Bilingual speakers make up a large portion of the population, both in the U.S. and abroad. Their two languages are not completely compartmentalized in the bilingual brain and mind, but rather the languages interact in dynamic ways. It is still unclear, however, whether learning a second language can affect one's native language, and if so, to what extent. Previous research has shown that certain grammatical constructions are strongly linked in the two languages of bilingual speakers. What about grammatical constructions that exist in only one of the two languages? Evidence that a construction which exists only in the second-learned language can be used to interpret sentences in the native language would provide strong support for an integrated grammatical system in bilinguals and one that is affected by new experiences.
This project takes advantage of a grammatical difference between Spanish and English. In English, manner-of-motion verbs such as 'run' and 'jump' can be used to describe an event in which someone causes another person (or being) to carry out the action. For example, in the sentence "The trainer jumped the horse over the fence," the trainer causes the action to occur, but it is the horse that performs the action of jumping. In Spanish, these same verbs ('correr' [run] and 'saltar' [jump]) cannot be used to describe causative actions; constructions of this type are ungrammatical (and uninterpretable in a causative sense).
The study will investigate whether native Spanish speakers who have learned English can interpret these ungrammatical sentences in Spanish due to their knowledge of English. To investigate whether age of second language acquisition or language dominance are important factors, early versus late acquirers of English will be compared, as well as speakers who are more proficient in Spanish versus those more proficient in English. Finally, to determine whether processing of these structures occurs automatically or only after conscious application of linguistic rules, the study includes electrophysiological measures (event-related potentials) and judgments of sentence acceptability.
