TY - JOUR

T1 - WHODUNNIT?

T2 - Language interaction in identification of sentential subjects in Wales and Patagonia

AU - Gathercole, Virginia

AU - Perez-Tattam, Rocio

AU - Stadthagen-Gonzalez, Hans

AU - Laporte, Nadine

AU - Thomas, Enlli

N1 - This study was supported in part by ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, ESRC/HEFCW grant RES-535-30-0061

PY - 2019/10/3

Y1 - 2019/10/3

N2 - This study examined Spanish-Welsh (in Patagonia) and Welsh-English (in North Wales) bilingual children's and adults' processing of sentences in which two noun phrases acted as arguments of a verb. The goal was to determine the relative importance of distinct cues to the identification of the subject in the bilinguals' processing of their two languages, and to explore possible crosslinguistic influence between their two languages. We provided speakers with a receptive task in which the participant heard a sentence in the given language and had to identify which of three cartoon depictions on a screencorresponded with the sentence heard. The sentences were constructed to systematically manipulate cues such as word order, prosodic stress, animacy, gender, and case marking. The results suggest some differences in performance between groups, but primarily in Welsh, not in English or Spanish. The results are discussed for their relevance to theories concerning the importance of proficiency, language balance, and acquisitional processes inbilinguals' performance in their two languages.

AB - This study examined Spanish-Welsh (in Patagonia) and Welsh-English (in North Wales) bilingual children's and adults' processing of sentences in which two noun phrases acted as arguments of a verb. The goal was to determine the relative importance of distinct cues to the identification of the subject in the bilinguals' processing of their two languages, and to explore possible crosslinguistic influence between their two languages. We provided speakers with a receptive task in which the participant heard a sentence in the given language and had to identify which of three cartoon depictions on a screencorresponded with the sentence heard. The sentences were constructed to systematically manipulate cues such as word order, prosodic stress, animacy, gender, and case marking. The results suggest some differences in performance between groups, but primarily in Welsh, not in English or Spanish. The results are discussed for their relevance to theories concerning the importance of proficiency, language balance, and acquisitional processes inbilinguals' performance in their two languages.

KW - Argentina

KW - Bilinguals

KW - Patagonia

KW - Spanish

KW - Welsh

KW - interaction

KW - sentential subjects

U2 - 10.1080/13670050.2017.1322550

DO - 10.1080/13670050.2017.1322550

M3 - Article

VL - 22

SP - 897

EP - 918

JO - International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

JF - International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

SN - 1367-0050

IS - 7

ER -