TY - JOUR A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Katsika, Kalliopi A1 - Family, Neiloufar A1 - Allen, Shanley E. M. T1 - The role of constituent order and level of embedding in cross-linguistic structural priming JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - In two cross-linguistic priming experiments with native German speakers of L2 English, we investigated the role of constituent order and level of embedding in cross-linguistic structural priming. In both experiments, significant priming effects emerged only if prime and target were similar with regard to constituent order and also situated on the same level of embedding. We discuss our results on the basis of two current theoretical accounts of cross-linguistic priming, and conclude that neither an account based on combinatorial nodes nor an account assuming that constituent order is directly responsible for the priming effect can fully explain our data pattern. We suggest an account that explains cross-linguistic priming through a hierarchical tree representation. This representation is computed during processing of the prime, and can influence the formulation of a target sentence only when the structural features specified in it are grammatically correct in the target sentence. KW - cross-linguistic structural priming KW - constituent order KW - level of embedding KW - hierarchical tree structures Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916000717 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 20 SP - 269 EP - 282 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Alexiadou, Artemis A1 - Allen, Shanley A1 - Bunk, Oliver A1 - Gagarina, Natalia A1 - Iefremenko, Kateryna A1 - Martynova, Maria A1 - Pashkova, Tatiana A1 - Rizou, Vicky A1 - Schroeder, Christoph A1 - Shadrova, Anna A1 - Szucsich, Luka A1 - Tracy, Rosemarie A1 - Tsehaye, Wintai A1 - Zerbian, Sabine A1 - Zuban, Yulia T1 - Heritage speakers as part of the native language continuum JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike. KW - heritage speakers KW - registers KW - participles KW - word order KW - bare NPs KW - boundary tone KW - referent introduction KW - relative clause formation Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717973 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER -