Late Bilinguals Share Syntax Unsparingly Between L1 and L2: Evidence From Crosslinguistically Similar and Different Constructions

Heeju Hwang, Jeong Ah Shin, Robert J. Hartsuiker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

34 Scopus citations

Abstract

Languages often use different constructions to convey the same meaning. For example, the meaning of a causative construction in English (Jen had her computer fixed) is conveyed using an active structure in Korean (Jen-NOM her computer-ACC fixed), and yet little is known about how bilinguals represent and process such constructions. The present study investigated whether late bilinguals develop shared or language-specific representations for crosslinguistically different (causatives) and similar (transitives) constructions. Using between-language structural priming, Experiment 1 showed that proficient Korean-English bilinguals exhibited a stronger priming effect for transitives than did less proficient bilinguals. Using a picture–sentence verification task, Experiment 2 showed that proficient bilinguals were more likely to apply the rules of Korean causatives to the processing of English causatives than were less proficient bilinguals. Our results suggest that Korean-English bilinguals share syntactic representations for both similar and different constructions, indicating that the bilingual system is highly integrated.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)177-205
Number of pages29
JournalLanguage Learning
Volume68
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2018

Keywords

  • bilinguals
  • causatives
  • crosslinguistic similarity
  • English
  • Korean
  • shared syntax
  • syntactic representation

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