Rapid Access of Verb Specific Information During Monolingual and Bilingual Sentence Processing...

Rapid Access of Verb Specific Information During Monolingual

and Bilingual Sentence Processing

Álvaro Villegas, Paola E. DussiasThe Pennsylvania State University

Josep Demestre, Rosa Sánchez-CasasUniversity Rovira i Virgili

UIC Bilingualism ForumOctober 4-5, 2012

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Outline

• The subjunctive in Spanish: ‘the tool’– Mood loss– Acquisition difficulties

• Research questions• Pilot Study: Moving-window Study• Dissertation

UIC BilForum, October 4-5, 2012

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Mood in Spanish

• Spanish: Indicative, Subjunctive, and Imperative

• Marked morphologically:– Indicative: comieron (they ate)– Subjunctive: comieran (they ate)

• They are dependent on syntactic, lexical, and pragmatical features:

Busco un libro que sea/es rojoI am looking for a red book

(Cameron, 2011; Palmer, 1986; Montrul, 2007)UIC BilForum, October 4-5, 2012

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Motivation for the study

Two issues of interest about the subjunctive:

1. Mood loss in contact situations.

2. L2 Acquisition difficulty.


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2. Acquisition difficulty.


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• Corpus studies suggest that the subjunctive mood is being lost in two ways: (Biber et al, 2006; Murphy, 2008)

– Morphologically:

– Syntactically: e.g., epistemic adverbs (King, et al., 2008)

[+Subj]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------[-Subj] tal vez quizás quizá posiblemente probablementePerhaps maybe maybe possibly probably

subjunctiveindicative[comieran][comieron]

indicative [comieron]

Mood Loss


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Languages in contact

• Studies have suggested that one of the possible reasons for this mood loss is contact situations:

• Spanish-Basque (Silva-Corvalán, 1982)

• Spanish-English (Silva-Corvalán, 1994)

• More interestingly, processing studies have shown that extensive immersion in the L2 environment can have consequences in the processing of the L1.

• Spanish-English (Dussias, 2004; Dussias & Sagarra, 2007)


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Our first question

Can immersion be a factor boosting the loss of the Spanish subjunctive mood in an environment where the L2 (English) lacks the same grammatical feature?


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2. Acquisition difficulty.


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Acquisition

• The acquisition of the subjunctive mood occurs late for monolingual children:– forms (2;3 years); semantics (5 years); adult-like (12 years).

• This process manifests the difficulty of acquisition of subjunctive.

(Blake, 1983; Hernández-Pina, 1984; Pérez-Leroux, 2001)


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L2 learners

• For L2 Spanish learners, subjunctive is also a very difficult structure to produce. (Collentine, 1995, 1998, 2010)

• But dependent on proficiency levels. (Borgonovo et al., 2005)Intermediate: correct subjunctive selection is low.Advanced: they start to select more subjunctive forms correctly.

• However, little is known about their ability to process this grammatical feature, specially when it is not present in their L2 (English) (Collentine, 2010)


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Our second question

• Can highly proficient L1 English - L2 Spanish speakers process subjunctive structures as native Spanish speakers in an online task when the L2 feature is not instantiated in their L1?


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Our questions

• Can immersion be a factor boosting the loss of the subjunctive mood in an environment where the L2 (English) lacks the same grammatical feature?

• Can high proficient L1 English - L2 Spanish speakers process subjunctive structures as native Spanish speakers in an online task when the L2 feature is not instantiated in their L1?


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Materials

• A group of verbs in Spanish always select the subjunctive in a sentence complement clause (e.g., permitir ‘permit’). (Silva-Corvalán, 2001)

La madre permitió al chico que comiera helado.The mother permitted the kid to eat ice cream.

• Correct use of the subjunctive: M=97.28%


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Materials

La fundación les permitió a los científicos que organizaron el simposio de física que publicaran una obra en memoria del fallecido.

La fundación les permitió a los científicos que organizaran el simposio de física y que publicaran una obra en memoria del fallecido.

MCRCSC

MCSCSC

Indicative Condition

Subjunctive Condition

The foundation permitted the scientistswho organized the Physics Symposiumto publish a work in memory of the deceased.

The foundation permitted the scientiststo organize the Physics Symposium andto publish a work in memory of the deceased.

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Methodology

• Self-paced reading task + comprehension Q.

EL PERRO COME HUESOUN_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _¿EL PERRO COME PIZZA?


