The use of complex structures with a word class change in Inuktitut child-directed speech.

Caregivers typically use a simplified mode of the language - child-directed speech (CDS) - when addressing young children. In this study, we investigate the use of complex morphological structures with a word class change within a single word in Inuktitut CDS. Inuktitut is a polysynthetic agglutinative language of the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan language family spoken in arctic Quebec, which allows more than 10 morphemes per word and in which the meaning of an entire sentence can be expressed in one word. Clearly, such a complex morphological system presents special challenges for young children, which raises the question of whether caregivers shape their CDS in ways that facilitate acquisition. Using the data from mothers addressing eight Inuktitut-speaking children aged 0;11 to 3;6, we investigated whether the frequency and complexity of polysynthetic structures in CDS are dependent on the stage of the children's linguistic development. The results demonstrate that the number and morphological complexity of the structures with a word class change increased as the children developed linguistically. The variety of nominalizers and verbalizers - the key components of such structures - also increased through the stages and were used in variation sets, which help children acquire morphological items by providing examples of use of the same morpheme in morphologically contrasting environments. These results show the presence of morphological simplification in Inuktitut CDS and demonstrate that such simplification is fine-tuned, i.e., that mothers are sensitive to their children's level of linguistic development.

Processing emotional prosody in a foreign language: the case of German and Hebrew.

This study investigated the universality of emotional prosody in perception of discrete emotions when semantics is not available. In two experiments the perception of emotional prosody in Hebrew and German by listeners who speak one of the languages but not the other was investigated. Having a parallel tool in both languages allowed to conduct controlled comparisons. In Experiment 1, 39 native German speakers with no knowledge of Hebrew and 80 native Israeli speakers rated Hebrew sentences spoken with four different emotional prosodies (anger, fear, happiness, sadness) or neutral. The Hebrew version of the Test for Rating of Emotions in Speech (T-RES) was used for this purpose. Ratings indicated participants' agreement on how much the sentence conveyed each of four discrete emotions (anger, fear, happiness and sadness). In Experient 2, 30 native speakers of German, and 24 Israeli native speakers of Hebrew who had no knowledge of German rated sentences of the German version of the T-RES. Based only on the prosody, German-speaking participants were able to accurately identify the emotions in the Hebrew sentences and Hebrew-speaking participants were able to identify the emotions in the German sentences. In both experiments ratings between the groups were similar. These findings show that individuals are able to identify emotions in a foreign language even if they do not have access to semantics. This ability goes beyond identification of target emotion; similarities between languages exist even for "wrong" perception. This adds to accumulating evidence in the literature on the universality of emotional prosody. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41809-022-00107-x.

The influence of prominence cues in 7- to 10-year-olds' pronoun resolution: Disentangling order of mention, grammatical role, and semantic role.

In two visual world experiments we disentangled the influence of order of mention (first vs. second mention), grammatical role (subject vs object), and semantic role (proto-agent vs proto-patient) on 7- to 10-year-olds' real-time interpretation of German pronouns. Children listened to SVO or OVS sentences containing active accusative verbs (küssen "to kiss") in Experiment 1 (N = 72), or dative object-experiencer verbs (gefallen "to like") in Experiment 2 (N = 64). This was followed by the personal pronoun er or the demonstrative pronoun der. Interpretive preferences for er were most robust when high prominence cues (first mention, subject, proto-agent) were aligned onto the same entity; and the same applied to der for low prominence cues (second mention, object, proto-patient). These preferences were reduced in conditions where cues were misaligned, and there was evidence that each cue independently influenced performance. Crucially, individual variation in age predicted adult-like weighting preferences for semantic cues (Schumacher, Roberts & Järvikivi, ).

Detecting structured repetition in child-surrounding speech: Evidence from maximally diverse languages.

