Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cross-linguistic activation of referential bias in second-language learners of English

双语在世界许多地方都是常态。因此，理解双语说话者如何在语境中获得意义不仅是一个关于人类大脑如何适应日常生活中经常使用两种或两种以上语言的有趣的研究问题，而且对应用语言专业人员，如口译员、教师和从事双语者工作的言语-语言病理学家有着直接的影响。之前的研究表明，双语者对一种语言的了解会影响他们用另一种语言表达和解释单词和句子的方式。这被称为跨语言激活。本论文的研究目的是帮助我们理解跨语言激活是如何影响双语者在语境中理解语言的，也就是超越理解单个单词和句子。本研究将通过调查韩语谓词所涉及的指称偏向的强度如何影响韩英双语者的英语指称加工，来深入了解词汇层面的跨语言激活对双语者语篇水平加工的影响。基于动词的隐含因果关系(IC)对谁将被提及产生了偏见；例如，‘John Threat Bill’暗示主语(‘John’)是‘Threat’事件的原因，这使得它最有可能成为话语中的下一个参照物。除了IC动词，韩语还有一类(主语偏向)句法使役(SC)结构，最好的翻译是‘使X是Y’。一项初步研究表明，说韩语的人对SC结构的指称偏向比对韩语中常规IC谓词的偏向更强。本研究旨在考察韩语中SC和IC谓词在偏向强度上的差异对韩英双语者英语离线和在线指称加工的影响程度。该项目将使用书面句子补全(实验1)和视觉世界眼球跟踪(实验2)范式，从说英语的韩语学习者和以英语为母语的人那里收集数据。在这两个实验中，都将评估英语水平和学习经验对指称加工中跨语言激活的潜在调节作用。

Bilingualism is the norm in many parts of the world. Understanding how bilingual speakers derive meaning in context is thus not only an interesting research question about how the human mind accommodates the regular use of two or more languages in daily life, but one that has direct implications for applied language professionals, such as interpreters, teachers, and speech-language pathologists working with bilinguals. Previous research has shown that bilinguals' knowledge of one language can affect how they say and interpret words and sentences in the other. This is called cross-linguistic activation. The goal of this dissertation research is to contribute to our understanding of how cross-linguistic activation affects how bilinguals make sense of language in context, that is, beyond understanding individual words and sentences. The proposed research will provide insight into the effect of cross-linguistic activation at a word level on bilinguals' discourse level processing by investigating how the strength of referential biases associated with Korean predicates affects Korean-English bilinguals' referential processing in English. Verb-based implicit causality (IC) creates biases for who will be mentioned next; e.g., 'John threatened Bill' implies the subject ('John') was the cause of the 'threaten' event, making it the most likely next referent in the discourse. Korean, in addition to IC verbs, has a class of (subject-biased) syntactic causative (SC) constructions, best translated as 'causing X to be Y'. A preliminary study has shown that Korean speakers have stronger referential biases with SC constructions than with regular IC predicates in Korean. This project investigates the extent to which differences in bias strength associated with SC and IC predicates in Korean influence Korean-English bilinguals' offline and online reference processing in English. The project will collect data from Korean-speaking learners of English and native English speakers, using both written sentence completion (Experiment 1) and visual-world eye-tracking (Experiment 2) paradigms. In both experiments, potentially modulating effects of English language proficiency and learning experience on cross-linguistic activation in referential processing will be assessed.