THE DOG EATS BONEA_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _IS THE DOG EATING PIZZA?

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Predictions

• If participants can access the lexical information of the main verb (permitió ‘he/she permitted’), we would expect longer Reading Times (RTs) in the indicative condition than in the subjunctive condition when reading the verb of the first subordinate clause (organizaron/organizaran ‘they organized’)

• If they do not access the information, no differences will be observed.


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Predictions

Graphically:

La fundación les permitió a los científicos que organizaron/ran el simposio de física (y)que publicaran una obra en memoria del fallecido.

(V2): Indicative > Subjunctive


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Participants

Three group of Participants:

- Control: 27 Spanish monolinguals in Granada, Spain- Q1: 27 Spanish-English at Penn State, US

- Years of immersion: (M=6.4; SD=3.94)

- Q2: 27 English-Spanish at Penn State, US


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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12350

450

550

650

750

850

950

INDICATIVE SUBJUNCTIVE

Results

Spanish Monolinguals

La fundación/les permitió/a los científicos/ que/organizar@n/el simposio /de física/ (y) /que/publicaran/una obra/en memoria / del fallecido.

*Region 5: F(1,26)=.50 p=.484

Region 6: F(1,26)=14.60, p<.01

350

550

750

950

350

550

750

950

*

RT (m

s)

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Results

L1 Spanish – L2 English group

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12350

450

550

650

750

850


*


RT (m

s)

Region 5: F(1,26)=.12, p=.736

Region 6: F(1,26)=4.60, p<.05

350

450

550

650

750

850

350

450

550

650

750

850

*

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Similar reading patterns

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12350

550

750

950


*

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12350450550650750850950


*Spanish Monolinguals

L1 Spanish – L2 English


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Differences between L1 Spanish groups

WORD 6:Repeated Measures ANOVA to observe interaction groups and conditions

Monolinguals Spanish-English640

660

680

700

720

740

760

780INDICATIVESUBJUNCTIVE

NO INTERACTION BETWEEN GROUPS:F (1, 52) = 1.669, p = .202


RT (m

s)

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12300400500600700800900

100011001200


Results

L1 English – L2 Spanish group


300

500

700

900

1100

Region 5: F(1,26)=.93, p=.342

Region 6: F(1,26)=1.28, p=.267

300

500

700

900

1100

RT (m

s)

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By proficiency

• We looked into more proficient participants in three measures:

• DELE: Spanish proficiency test• Picture Naming• Norming Study: Sentence completion (16 / 48)

• Papers on proficiency have considered cuts for DELE up to a 85%. (Rossi, Diaz, Kroll, Dussias, under review)

• We applied the same cut: 5 participants considered.


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DELE @ 85%

L1 English – L2 Spanish

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12350450550650750850950

1050


*


RT (m

s)

*

350

550

750

950

350

550

750

950

Region 5: F(1,4)=1.75, p=.256

Region 6: F(1,4)=12.45, p=.024

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Discussion

• Results show that monolingual and Spanish-English speakers can use their knowledge of Spanish verb mood to predict upcoming use of the Subjunctive.

• Spanish-English speakers immersed in their L2 behave similarly to the monolingual group.

• This suggests that, although Subjunctive mood is a fragile grammatical feature in Spanish, it is still a strong feature that resists being lost.

• We argue that the lack of the same grammatical feature in the L2 environment does not necessarily affect processing of weak structures.


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Discussion

• The L1 English–L2 Spanish group not able to use their knowledge of subjunctive to make the predictions of a upcoming clause.

• They don’t show same processing as native Spanish speakers.

• However, the analysis of only 5 people suggests that only very high proficient (native-like) English-Spanish speakers can use their knowledge in verb mood processing.

• Further research needs to confirm this tendency.UIC BilForum, October 4-5, 2012

U. Rovira I Virgili:Josep Demestre

Rosa Sánchez CasasJosé García-Albea

U. of Granada:Teresa Bajo

Center for Language Science at PSU

Research Assistants:Nicole Roth

Natalie SudersMichelle Haack

Lucy SublerChad PickettJason Gullifer

Jorge Valdés Kroff

Thank you!

Rapid Access of Verb Specific Information During Monolingual

and Bilingual Sentence Processing

Álvaro Villegas, Paola E. DussiasThe Pennsylvania State University

Josep Demestre, Rosa Sánchez-CasasUniversity Rovira i Virgili

UIC Bilingualism ForumOctober 4-5, 2012

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