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

在当今世界，双语者比单语者更多，在美国，双语者的人数正在上升。然而，双语能力是动态的，在不同人群之间以及在不同的说话者内部都可能有所不同。例如，双语者在他们的每种语言之间的相对熟练程度、他们接触每种语言的环境以及他们使用每种语言的频率可能会有所不同。本研究调查了这些因素如何影响双语者对语法信息的认知加工，以及双语语言加工如何随着说话者的社会、语言和环境语境的不同而变化。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、环境和语言因素如何影响双语人群的跨语言互动。具体地说，这项研究调查了德语-意大利语双语者如何处理各自语言中的语法性别信息，以衡量第一语言(L1)和第二语言(L2)之间的互动量。当双语的两种语言包含语法性别时，通常情况下，第一语言单词被分配到与相应的第二语言单词不同的性别(例如，在德语中是女性，而在意大利语中是男性)。L1德语-L2意大利语双语者将完成一系列任务，在这些任务中，他们用各自的语言命名图像。命名时间将揭示，当德语和意大利语性别一致时，双语者命名图像的速度是否比不一致时更快。两种语言的命名允许比较同一说话者中L1到L2和L2到L1的互动量。在第一个实验中，图像将被孤立地呈现，而在第二个实验中，图像将出现在句子上下文中，以确定当参与者只用一种语言阅读时，跨语言互动是否会减少。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参与者(南蒂罗尔)和生活在母语主导环境中的相同人群的说话者(奥地利)来衡量。研究结果将加深我们对双语的动态性质的了解，不仅对南蒂罗尔双语者，而且对生活在美国和世界各地双语人群中的类似说话者。

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.