Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cross-language interaction of grammatical gender: Investigating L2-to-L1 influence

在当今世界上，双语者比单语者多，在美国，双语者正在上升。然而，双语是动态的，可以在人口之间以及在个人发言者之间变化。例如，双语者可以在他们的每种语言之间的相对熟练度，他们遇到每种语言的环境以及他们使用每种语言的频率方面有所不同。本研究探讨了这些因素如何影响双语者对语法信息的认知加工，以及双语者的语言加工如何根据说话者的社会、语言和环境语境而变化。证据表明，在双语言语产生过程中，两种语言都被激活并相互作用。本研究的目的是探讨社会语言学、环境和语言学因素如何影响双语人群的跨语言互动。具体来说，本研究调查如何德国，意大利双语扬声器处理语法性别信息，在他们的语言来衡量第一（L1）和第二（L2）语言之间的互动量。当双语者的两种语言包含语法性别时，通常的情况是L1单词被分配了与对应的L2单词不同的性别（例如，“花”在德语中是阴性的，但在意大利语中是阳性的。L1德语-L2意大利语双语者将完成一系列任务，其中他们用各自的语言命名图像。两次测试将揭示双语者在德语和意大利语性别一致的情况下比在性别不一致的情况下更快地命名图像。两种语言的对比可以比较同一说话者中L1到L2和L2到L1的互动量。在第一个实验中，图像将被单独呈现，而在第二个实验中，图像将出现在一个句子的上下文中，以确定当参与者仅用一种语言阅读时，跨语言的互动是否减少。语言环境对跨语言互动的影响将通过比较目前生活在双语环境中的南蒂罗尔州参与者（南蒂罗尔州）与生活在L1主导环境中的同一人口的发言者（奥地利）来衡量。结果将提高我们的理解双语的动态性质，不仅与南蒂罗尔双语，但类似的扬声器生活在美国和世界各地的双语人口。

In the world today there are more bilinguals than monolinguals, and in the United States bilingualism is on the rise. However, bilingualism is dynamic and can vary between populations as well as within individual speakers. For example, bilinguals can vary in the relative proficiency between each of their languages, the environments in which they encounter each language, and the frequency with which they use each language. The current study investigates how such factors can have an impact on the cognitive processing of grammatical information in bilinguals and how bilingual language processing may vary according to the social, linguistic, and environmental contexts of the speaker.Evidence has shown that during bilingual speech production, both languages are activated and interact with each other. The goal of the present study is to look at how sociolinguistic, environmental, and linguistic factors influence cross-language interaction among bilingual populations. Specifically, this study investigates how German-Italian bilingual speakers process grammatical gender information in each of their languages to measure the amount of interaction between the first (L1) and second (L2) languages. When the two languages of a bilingual contain grammatical gender, it is often the case that L1 words are assigned a different gender than the corresponding L2 word (e.g., 'flower' is feminine in German but masculine in Italian). L1 German-L2 Italian bilinguals will complete a series of tasks in which they name images in each of their languages. Naming times will reveal whether bilinguals are faster to name images when the gender is congruent between German and Italian than when it is incongruent. Naming in both languages allows for the comparison the amount of L1-to-L2 and L2-to-L1 interaction within the same speakers. In the first experiment, images will be presented in isolation, while in the second experiment images will appear within a sentence context, to determine whether cross-language interaction is reduced when participants are reading in just one language. The effect of language environment on cross-language interaction will be measured by comparing South Tyrolean participants currently living in a bilingual environment (South Tyrol) to the same population of speakers who live in an L1-dominant environment (Austria). Results will enhance our understanding of the dynamic nature of bilingualism not only with regard to South Tyrolean bilinguals, but to similar speakers living in bilingual populations in the United States and around the world.