Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T17:20:15.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bilingual referential choice in cognitively demanding situations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2020

Carla Contemori Open the ORCID record for Carla Contemori [Opens in a new window]  and
Iva Ivanova
Carla Contemori*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at El Paso
Iva Ivanova
Affiliation:
University of Texas at El Paso
*
Address for correspondence: Carla Contemori, E-mail: ccontemori@utep.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Under the Interface Hypothesis, bilinguals’ non-nativelike referential choices may be influenced by the increased cognitive demands and less automatic processing of bilingual production. We test this hypothesis by comparing pronoun production in the L2 of nonbalanced Spanish–English bilinguals to that of English monolinguals in two cognitively challenging contexts. In Experiment 1, both monolinguals and bilinguals produced more explicit references when part of the information was unavailable to their addressee (privileged ground) than when all information was shared (common ground), evidencing audience design. In Experiment 2, verbal load led to more unspecified references than visual load and no load (an effect statistically indistinguishable between groups but numerically driven by the monolingual group). While bilinguals produced overall more pronouns than monolinguals in both experiments, there was no indication that bilinguals’ referential choice was disproportionally affected by increased cognitive demand, contrary to the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis.

Keywords

L2 language productionnon-native speakerspronoun productionperspective-takingprivileged groundcommon grounddual taskworking memory load
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 83 - 95
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abutalebi, J (2008) Neural aspects of second language representation and language control. Acta Psychologica 128, 466–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Almor, A (1999) Noun-phrase anaphora and focus: the informational load hypothesis. Psychological Review 106, 748–765.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Argyri, E and Sorace, A (2007) Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 10, 79–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariel, M (1990) Accessing noun phrase antecedents. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arnold, JE (2016) Explicit and emergent mechanisms of information status. TopICS 8, 722–736.Google ScholarPubMed
Arnold, J (2010) How Speakers Refer: The Role of Accessibility. Language and Linguistics Compass 4, 187–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, JE (1999) Marking salience: The similarity of topic and focus. Unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Arnold, JE (1998) Reference Form and Discourse Patterns. Dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Arnold, JE, Eisenband, JG, Brown-Schmidt, S and Trueswell, JC (2000) The immediate use of gender information: eyetracking evidence of the time-course of pronoun resolution. Cognition 76, 13–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, JE, Bennetto, L and Diehl, JJ (2009) Reference Production in Young Speakers with and without Autism: Effects of Discourse Status and Processing Constraints. Cognition 110, 131–146.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arnold, J and Griffin, ZM (2007) The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts. Journal of Memory and Language 56(4), 521–536.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baddeley, AD (1986) Working Memory. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Bard, EG and Aylett, MP (2005) Referential form, word duration, and modeling the listener in spoken dialogue. In Trueswell, JC and Tanenhaus, MK (eds), Approaches to studying world-situated language use: Bridging the language-as-product and language-as-action traditions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 173–191.Google Scholar
Belletti, A, Bennati, E and Sorace, A (2007) Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25, 657–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown-Schmidt, S and Tanenhaus, MK (2006) Watching the eyes when talking about size: An investigation of message formulation and utterance planning. Journal of Memory and Language 54, 592–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkhardt, P (2005) The syntax-discourse interface: Representing and interpreting dependency. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Carminati, MN (2002) The processing of Italian subject pronouns (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Chafe, WL (1976) Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view. In Charles, NL (ed), Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press, pp. 27–55.Google Scholar
Chamorro, G, Sorace, A and Sturt, P (2016) What is the source of L1 attrition? The effects of recent re-exposure on Spanish speakers under L1 attrition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 9(3), 520–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H and Felser, C (2006) How native-like is non-native language processing? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(12), 564–570.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, HH, and Marshall, CR (1981) Definite reference and mutual knowledge. In Joshe, AK, Webber, B and Sag, IA (eds), Elements of discourse understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Contemori, C, Asiri, O and Perea Irigoyen, ED (in press) Anaphora resolution in L2 English: an analysis of discourse complexity and cross-linguistic interference. Studies in Second Language Acquisition.Google Scholar
Contemori, C, Pozzan, L, Galinsky, P and Dussias, G (2018) When actions and looks don't line up: The contribution of referential and prosodic information in the processing of PP ambiguities in bilinguals. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18001.conGoogle Scholar
Contemori, C and Dussias, G (2016) Referential choice in a second language: evidence for a listener-oriented approach. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 31(10), 1257–1272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunnings, I (2017) Parsing and working memory in bilingual sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20(4), 659–678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francik, EP and Clark, HH (1985) How to make requests that overcome obstacles to compliance. Journal of Memory and Language 24, 560–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukumura, K and van Gompel, RPG (2012) Producing Pronouns and Definite Noun Phrases: Do Speakers Use the Addressee's Discourse Model? Cognitive Science 36(7), 1289–1311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fukumura, K and van Gompel, RPG (2015) Effects of order of mention and grammatical role on anaphor resolution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 41(2), 501–525.Google ScholarPubMed
