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It is a common finding that preschoolers have difficulties in identifying who is doing what to whom in non-canonical sentences, such as (object-verb-subject) OVS and passive sentences in German. This dissertation investigates how German monolingual and German-Italian simultaneous bilingual children process German OVS sentences in Study 1 and German passives in Study 2. Offline data (i.e., accuracy data) and online data (i.e., eye-gaze and pupillometry data) were analyzed to explore whether children can assign thematic roles during sentence comprehension and processing. Executive functions, language-internal and -external factors were investigated as potential predictors for children’s sentence comprehension and processing.
Throughout the literature, there are contradicting findings on the relation between language and executive functions. While some results show a bilingual cognitive advantage over monolingual speakers, others suggest there is no relationship between bilingualism and executive functions. If bilingual children possess more advanced executive function abilities than monolingual children, then this might also be reflected in a better performance on linguistic tasks. In the current studies monolingual and bilingual children were tested by means of two executive function tasks: the Flanker task and the task-switching paradigm. However, these findings showed no bilingual cognitive advantages and no better performance by bilingual children in the linguistic tasks. The performance was rather comparable between bilingual and monolingual children, or even better for the monolingual group. This may be due to cross-linguistic influences and language experience (i.e., language input and output). Italian was used because it does not syntactically overlap with the structure of German OVS sentences, and it only overlapped with one of the two types of sentence condition used for the passive study - considering the subject-(finite)verb alignment. The findings showed a better performance of bilingual children in the passive sentence structure that syntactically overlapped in the two languages, providing evidence for cross-linguistic influences.
Further factors for children’s sentence comprehension were considered. The parents’ education, the number of older siblings and language experience variables were derived from a language background questionnaire completed by parents. Scores of receptive vocabulary and grammar, visual and short-term memory and reasoning ability were measured by means of standardized tests. It was shown that higher German language experience by bilinguals correlates with better accuracy in German OVS sentences but not in passive sentences. Memory capacity had a positive effect on the comprehension of OVS and passive sentences in the bilingual group. Additionally, a role was played by executive function abilities in the comprehension of OVS sentences and not of passive sentences. It is suggested that executive function abilities might help children in the sentence comprehension task when the linguistic structures are not yet fully mastered.
Altogether, these findings show that bilinguals’ poorer performance in the comprehension and processing of German OVS is mainly due to reduced language experience in German, and that the different performance of bilingual children with the two types of passives is mainly due to cross-linguistic influences.
V3-Deklarativa – wie z.B. ‚Auf einmal der Hund hat sich mies erschrocken‘ – kommen sowohl bei bilingualen als auch bei monolingualen L1-Sprecher:innen des Deutschen vor. Im Rahmen einer korpuslinguistischen Analyse anhand des RUEG-Korpus (Wiese et al. 2021) untersucht diese Masterarbeit die folgende Fragestellung: In welchen Kontexten verwenden mono- und bilinguale Sprecher:innen des Deutschen genuines V3? Dabei bezieht sich der Begriff ‚Kontext‘ sowohl auf das Setting, in dem die V3-Deklarativa produziert werden (mediale und konzeptionelle Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit), als auch den linguistischen Kontext (syntaktische, semantische, informationsstrukturelle und phonologische Eigenschaften der präverbalen Konstituenten). Die Korpusuntersuchung ergibt, dass V3-Belege in allen Settings und in allen Sprecher:innengruppen auftreten. Die bilingualen Sprecher:innen verwenden insgesamt häufiger V3 als die monolingualen, wobei jedoch große Frequenzunterschiede je nach Heritage-Sprache vorliegen. Hinsichtlich der präverbalen Konstituenten bestätigt sich die bereits in der vorherigen Forschung identifizierte Tendenz zur syntaktischen Abfolge Adverbial-Subjekt und zur semantischen Abfolge Zeit-Person. Neben Temporaladverbialen erscheinen insbesondere Satzadverbiale als initiale Konstituente. Auf Ebene der Informationsstruktur kann den initialen Adverbialen zu fast 94% die Funktion eines Diskurslinkers oder Framesetters zugeschrieben werden, was die These einer informationsstrukturellen Motivation der V3-Stellung bekräftigt. Eine zweite Korpusanalyse anhand des Korpus Falko der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin zeigt, dass sich auch bei V3-Deklarativa fortgeschrittener DaF-Lernender eine informationsstrukturelle Motivation der Syntax geltend machen lässt. Insgesamt plädiert die Masterarbeit somit für einen ressourcenorientierten Blick auf V3-Strukturen.
