It’s not what you see: it’s the language you say it in
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In an eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the interplay between visual and linguistic information
processing during time-telling, and how this is affected by speaking in a non-native language. We compared
time-telling in Greek and English, which differ in time-telling word order (hour vs. minute mentioned first), by
contrasting Greek-English bilinguals speaking in their L1-Greek or their L2-English, and English monolingual
speakers. All three groups were faster when telling the time for digital than for analogue clocks, and when
telling the time for the first half-hour than the second half-hour. Critically, first fixation and gaze duration
analyses for the hour and minute regions showed a different pattern for Greek-English bilinguals when
speaking in their L1 versus L2, with the latter resembling that of English monolinguals. Our results suggest
that bilingual speakers’ eye-movement programming was influenced by the type of time-telling utterance
specific to the language of production currently in use.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1233-1239 |
Journal | Language and Cognitive Processes |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 10 |
Early online date | 18 Nov 2013 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2014 |