Poster E43, Thursday, August 22, 2019, 3:45 – 5:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Individual differences in pronoun Processing in Heritage Speakers of Spanish: data from ERPs and TFR
Eleonora Rossi1, Beverly Cotter2;1University of Florida, 2California State Polytechnic University
The aim of the study was to investigate syntactic processing abilities in heritage speakers of Spanish. The term “heritage speaker” refers to individuals who are raised speaking the family language at home from infancy but have not received formal education in that language, while growing up in an environment where another language is spoken. Critically, the literature on heritage speakers’ grammatical processing abilities is still mixed but suggests that comprehension and production abilities are markedly different than the ones observed in native speakers (i.e., Montrul, 2010; Polinsky 2011). Previous behavioral studies have proposed that heritage grammatical processing might bear similarities with late second language processing. However, fewer neurophysiological studies have assessed variability in heritage language processing. METHODS: In this study, we took an individual differences approach to investigate grammatical processing in heritage speakers. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess the neural correlates of grammatical processing in heritage speakers of Spanish, using Spanish clitic pronouns as testbed. Given their highly grammatical complexity, clitic pronouns are one of those structures that are processed differently in heritage speakers, especially because of marking both grammatical gender and number which must agree with the antecedent. For example, in a sentence such as: “Ana compró la manzanafem/sing y lafem/sing comió”, the clitic pronoun “la” has to agree with the antecedent “la manzana” (the apple) both in gender and number. A total of 60 heritage speakers of Spanish (age: 19-25) were tested while they processed sentences containing clitic pronouns, and completed a sentence acceptability task. We hypothesized that if heritage speakers are sensitive to clitic pronouns and sensitive to the violations of grammatical gender and/or number, we should observe the emergence of a P600 when presented with clitic pronoun violations. Participants also completed a behavioral battery of tests consisting of a language history questionnaire, a Spanish grammar task, and a memory task to assess individual linguistic and cognitive indexes. RESULTS: When collapsing all the data together no sensitivity to violations of clitic pronouns was observed. However, three major ERP patterns emerged. For a subset of participants a P600 to gender and number violation was observed, suggesting more native-like sensitivity to the grammatical structure. Instead, for another subset of participants, an N400 component emerged, in line with what previously found for second language learners, suggesting that a subset of heritage speakers might process syntactic information through semantics. Time Frequency Representation analysis is currently being performed. If the variability observed in the ERP response will mirror what will be observed during the TFR analysis, we will expect to observe a different coupling of alpha and beta frequencies. Overall, this data shows a variable neural response during syntactic processing in heritage speakers. Data will be discussed under current neurobiological models of syntactic processing, and emphasis will be placed on the role of variable syntactic input.
Themes: Multilingualism, Syntax
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)