Caretakers tend to repeat themselves when speaking to children, either to clarify their message or to redirect wandering attention. This repetition also appears to support language learning. For example, words that are heard more frequently tend to be produced earlier by young children. However, pure repetition only goes so far; some variation between utterances is necessary to support acquisition of a fully productive grammar. When individual words or morphemes are repeated, but embedded in different lexical and syntactic contexts, the child has more information about how these forms may be used and combined. Corpus analysis has shown that these partial repetitions frequently occur in clusters, which have been coined variation sets. More recent research has introduced algorithms that can extract these variation sets automatically from corpora with the goal of measuring their relative prevalence across ages and languages. Longitudinal analyses have revealed that rates of variation sets tend to decrease as children get older. We extend this research in several ways. First, we consider a maximally diverse sample of languages, both genealogically and geographically, to test the generalizability of developmental trends. Second, we compare multiple levels of repetition, both words and morphemes, to account for typological differences in how information is encoded. Third, we consider several additional measures of development to account for deficiencies in age as a measure of linguistic aptitude. Fourth, we examine whether the levels of repetition found in child-surrounding speech is greater or less than what would have been expected by chance. This analysis produced a new measure, redundancy, which captures how repetitive speech is on average given how repeititive it could have been. Fifth, we compare rates of repetition in child-surrounding and adult-directed speech to test whether variation sets are especially prevalent in child-surrounding speech. We find that (1) some languages show increases in repetition over development, (2) true estimates of variation sets are generally lower than or equal to random baselines, (3) these patterns are largely convergent across developmental indices, and (4) adult-directed speech is reliably less redundant, though in some cases more repetitive, than child-surrounding speech. These results are discussed with respect to features of the corpora, typological properties of the languages, and differential rates of change in repetition and redundancy over children's development.

Deconstructing the Native Speaker: Further Evidence From Heritage Speakers for Why This Horse Should Be Dead!

The category "native speaker" is flawed because it fails to consider the diversity between the speaker groups falling under its scope, as highlighted in previous literature. This paper provides further evidence by focusing on the similarities and differences between heritage speakers (HSs) and monolingually-raised speakers (MSs) of their heritage and majority languages. HSs are bilinguals who acquire a family (heritage) language and a societal (majority) language in early childhood. Naturalistic exposure from early childhood qualifies them as native speakers of their heritage language. Some HSs are simultaneous bilinguals, which makes them native speakers of their majority language as well. Others are early second language acquirers who may be indistinguishable from simultaneous bilinguals. Previous research shows that the heritage language productions of German HSs in the United States do not completely overlap with those of German MSs, who are, by default, native speakers. In overall clause type selection (independent main, coordinate main, and subordinate), the HSs differ from German MSs in German but are similar to English MSs in English. The present study examines the distribution of finite subordinate clauses and their types (relative, complement, and adverbial) across registers in 27 adolescent HSs of German in the United States, compared to 32 adolescent MSs of German and 32 MSs of English. All participants described a short video in two settings (formal/informal) and two modes (spoken/written). Results demonstrate that, even with respect to a specific phenomenon (subordinate clauses), HSs show similarities and differences to MSs of both languages. Concerning the distribution of subordinate clause types, HSs behave similarly to both English and German MSs. Concerning subordinate clauses in general, HSs use them less frequently than MSs in German. In English, the difference is more nuanced: HSs differentiate between settings in both modes, while MSs do so only in the written mode. This indicates that the category "native speaker" is not a meaningful descriptor since it covers speakers with varying production patterns. We propose that studies including native speakers should assure transparency and replicability of research by specifying and taking into account speaker characteristics such as bilingualism, proficiency, exposure and dominance.

Cross-linguistic differences in parafoveal semantic and orthographic processing.

