Showing papers by "Theodoros Marinis published in 2018"

Editorial: Language Acquisition in Diverse Linguistic, Social and Cognitive Circumstances.

Abstract: verb root be_located and some placement affixes such as “next to” and “on top of” to encode the axial parts of the Ground entity with which the Figure sets up a spatial relation with. These crosslinguistic differences between HKSL and Cantonese pose Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org July 2018 | Volume 9 | Article 1148 190 Tang and Li Acquisition of Classifier Constructions interesting acquisition predictions especially in the context of Deaf children acquiring HKSL in a bilingual fashion. As discussed previously, the basic word order of HKSL is SVO with plain verbs, uninflected spatial and agreement verbs. Child data from Lam (2009) also confirmed an initial SVO order based on plain verbs. As such, it overlaps with the canonical SVO order in Cantonese. Under these circumstances, we predict that the initial word order of constructions involving a classifier predicate in HKSL is SVO, which may actually be doubly enhanced by the “shared” canonical SVO order of Cantonese andHKSL. Language Synthesis will predict that these DHs may initially select those morphosyntactic features pertaining to a SVO order with a lexicalized verb root, but not classifier features or locus features. Under those circumstances, it pertains to a Cantonese or a HKSLbased structure and the latter reflects the word order grammar of plain verbs and sometimes uninflected agreement verbs. As such, Vocabulary Insertion may come from Cantonese and HKSL, or both under code blending conditions. Subsequent acquisition of inflectional morphology for person and spatial agreement with agreement verbs and spatial verbs may trigger Deaf children’s reanalysis of verb morphology, in the sense that HKSL verbs are not totally uninflected, leading to a reformulation of sub-classes of verbs and one of them is classifier constructions constituted by an abstract verb root, classifier features as well as locus features for spatial and subject/object agreement. We predict that classifier features are selected earlier than locus features in the Numeration, because classifier features, said to be akin to gender features in Zwitserlood (2003), are more semantic in nature, unlike locus features which yield R-loci in space for certain formal functions of encoding referential and agreement relations. The selection of such features in the Numeration motivates projections of agreement nodes at Spell-out where the features are merged at the terminal nodes for Spec-Head agreement with the noun referents in the specifier positions, and for spelling out the R-loci of the classifiers for subject/object agreement. In other words, the acquisition of the morphosyntactic properties of classifier constructions, and the schema of the Ground preceding the Figure in classifier constructions trigger Deaf children to develop word order variation, from SVO to OSV or SOV orders. To sum up this section, we examine whether the selection of morphosyntactic features in the Numeration is a potential domain for language interaction to occur in our DHs’ production of HKSL classifier constructions. Lack of inhibition also implies that Vocabulary Insertion as a late phenomenon allows items to come from either Cantonese or HKSL.

Predicting executive functions in bilinguals using ecologically valid measures of code-switching behavior

Abstract: One of the factors claimed to impact on executive functions in bilinguals is code-switching. New insights into how exactly code-switching affects executive functions can be obtained if attention is paid to the kind of code-switching bilinguals engage in, and not just the frequency of code-switching. This raises the question how code-switching habits can be assessed in experimental research. This study presents two ecologically valid, yet efficient, methods of assessing code-switching habits: a frequency judgement task based on authentic stimuli, and a bilingual email production task. The two tasks converged in revealing differences in Dense code-switching in two groups of German-English bilinguals. Moreover, the frequency judgement task predicted code-switching frequency in the ecologically more valid email production task. Importantly, both tasks revealed code-switching patterns that explained group differences observed in executive performance. The bilinguals engaging in frequent Dense code-switching excelled at the aspect of executive functions (conflict-monitoring) predicted to be related to code-switching based on existing processing models. Hence, both methods are recommended for use as code-switching measurements in bilingualism research.

Comprehending non-literal language: effects of aging and bilingualism

Abstract: A pressing issue that the 21st century is facing in many parts of the developed world is a rapidly aging population. Whilst several studies have looked at aging older adults and their language use in terms of vocabulary, syntax and sentence comprehension, few have focused on the comprehension of non-literal language (i.e. pragmatic inference-making) by aging older adults, and even fewer, if any, have explored the effects of bilingualism on pragmatic inferences of non-literal language by aging older bilinguals. Thus, the present study examined the effects of age(ing) and the effects of bilingualism on aging older adults’ ability to infer non-literal meaning. Four groups of participants made up of monolingual English-speaking and bilingual English-Tamil speaking young (17–23 years) and older (60– 83 years) adults were tested with pragmatic tasks that included non-conventional indirect requests, conversational implicatures, conventional metaphors and novel metaphors for both accuracy and efficiency in terms of response times. While the study did not find any significant difference between monolinguals and bilinguals on pragmatic inferences, there was a significant effect of age on one type of non-literal language tested: conventional metaphors. The effect of age was present only for the monolinguals with aging older monolinguals performing less well than the young monolinguals. Aging older bilingual adults were not affected by age whilst processing conventional metaphors. This suggests a bilingual advantage in pragmatic inferences of conventional metaphors.

Cross-modal priming in bilingual sentence processing

Abstract: This paper provides a concise overview of the cross-modal priming methodology, it presents a selection of key studies to illustrate how this method can be used to address lexical and syntactic processing and discusses advantages and disadvantages, along with issues that need to be taken into consideration when designing studies that address sentence processing in bilinguals.