Turkish is a language described as relying predominantly on non-finite subordination in the domain of clause combining. However, there are also strategies of finite subordination, as well as means of syndetic and asyndetic paratactic clause combining, especially in the informal settings.
Clause combining is and has been one of the focal points of research on heritage Turkish (h-Turkish).
One point is particularly clear: In comparison with the monolingual setting, finite means of clause combining are more frequent in h-Turkish in Germany, the U.S., and the Netherlands, while non-finite means of clause combining are less frequent.
Overall, our results confirm the findings of earlier studies: heritage speakers in Germany and the U.S. prefer paratactic means of clause combining using connectors, as opposed to monolingual speakers.
Our results also reveal that age (adolescents vs. adults) and register (informal vs. formal) significantly modulate the use of connectors.
Moreover, we find that the shift in preferences in means of clause combining triggers an expansion in the system of connectors and leads to the development of new narrative connectors, such as o zaman and derken.
The system of syndetic paratactic clause combining is expanding in heritage Turkish. This expansion calls for multifaceted modeling of change in heritage languages, which integrates language-internal factors (register), dynamics of convergence with the contact languages, and extra-linguistic factors (age and language use).
Развитие науки, общества и медицины ведет за собой неуклонный рост средней продолжительности жизни. В результате наука сталкивается с новыми задачами, в число которых входит предотвращение деменции и поддержание эффективной работоспособности мозга при старении человека. Одним из защитных факторов, предотвращающих ослабление когнитивных функций и поддерживающих нейропластичность мозга, является билингвизм.
Однако дебаты насчет нейропротекторных свойств двуязычия до сих пор являются актуальными. В данной статье рассмотрен феномен нейрокогнитивного резерва (НКР) и определена взаимосвязь между билингвизмом и такими составляющими НКР, как мозговой резерв, нейрональный резерв и нейрональная компенсация.
Кроме этого, в статье приведен обзор исследований, посвященных изучению нейронных и когнитивных механизмов влияния билингвизма на здоровое функционирование мозга при старении. В заключении мы вкратце остановились на том, каким образом двуязычие может защищать мозг от старения благодаря взаимодействию между мозговыми и когнитивными составляющими НКР.
Substantial research has examined cognition in aging bilinguals. However, less work has investigated the effects of aging on language itself in bilingualism. In this article I comprehensively review prior research on this topic, and interpret the evidence in light of current theories of aging and theories of bilingualism. First, aging indeed appears to affect bilinguals' language performance, though there is considerable variability in the trajectory across adulthood (declines, age-invariance, and improvements) and in the extent to which these trajectories resemble those found in monolinguals. I argue that these age effects are likely explained by the key opposing forces of increasing experience and cognitive declines in aging. Second, consistent with some theoretical work on bilingual language processing, the grammatical processing mechanisms do not seem to change between younger and older bilingual adults, even after decades of immersion. I conclude by discussing how future research can further advance the field.
Preregistration is an open science practice that requires the specification of research hypotheses and analysis plans before the data are inspected. Here, we discuss the benefits of preregistration for hypothesis-driven, confirmatory bilingualism research. Using examples from psycholinguistics and bilingualism, we illustrate how non-peer reviewed preregistrations can serve to implement a clean distinction between hypothesis testing and data exploration. This distinction helps researchers avoid casting post-hoc hypotheses and analyses as confirmatory ones. We argue that, in keeping with current best practices in the experimental sciences, preregistration, along with sharing data and code, should be an integral part of hypothesis-driven bilingualism research.