Givón, T (1983) Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. In Givón, T (ed), Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, pp. 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, DW (1998) Mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 67–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gundel, JK, Hedberg, N and Zacharski, R (1993) Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69, 274–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haznedar, B (2010) Transfer at the syntax-pragmatics interface: Pronominal subjects in bilingual Turkish. Second Language Research 26, 355–378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendriks, P, Koster, C and Hoeks, JCJ (2014) Referential choice across the lifespan: why children and elderly adults produce ambiguous pronouns. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 29(4), 391–407.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Horton, WS and Keysar, B (1996) When do speakers take into account common ground? Cognition 59, 91–117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaeger, TF (2008) Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language 59, 434–446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Just, MA and Carpenter, PA (1992) A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory. Psychological Review 98, 122–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A (1985) Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes 1, 61–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keating, G, VanPatten, B and Jegerski, J (2011) Who was walking on the beach: Anaphora resolution in Spanish heritage speakers and adult second language learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33, 193–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, JF, Dussias, PE, Bogulski, CA, and Valdés Kroff, JR (2012) Juggling two languages in one mind: What bilinguals tell us about language processing and its consequences for cognition. In Ross, B (ed), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 56. Academic Press, pp. 229–273.Google Scholar
Kuijper, S, Hartman, CA and Hendriks, P (2015) Who is he? Children with ASD and ADHD take the listener into account in their production of ambiguous pronouns. PLoS ONE 10(7).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luo, L, Craik, FIM, Moreno, S and Bialystok, E (2013) Bilingualism interacts with domain in a working memory task: Evidence from aging. Psychology and Aging 28(1), 28–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marian, V, Blumenfeld, HK and Kaushanskaya, M (2007) The language experience and proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50, 940–967.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Montrul, S, and Rodríguez Louro, C (2006) Beyond the syntax of the null subject parameter: A look at the discourse-pragmatic distribution of null and overt subjects by L2 learners of Spanish. In Torrens, V and Escobar, L (eds), The acquisition of syntax in romance languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 401–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S (2004) Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7, 125–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S (2006) Incomplete acquisition as a feature of bilingual and L2 grammars. In Slabakova, R, Montrul, SA and Prévost, P (eds), Inquiries in linguistic development: In honor of Lydia White. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 335–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piñango, MM, and Burkhardt, P (2005) Pronominal Interpretation and the Syntax-Discourse Interface: Real-time Comprehension and Neurological Properties. In Branco, A, McEnery, T and Mitkov, R (eds), Anaphora Processing: linguistic, cognitive and computational modeling. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 221–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pozzan, L and Trueswell, JC (2017) Second language processing and revision of garden-path sentences: a visual word study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19, 636–643.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, EF (1985) Fancy syntax and shared knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics 9(1), 65–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosa, EC and Arnold, JE (2011) The role of attention in choice of referring expressions. In Proceedings of PRE-Cogsci: Bridging the gap between computational, empirical and theoretical approaches to reference, Boston.Google Scholar
Rothman, J (2007) Pragmatic Solutions for Syntactic Problems: Understanding Some L2 Syntactic Errors in Terms of Pragmatic Deficits. In Baauw, S, Dirjkoningen, F and Pinto, M (eds), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2005. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 299–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothman, J (2008) How pragmatically odd! Interface delays and pronominal subject distribution in L2 Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 1, 317–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothman, J (2009) Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences? L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 951–973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sedivy, JC (2003) Pragmatic versus form-based accounts of referential contrast: Evidence for effects of informativity expectations. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 32, 3–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sorace, A (2011) Pinning down the concept of ‘interface’ in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1, 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A and Filiaci, F (2006) Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research 22(3), 339–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A and Serratrice, L (2009) Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism 13, 195–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A, Serratrice, L, Filiaci, F and Baldo, M (2009) Discourse conditions on subject pronoun realization: Testing the linguistic intuitions of older bilingual children. Lingua 119, 460–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Travis, C, Torres Cacoullos, R and Kidd, E (2017) Cross-language priming: A view from bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20(2), 283–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsimpli, I, Sorace, A, Heycock, C and Filiaci, F (2004) First language attrition and syntactic subjects: A study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism 8, 257–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Rij, J, Van Rijn, H and Hendriks, P (2010) Cognitive architectures and language acquisition: A case study in pronoun comprehension. Journal of Child Language 37(3), 731–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vogels, J, Krahmer, E and Maes, A (2015) How cognitive load influences speakers' choice of referring expressions. Cognitive Science 39(6), 1396–1418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: PDF

Contemori and Ivanova supplementary material

Appendix

Download Contemori and Ivanova supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 69.9 KB