Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language Processing in Heritage Language Speakers: Evidence from Vietnamese-English Bilinguals

博士论文研究：传统语言使用者的语言处理：来自越英双语者的证据

• 批准号: 1844810
• 负责人: Naoko Witzel
• 金额: $ 1.67万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Arlington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-03-15 至 2021-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1844810&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Language; Processing

This dissertation examines heritage language processing. A Heritage Language (HL) is a first language (L1) that has become a non-dominant language for its speakers because of its minority status. The question asked in this project is whether a heritage language (HL) behaves like a first language (L1) because an HL is learned as a native language, or if a heritage language (HL) behaves like a second language (L2) because it is underdeveloped like an L2. In order to test this, this study investigates the grammatical and lexical processing in Vietnamese-English bilinguals. Vietnamese, a heritage and minority language in the United States, is the fourth most spoken language outside of English (U. S. Census Bureau, 2015). This shows how prevalent HL speakers are in this country, and yet, there is a limited amount of research conducted on HL processing. Many bilingual language processing models, such as the Bilingual Interactive Activation model (Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002; van Heuven, Dijkstra, & Grainger, 1998) and the episodic L2 hypothesis (Jiang & Forster, 2001; Witzel & Forster, 2012), were proposed based on evidence from bilinguals with a dominant L1 and less-dominant L2. Little is known about the processing of a non-dominant L1. The first portion of this study examines grammatical processing in HL speakers. A preliminary study compared grammatical processing in HL Vietnamese speakers to L1 Vietnamese-dominant speakers. Findings from this study suggest that HL speakers and L1-dominant speakers decompose L1 Vietnamese compound words in a very similar manner. To further investigate whether an HL is processed like an L1 or an L2, a follow-up study testing morphological decomposition in L2 English is proposed. The second portion of this study examines lexical processing in these speakers. L1 dominant bilinguals have reliably shown that L1 words automatically activate their respective L2 translations. However, it is unclear what happens to bilinguals whose dominant language has switched from their L1 to their L2.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.

本文主要研究传统语言处理。遗产语言（HL）是第一语言（L1），由于其少数民族地位而成为其使用者的非主导语言。在这个项目中提出的问题是，遗产语言（HL）表现得像第一语言（L1）是因为HL是作为母语学习的，还是遗产语言（HL）表现得像第二语言（L2）是因为它像L2一样不发达。为了验证这一点，本研究调查了越英双语者的语法和词汇加工。越南语是美国的一种传统和少数民族语言，是英语以外的第四大语言（美国人口普查局，2015年）。这表明了HL使用者在这个国家是多么普遍，然而，关于HL加工的研究数量有限。许多双语语言处理模型，如双语交互激活模型（Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002; van Heuven, Dijkstra, & Grainger, 1998）和情景L2假设（Jiang & Forster, 2001; Witzel & Forster, 2012），都是基于母语占主导地位和第二语言不占主导地位的双语者的证据提出的。我们对非显性L1的加工知之甚少。本研究的第一部分考察了HL使用者的语法加工。一项初步研究比较了HL越南语使用者和L1越南语主导型使用者的语法加工。本研究发现，母语语者和母语优势语者对母语越南语复合词的分解方式非常相似。为了进一步研究HL是像L1还是L2一样被加工，我们提出了一项后续研究来测试二语英语的形态分解。本研究的第二部分考察了这些说话者的词汇加工。母语优势双语者已经可靠地表明，母语词汇会自动激活他们各自的第二语言翻译。然而，对于那些主导语言从第一语言转换为第二语言的双语者来说，会发生什么还不清楚。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。