In this study we investigated parafoveal processing by L1 and late L2 speakers of English (L1 German) while reading in English. We hypothesized that L2ers would make use of semantic and orthographic information parafoveally. Using the gaze contingent boundary paradigm, we manipulated six parafoveal masks in a sentence (Mark found th*e wood for the fire; * indicates the invisible boundary): identical word mask (wood), English orthographic mask (wook), English string mask (zwwl), German mask (holz), German orthographic mask (holn), and German string mask (kxfs). We found an orthographic benefit for L1ers and L2ers when the mask was orthographically related to the target word (wood vs. wook) in line with previous L1 research. English L2ers did not derive a benefit (rather an interference) when a non-cognate translation mask from their L1 was used (wood vs. holz), but did derive a benefit from a German orthographic mask (wood vs. holn). While unexpected, it may be that L2ers incur a switching cost when the complete German word is presented parafoveally, and derive a benefit by keeping both lexicons active when a partial German word is presented parafoveally (narrowing down lexical candidates). To the authors' knowledge there is no mention of parafoveal processing in any model of L2 processing/reading, and the current study provides the first evidence for a parafoveal non-cognate orthographic benefit (but only with partial orthographic overlap) in sentence reading for L2ers. We discuss how these findings fit into the framework of bilingual word recognition theories.

Heritage Speakers as Part of the Native Language Continuum.

We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.

Effects of speech rate on anticipatory eye movements in the visual world paradigm: Evidence from aging, native, and non-native language processing.

Research has shown that suprasegmental cues in conjunction with visual context can lead to anticipatory (or predictive) eye movements. However, the impact of speech rate on anticipatory eye movements has received little empirical attention. The purpose of the current study was twofold. From a methodological perspective, we tested the impact of speech rate on anticipatory eye movements by systemically varying speech rate (3.5, 4.5, 5.5, and 6.0 syllables per second) in the processing of filler-gap dependencies. From a theoretical perspective, we examined two groups thought to show fewer anticipatory eye movements, and thus likely to be more impacted by speech rate. Experiment 1 compared anticipatory eye movements across the lifespan with younger (18-24 years old) and older adults (40-75 years old). Experiment 2 compared L1 speakers of English and L2 speakers of English with an L1 of German. Results showed that all groups made anticipatory eye movements. However, L2 speakers only made anticipatory eye movements at 3.5 syllables per second, older adults at 3.5 and 4.5 syllables per second, and younger adults at speech rates up to 5.5 syllables per second. At the fastest speech rate, all groups showed a marked decrease in anticipatory eye movements. This work highlights (1) the importance of speech rate on anticipatory eye movements, and (2) group-level performance differences in filler-gap prediction.

The impact of uninformative parafoveal masks on L1 and late L2 speakers.

Much reading research has found that informative parafoveal masks lead to a reading benefit for native speakers (see 1). However, little reading research has tested the impact of uninformative parafoveal masks during reading. Additionally, parafoveal processing research is primarily restricted to native speakers. In the current study we manipulated the type of uninformative preview using a gaze contingent boundary paradigm with a group of L1 English speakers and a group of late L2 English speakers (L1 German). We were interested in how different types of uninformative masks impact on parafoveal processing, whether L1 and L2 speakers are similarly impacted, and whether they are sensitive to parafoveally viewed language-specific sub-lexical orthographic information. We manipulated six types of uninformative masks to test these objectives: an Identical, English pseudo-word, German pseudo-word, illegal string of letters, series of X's, and a blank mask. We found that X masks affect reading the most with slight graded differences across the other masks, L1 and L2 speakers are impacted similarly, and neither group is sensitive to sub-lexical orthographic information. Overall these data show that not all previews are equal, and research should be aware of the way uninformative masks affect reading behavior. Additionally, we hope that future research starts to approach models of eye-movement behavior during reading from not only a monolingual but also from a multilingual perspective.

A universal cue for grammatical categories in the input to children: Frequent frames.