This eye-tracking study establishes basic benchmarks of eye movements during reading in heritage language (HL) by Russian-speaking adults and adolescents of high (n = 21) and low proficiency (n = 27). Heritage speakers (HSs) read sentences in Cyrillic, and their eye movements were compared to those of Russian monolingual skilled adult readers, 8-year-old children and L2 learners. Reading patterns of HSs revealed longer mean fixation durations, lower skipping probabilities, and higher regressive saccade rates than in monolingual adults. High-proficient HSs were more similar to monolingual children, while low-proficient HSs performed on par with L2 learners. Low-proficient HSs differed from high-proficient HSs in exhibiting lower skipping probabilities, higher fixation counts, and larger frequency effects. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the weaker links account of bilingual language processing as well as the divergent attainment theory of HL.
Much work has shown that differences in the timecourse of language processing are central to comparing native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers. However, estimating the onset of experimental effects in timecourse data presents several statistical problems including multiple comparisons and autocorrelation. We compare several approaches to tackling these problems and illustrate them using an L1-L2 visual world eye-tracking dataset. We then present a bootstrapping procedure that allows not only estimation of an effect onset, but also of a temporal confidence interval around this divergence point. We describe how divergence points can be used to demonstrate timecourse differences between speaker groups or between experimental manipulations, two important issues in evaluating L2 processing accounts. We discuss possible extensions of the bootstrapping procedure, including determining divergence points for individual speakers and correlating them with individual factors like L2 exposure and proficiency. Data and an analysis tutorial are available at https://osf.io/exbmk/.
Matching participants (as suggested by Hope, 2015) may be one promising option for research on a potential bilingual advantage in executive functions (EF). In this study we first compared performances in three EF-tasks of a naturally heterogeneous sample of monolingual (n = 69, age = 9.0 y) and multilingual children (n = 57, age = 9.3 y). Secondly, we meticulously matched participants pairwise to obtain two highly homogeneous groups to rerun our analysis and investigate a potential bilingual advantage. The initally disadvantaged multilinguals (regarding socioeconomic status and German lexicon size) performed worse in updating and response inhibition, but similarly in interference inhibition. This indicates that superior EF compensate for the detrimental effects of the background variables. After matching children pairwise on age, gender, intelligence, socioeconomic status and German lexicon size, performances became similar except for interference inhibition. Here, an advantage for multilinguals in the form of globally reduced reaction times emerged, indicating a bilingual executive processing advantage.
Literacy acquisition is one of the primary goals of school education, and usually it takes place in the national language of the respective country. At the same time, schools accommodate pupils with different home languages who might or might not be fluent in the national language and who start from other linguistic backgrounds in their acquisition of literacy. While it is safe to say that schools with a monolingual policy are not prepared to deal with the factual multilingualism in their classrooms in a systematic way, bilingual pupils have to deal with it nonetheless.
The interdisciplinary and comparative research project “Literacy Acquisition in Schools in the Context of Migration and Multilingualism” (LAS) investigated the practical processes of literacy acquisition in two countries, Germany and Turkey, where the monolingual orientation of schools is as much a reality as are the multilingual backgrounds of many of their pupils. The basic assumption was that pupils cope with the ways they are engaged by the school – both socially and academically – based on their cultural and linguistic repertoires acquired biographically, providing them with more or less productive options regarding the acquisition of literary skills. By comparing the literary development of bilingual children with that of their monolingual classmates throughout one school year in the first and the seventh grade in Germany and Turkey, respectively, we found out that the restricting potential of multilingualism is located rather on the part of the schools than on the part of the pupils. While the individual bilingual pupil almost naturally uses his/her home language as a resource for literacy acquisition in the school language, schools still tend to regard the multilingual backgrounds of their pupils as irrelevant or even as an impediment to adequate schooling. We argue that by ignoring or even suppressing the specific linguistic potentials of bilingualism, bilingual pupils are put at a structural disadvantage.
This research report is the slightly revised but full version of the final study project report from 2011 that was until now not available as a quotable publication. While several years have passed since the primary research was finalized, the addressed issues have lost none of their relevance. The report is accompanied by numerous publications in the frame of the LAS project, as well as by a web page (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/daf/projekte/las), which also contains the presentations from the final LAS-Conference, including valuable discussions of the report from renowed experts in the field.