Multilingual two-digit number naming: The influence of composition rules on language switching

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine language switching in a two-digit number naming task. In contrast to single digits, two-digit numbers have a composition rule (i.e., morphological configuration) that may differ between languages. For example, the Arabic number 21 is read with an inverted composition rule in German (unit before decade) and a non-inverted composition rule in English (decade before unit). In the present experiment, one group of German native speakers and one group of Spanish native speakers had to name two-digit numbers in German, English, or Spanish. The results demonstrate a language-switch cost, revealing better performance in language repetition than in language-switch trials. This switch cost was further modulated by repeating or switching the composition rule, since the language repetition benefit (i.e., the switch cost) was reduced in trials with composition-rule switches compared with trials with composition-rule repetitions. This finding indicates that the language in which the number word has to be produced and its composition rule are not switched independently but rather may be integrated into one language schema.

The reliability of language-switch costs in bilingual one- and two-digit number naming

“…Especially when referring to the correlation across different conditions, it is important to take into account that the conditions were similar in the sense that they all requested number naming. However, there was also a difference with respect to the complexity of the number names (see Contreras-Saavedra et al, 2020). Whereas the names of one-digit numbers have no specific composition rule, a language-specific composition rule has to be followed when naming two-digit numbers.…”

“…The data pattern shows that the size of switch costs was larger for a bilingual naming task involving two-digit numbers (especially with decade 20) than in a naming task involving one-digit numbers. This may suggest that the complexity of two-digit numbers, involving two constituents (unit and decade), might add an additional influence on language switching (Contreras-Saavedra et al, 2020). Although this difference was small, it might nevertheless indicate that language-switch costs are not a pure empirical marker for language control processes, but always depend on a multitude of factors specific for each individual setting.…”

“… 1. A recent study by Contreras-Saavedra et al (2020) found that language switching was affected by the composition rule of the number name when participants performed two-digit number naming. In this study, participants named digits in one of three languages.…”

Syntactic priming reveals an explicit syntactic representation of multi-digit verbal numbers

“…Previous studies used different methods to examine the syntactic processing of verbal numbers -e.g., neuropsychological examination of individuals with selective deficits (Dotan & Friedmann, 2018;Marangolo et al, 2004;McCloskey et al, 1986), manipulating the grammaticality of number-word sequences (Brutman & Dotan, 2019;Hung et al, 2015), saying the same numbers with different verbal structure (Lochy et al, 2002;Noël & Seron, 1997), and examining languages with tens-ones number-word inversion (Blanken et al, 1997;Brysbaert et al, 1998;Cohen et al, 1997;Contreras-Saavedra et al, 2020;Göbel et al, 2014;Hayek et al, 2020;Moeller et al, 2009;Pixner et al, 2011;Pourquié & Nespoulous, 2018;Proios et al, 2002;Qasim-Masarwa et al, 2020;Zuber et al, 2009). Syntactic priming is an additional paradigm, which offers unique advantages: first, it does not merely tap "sensitivity" to the number syntax, a phenomenon that can occur also for low-level syntactic processes, perhaps even such that handle syntactic information merely for single digits or single number words.…”

“…However, phonological retrieval is a language-dependent peripheral stage; clearly not the central representation that we wish to examine here. Other studies showed sensitivity to the order of number words in languages with non-canonical word order -in particular, languages such as German or Arabic, in which the ones word precedes the tens word, e.g., 123 = "one hundred three and twenty" (Blanken et al, 1997;Brysbaert et al, 1998;Cohen et al, 1997;Contreras-Saavedra et al, 2020;Göbel et al, 2014;Hayek et al, 2020;Moeller et al, 2009;Pixner et al, 2011;Pourquié & Nespoulous, 2018;Proios et al, 2002;Qasim-Masarwa et al, 2020;Zuber et al, 2009). Nevertheless, word-order too might be handled by peripheral syntactic processes that operate on a verbal, language-specific representation rather than on a central representation (the number-reading model in Dotan & Friedmann, 2018 made precisely this assumption).…”