Syntactic Regulation and Adaptation in Bidialectal and Heritage Bilingual Speakers

Leon Guerrero, Sibylla, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) and Linguistics programs. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Julie Washington at the University of California, Irvine this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist studying linguistic and cognitive processing adaptations among speakers of dialectal varieties and heritage languages. Children’s brains are famously plastic when exposed to multiple languages, with dramatic consequences for the adult mind and brain in language and cognition. However, the benefits of multilingual experience are most commonly studied in bilingual speakers of English and other national European languages. In contrast, even proficient speakers of highly prevalent minoritized language varieties, such as African American English and Spanish-influenced English in the U.S., have largely been evaluated from a deficit perspective in comparison to speakers of monodialectal, monolingual General American English. As a result, we know little about how proficient multidialectal speakers adapt to diverse language experience and whether children who are exposed to early linguistic diversity at the dialect level later accrue bilingual-like benefits in adolescence and young adulthood. To better understand the nature and consequences of proficient, multidialectal language experience, this research will examine reading behaviors and corresponding brain activity with highly competent adult speakers of African American and Spanish influenced English. By demonstrating the linguistic competencies and highlighting the cognitive strengths of multidialectal speakers, this project will contribute to a strengths-based understanding of two of the largest minoritized language communities in the U.S. Differences in bilingual and monolingual written sentence processing have been demonstrated in prior research using eye movement as well as electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to index early word access and expectations for meaning in response to incongruent or unexpected grammatical elements. Although these indices of language understanding have classically been used to characterize native-like language, little is known about how highly proficient dialectal and heritage language speakers process grammatical variation and how skilled language comprehension may be supported by variations in processing that arises from diversity in early language experience. To address this gap, the proposed research will examine eye movements and EEG (N400 and P600) responses to verb forms characteristic of dialectal and heritage syntax in African American English (AAE) and heritage Spanish speakers, as well as the association of these responses with childhood and concurrent language use and exposure. This research is the first systematic neurolinguistic investigation of brain and behavior in written sentence processing by bidialectal and heritage bilingual speakers and will make a unique contribution to emerging knowledge that seeks to characterize the complexity and interrelationship of diverse forms and timing of linguistic diversity with language processing and comprehension. Further, by investigating bidialectal and heritage language processing in their own right rather than in comparison to monodialectal, monolingual English speakers, the proposed research contributes to the recognition of the value of minoritized language forms and of bidialectals’ and bilinguals’ unique linguistic and cognitive adaptations for successful communication. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.