Ivana Cvekić
Tehničko sveučilište u Braunschweigu
Cross-linguistic effects of grammatical gender during a code-switching discourse
četvrtak, 18. listopada 2018.
13 sati, predavaonica 303
So far, research on word processing has shown that all languages are activated simultaneously (Dijkstra, & van Heuven, 2002). In other words, multiple languages are stored in the same mental lexicon, and are therefore activated at all times. In this talk, I will report a study investigating if morphosyntactic information of a gendered L1 affects L2 pronoun processing in a context where grammatical gender information is irrelevant. An eye-tracking experiment by Conklin, Dijkstra, and van Heuven (2009) examined Dutch-English bilinguals, who displayed L1 Dutch gender activation during L2 English processing. The study at hand builds on previous research by Conklin et al. (2009), this time testing advanced German-English bilinguals and examining if L1 German gender is activated while listening to a code-switching discourse in English and German. Critically, cross-linguistic activation also looked at the type of word overlap, i.e. cognates (tractorENG -TraktorGER) and non-cognates (plateENG – TellerGER).