Language dominance and order of acquisition affect auditory translation priming in heritage speakers

Abstract

Late second language (L2) learners show translation priming from the first language to the second (L1-L2), while L2-L1 effects are inconsistent. Typically, late L2 learners are both less dominant in the L2 and acquire the L2 after the L1, making the relative contribution of language dominance and order of acquisition in these results unclear. Here, Cantonese heritage and native speakers are tested in an auditory translation priming paradigm. As heritage speakers first learn Cantonese (L1) but later become more dominant in English (L2), this profile allows for the potential dissociation of dominance and order of acquisition in translation priming. If order of acquisition is the primary factor, stronger priming is expected to occur in the L1-L2 (Cantonese-English) direction; however, if dominance plays a stronger role, priming is expected to occur in the L2-L1 (English-Cantonese) direction. Native speakers showed stronger L1-L2 priming, consistent with previous findings, while heritage speakers showed priming in both directions, but stronger L2-L1 priming. The current results suggest that language dominance is a primary factor in explaining auditory translation priming results and that order of acquisition also plays a role in bilingual lexical processing.

Perceptual effects of lexical competition on Cantonese tone categories

“…More recently, Soo and Monahan (2023) provide evidence from a medium-term priming task that "heritage" Cantonese speakers treat tone minimal pairs like identity pairs, suggesting that tone may be encoded less precisely for English-dominant Cantonese-English bilinguals. All together, this suggests that lexical representations with less precise phonological detail may be a feature of a less-dominant language, not simply a late acquired second language (see also Soo & Monahan, 2022).…”