Not all wh-dependencies are created equal: processing of multiple wh-questions in Romanian children and adults

Bentea, Anamaria; Marinis, Theodoros

doi:10.1017/s0142716421000059

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Moreover, Romanian heritage-children do not slowdown upon listening to the second wh-phrase, as we predicted would be the case if their processing of multiple wh-dependencies in Romanian would be affected by cross-linguistic influence from the dominant English. Furthermore, neither group showed an on-line sensitivity to the ungrammatical object-subject order in multiple who- questions, contrary to the findings for Romanian monolingual adults in Bentea and Marinis (2021) . The authors show that, adults, but not children, are sensitive to the ungrammaticality of multiple who -questions in which the wh-object precedes the wh-subject and one explanation they put forth is that this effect is delayed in children, in other words that it might only surface after the end of the sentence.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…In a recent study on the processing of Romanian multiple who and which -questions, Bentea and Marinis (2021) show that both monolingual children (6 to 9-year-olds) and adults slow down when processing who- compared to which- phrases, as measured by reaction times (RTs) in a self-paced listening task. However, only adults seem to show an online sensitivity to the ordering constraints in who -questions illustrated in (1b) above.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is the first study to examine the production of multiple wh-interrogatives in Romanian, as previous studies have only looked into how Romanian-speaking children comprehend this type of questions ( Bentea, 2010 ; Măniță, 2017 ; Bentea and Marinis, 2021 ). If the Romanian-speaking children tested in Romania have fully acquired the syntax of multiple interrogatives, they should mainly produce questions with multiple wh-fronting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The monolingual group (n=30) overlaps with the sample of children (n=32) reported inBentea and Marinis (2021) which compared the online processing of multiple wh-questions in Romanian monolingual children and adults. In the current study, we investigated in addition the production of multiple interrogatives.…”

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Multiple wh-interrogatives in child heritage Romanian: On-line comprehension and production

Bentea

Marinis

2022

Front. Psychol.

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This study compared the online comprehension and the production of multiple interrogatives in 18 Romanian-English bilingual children aged 6;0–9;2 (MAGE = 8;0) living in the UK who have Romanian as heritage language (L1) and English as majority language (L2) and 32 Romanian monolingual children aged 6;11 to 9;8 (MAGE = 8;3). We examined whether differences emerge between heritage and monolingual children in the online comprehension and in the production of multiple interrogatives in Romanian, which requires fronting of all wh-phrases, contrary to English. The main aim was to uncover to which extent similarities or differences in morphosyntactic properties between the L1 and the L2 systems affect the acquisition and processing of the heritage language/L1. Online comprehension was assessed in a self-paced listening task, while production was assessed using an elicitation task. The results reveal that Romanian heritage children show similar online comprehension patterns to monolingual children for multiple interrogatives in Romanian. A different pattern emerges for production as heritage children produce less complex multiple questions in Romanian and avoid movement of two wh-phrases in all elicited structures. Given that their predominant responses for multiple interrogatives only make use of the structural option present in English, namely one fronted wh-phrase and one in-situ, we take this to show that there is transfer from the majority language to the heritage language. Thus, language production in the children’s L1 seems to be affected by properties of the dominant L2, under cross-linguistic influence. Taken together, the results for both comprehension and production suggest that heritage children are able to establish the underlying representation of multiple wh-movement structures, similarly to monolinguals, but have difficulties activating the more complex structure in production.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Multiple wh-interrogatives in child heritage Romanian: On-line comprehension and production

Bentea

Marinis

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Sentence processing in bilingual children

Pontikas,

Cunnings,

Marinis

2024

LAB

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Research in sentence processing in bilingual children is emergent but incomplete as very few studies examine the processing of structurally complex sentences or bilingual children’s real-time interpretation of sentences. One underexplored linguistic feature which can offer insights in this direction are garden-path sentences, i.e., sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguity. These are difficult to process for monolingual children as incremental processing results in an initial misinterpretation and the need for reanalysis. Studies on bilingual children’s processing of garden-path sentences have used paradigms with limited ecological validity and which are not informative about one’s interpretation while listening. This study bridges this gap by investigating the processing of garden-path sentences in bilingual children with the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. It further explores the role of referential context in the visual stimuli to aid disambiguation. Monolingual and bilingual children aged 8–11 years completed a task similar to Trueswell et al. (1999). The results showed similar difficulty with revising garden-path sentences as evidenced by comprehension accuracy for both groups but only the monolinguals showed real-time garden-path effects in the gaze data. We interpret these findings as a manifestation of slower sentence processing in bilingual children. Both groups made limited use of the referential context to facilitate processing.

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Wh-questions in the grammar of heritage Egyptian speakers

Albirini,

Benmamoun

2024

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Aims and objectives: Despite the growth in research on heritage grammars, very few studies focused on heritage speakers’ knowledge of the syntax of wh-questions. This paper examines heritage Egyptian speakers’ knowledge of wh-questions in their L1 with particular focus on their knowledge of (1) the four main strategies of wh-question formation (three movement strategies and one in situ strategy) and (2) the unmarkedness of the in situ strategy compared to the movement strategy. Design: This study implements a cross-sectional design comparing an experimental group (30 heritage Egyptian speakers) and a control group (22 native Egyptian speakers) with respect to the issues under investigation. Data and analysis: Besides a proficiency measure and a background questionnaire, the participants completed three tasks: an elicited oral production task, an acceptability judgment task, and a preference task. The data from the oral production task were transcribed verbatim and coded in an Excel sheet. The data from the other two tasks were coded in two separate Excel sheets. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to describe and analyze the data from the three tasks. Findings: Heritage speakers had robust knowledge of the core aspects of wh-questions, including word order, strategies of wh-question formation, and resumption. They also realize the difference between marked and unmarked forms and often opt for the unmarked in situ strategy. However, they diverge from the controls in errors and patterns that mostly reflect transfer effects from their dominant L2 (English). Originality: This study is the first to explore wh-questions in heritage Arabic. Although very few studies focused on wh-questions in other languages, most of the issues examined here are unique because Egyptian Arabic deploys multiple strategies in constructing wh-questions. Implications: The findings corroborate the hypothesis that the core aspects of syntax are less susceptible to language loss. The results also demonstrate that heritage grammar is unique as it diverges from the grammar of L1 speakers in significant respects.

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Not all wh-dependencies are created equal: processing of multiple wh-questions in Romanian children and adults

Cited by 3 publications

References 59 publications

Multiple wh-interrogatives in child heritage Romanian: On-line comprehension and production

Multiple wh-interrogatives in child heritage Romanian: On-line comprehension and production

Sentence processing in bilingual children

Wh-questions in the grammar of heritage Egyptian speakers

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