How does a child map words to grammatical categories when words are not overtly marked either lexically or prosodically? Recent language acquisition theories have proposed that distributional information encoded in sequences of words or morphemes might play a central role in forming grammatical classes. To test this proposal, we analyze child-directed speech from seven typologically diverse languages to simulate maximum variation in the structures of the world's languages. We ask whether the input to children contains cues for assigning syntactic categories in frequent frames, which are frequently occurring nonadjacent sequences of words or morphemes. In accord with aggregated results from previous studies on individual languages, we find that frequent word frames do not provide a robust distributional pattern for accurately predicting grammatical categories. However, our results show that frames are extremely accurate cues cross-linguistically at the morpheme level. We theorize that the nonadjacent dependency pattern captured by frequent frames is a universal anchor point for learners on the morphological level to detect and categorize grammatical categories. Whether frames also play a role on higher linguistic levels such as words is determined by grammatical features of the individual language.

The development of the causative construction in Persian child language.

The acquisition of systematic patterns and exceptions in different languages can be readily examined using the causative construction. Persian allows four types of causative structures, including one productive multiword structure (i.e. the light verb construction). In this study, we examine the development of all four structures in Persian child speech between the ages of 1;11 and 6;7, in correspondence with their caregivers' speech. We define developmental stages based on dendrograms derived from variability clustering (Gries & Stoll, 2009). These stages are further substantiated by qualitative data, including overgeneralization errors and alternating structures. We find that Persian-speaking children learn to exploit two (i.e. lexical and light verb construction causatives) of the four constructions. They go from relying on lexical causatives to forming progressively constrained templates for the more complex light verb construction. This first study of the development of Persian causatives supports a usage-based account of verb-by-verb learning in child language development.

Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture: motion events in English and Turkish.

The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific ways from age 3 onward (i.e., English speakers used 1 clause and Turkish speakers used 2 clauses to express manner and path). In contrast, English- and Turkish-speaking children's gestures looked similar at ages 3 and 5 (i.e., separate gestures for manner and path), differing from each other only at age 9 and in adulthood (i.e., English speakers used 1 gesture, but Turkish speakers used separate gestures for manner and path). The authors argue that this pattern of the development of cospeech gestures reflects a gradual shift to language-specific representations during speaking and shows that looking at speech alone may not be sufficient to understand the full process of language acquisition.

Language-specific and universal influences in children's syntactic packaging of Manner and Path: a comparison of English, Japanese, and Turkish.

Different languages map semantic elements of spatial relations onto different lexical and syntactic units. These crosslinguistic differences raise important questions for language development in terms of how this variation is learned by children. We investigated how Turkish-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children (mean age 3;8) package the semantic elements of Manner and Path onto syntactic units when both the Manner and the Path of the moving Figure occur simultaneously and are salient in the event depicted. Both universal and language-specific patterns were evident in our data. Children used the semantic-syntactic mappings preferred by adult speakers of their own languages, and even expressed subtle syntactic differences that encode different relations between Manner and Path in the same way as their adult counterparts (i.e., Manner causing vs. incidental to Path). However, not all types of semantics-syntax mappings were easy for children to learn (e.g., expressing Manner and Path elements in two verbal clauses). In such cases, Turkish- and Japanese-speaking children frequently used syntactic patterns that were not typical in the target language but were similar to patterns used by English-speaking children, suggesting some universal influence. Thus, both language-specific and universal tendencies guide the development of complex spatial expressions.

Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual acquisition: subject omission in learners of Inuktitut and English.

This study investigates subject omission in six English-Inuktitut simultaneous bilingual children, aged 1;8-3;9, to examine whether there are cross-language influences in their language development. Previous research with other language pairs has shown that the morphosyntax of one language can influence the development of morphosyntax in the other language. Most of this research has focused on Romance-Germanic language combinations using case studies. In this study, we examined a language pair (English-Inuktitut) with radically different morphosyntactic structures. Analysis of the English-only and Inuktitut-only utterances of the children revealed monolingual-like acquisition patterns and subject omission rates. The data indicate that these bilingual children possessed knowledge of the target languages that was language-specific and that previously identified triggers for crosslinguistic influence do not operate universally.