The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals
The processing literature provides some evidence that heritage Spanish speakers process gender like monolinguals, since gender-marking in definite articles facilitates their lexical access to nouns, albeit these effects may be reduced relative to speakers who learned the language as majority languag...
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2024-12-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1442339/full |
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| author | Ana T. Pérez-Leroux Ana T. Pérez-Leroux Laura Colantoni Laura Colantoni Danielle Thomas Danielle Thomas Crystal H. Y. Chen |
| author_facet | Ana T. Pérez-Leroux Ana T. Pérez-Leroux Laura Colantoni Laura Colantoni Danielle Thomas Danielle Thomas Crystal H. Y. Chen |
| author_sort | Ana T. Pérez-Leroux |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The processing literature provides some evidence that heritage Spanish speakers process gender like monolinguals, since gender-marking in definite articles facilitates their lexical access to nouns, albeit these effects may be reduced relative to speakers who learned the language as majority language. However, previous studies rely on slowed-down speech, which leaves open the question of how processing occurs under normal conditions. Using naturalistic speech, our study tests bilingual processing of gender in determiners, and in word-final gender vowels. Participants were 17 adult heritage speakers of Spanish (HSSs) and 21 adult Spanish-speaking immigrants (ASIs). We presented these bilinguals with questions containing either a definite article or an unmarked possessive (¿Dónde está la/mi pala? ‘Where is the/my shovel?’) in a three-object display. Gaze fixations were recorded during determiner, noun and post speech processing. Nouns were controlled for gender, morphological transparency, gender alternation, and animacy. Individually, heritage speakers tend to fall within the performance range of adult immigrants, but statistical analyses show that ASIs have more fixations to targets for definite articles compared to HSSs. For HSSs the advantage of gender-marking appears later, during noun processing. In contexts where the noun-final vowels were the only cue to lexical selection, HSS had less looks to targets with alternating nouns, and with feminine nouns. When presented with natural speech, despite the great overlap between adult immigrant and heritage speakers, there are quantitative differences in how HSS process gender both for syntactic agreement (gender in articles) and noun morphophonology. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-95ccd5238854444ea5dd9c81ca384c29 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 1662-5161 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-12-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj-art-95ccd5238854444ea5dd9c81ca384c292025-08-20T01:55:42ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Human Neuroscience1662-51612024-12-011810.3389/fnhum.2024.14423391442339The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilingualsAna T. Pérez-Leroux0Ana T. Pérez-Leroux1Laura Colantoni2Laura Colantoni3Danielle Thomas4Danielle Thomas5Crystal H. Y. Chen6Experimental Microvariation Lab, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaExperimental Microvariation Lab, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaExperimental Microvariation Lab, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaDepartment of Linguistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaThe processing literature provides some evidence that heritage Spanish speakers process gender like monolinguals, since gender-marking in definite articles facilitates their lexical access to nouns, albeit these effects may be reduced relative to speakers who learned the language as majority language. However, previous studies rely on slowed-down speech, which leaves open the question of how processing occurs under normal conditions. Using naturalistic speech, our study tests bilingual processing of gender in determiners, and in word-final gender vowels. Participants were 17 adult heritage speakers of Spanish (HSSs) and 21 adult Spanish-speaking immigrants (ASIs). We presented these bilinguals with questions containing either a definite article or an unmarked possessive (¿Dónde está la/mi pala? ‘Where is the/my shovel?’) in a three-object display. Gaze fixations were recorded during determiner, noun and post speech processing. Nouns were controlled for gender, morphological transparency, gender alternation, and animacy. Individually, heritage speakers tend to fall within the performance range of adult immigrants, but statistical analyses show that ASIs have more fixations to targets for definite articles compared to HSSs. For HSSs the advantage of gender-marking appears later, during noun processing. In contexts where the noun-final vowels were the only cue to lexical selection, HSS had less looks to targets with alternating nouns, and with feminine nouns. When presented with natural speech, despite the great overlap between adult immigrant and heritage speakers, there are quantitative differences in how HSS process gender both for syntactic agreement (gender in articles) and noun morphophonology.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1442339/fullSpanish genderheritage speakersNP processingeye-trackingbilingual processingdomain interactions |
| spellingShingle | Ana T. Pérez-Leroux Ana T. Pérez-Leroux Laura Colantoni Laura Colantoni Danielle Thomas Danielle Thomas Crystal H. Y. Chen The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals Frontiers in Human Neuroscience Spanish gender heritage speakers NP processing eye-tracking bilingual processing domain interactions |
| title | The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals |
| title_full | The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals |
| title_fullStr | The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals |
| title_full_unstemmed | The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals |
| title_short | The morphophonological dimensions of Spanish gender marking: NP processing in Spanish bilinguals |
| title_sort | morphophonological dimensions of spanish gender marking np processing in spanish bilinguals |
| topic | Spanish gender heritage speakers NP processing eye-tracking bilingual processing domain interactions |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1442339/full |
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