during the formation of the L1/L2 lexicon architecture, while processing aspects were sensitive to the word frequency in the later dominant L2. Because Multilink makes a clear distinction between structure and process, this aspect could be implemented in terms of representations and parameter settings.…”