Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:32:01.380Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sentence interpretation strategies in emergent bilingual children and adults

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2006

ILIANA REYES  and
ARTURO E. HERNÁNDEZ
ILIANA REYES
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
ARTURO E. HERNÁNDEZ
Affiliation:
University of Houston
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examined sentence processing in emergent bilingual children and young adults in both English (second language – L2) and Spanish (first language – L1). One hundred participants from five different age groups (5;4–7;11, 8;0–10;11, 11;2–13;11, 14;0–16;8 years, and college-age adults) participated in this study. An online sentence interpretation paradigm was used to explore participants' processing patterns. Results of both choice and reaction time experiments provide new information about consolidation and “in between” strategies for Spanish–English bilinguals; on the use of the distribution of local vs. topological cues (namely early reliance on word order in both languages, followed by an integration of late-emerging subject-verb agreement cues from 11 to 13 years of age). The nature of these syntactic strategies and their implications for developmental theories of bilingualism are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 51 - 69
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2006

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.)

Footnotes

We dedicate this article to our mentor, Liz Bates, who introduced us to and guided us through the exploration of psycholinguistic processes in bilingual populations.We thank Dan Slobin, and two anonymous reviewers for many constructive comments on previous versions of this paper. We would also like to thank Kain Sosa and Rehana Salahuddin for technical support, and to Paula Bautista for child testing. Finally, we are grateful to the children, their parents, and families who were so enthusiastic during their participation in this study. This research was partially supported by an LMRI grant (001G-SD) and the grant entitled ‘Aging and Bilingualism’ (NIA Grant # 5-R01-AG13474-03).