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Bilingualism

Do bilinguals apply Spanish sound rules while hearing English?

Freeman MR, Blumenfeld HK, Marian V · Frontiers in psychology · 2016

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

After hearing English words starting with 'st' or 'sp', Spanish-English bilinguals, but not English monolinguals, were faster to judge letter strings starting with the extra 'e' that Spanish requires, suggesting their first-language sound rule was switched on during English listening.

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Study at a glance

Design
Human experiment — Cross-modal phonological priming lexical decision: spoken English primes (cognate, non-cognate or control) followed after a 350 ms gap by a written target (Spanish-like /es/ non-word, /e/-only non-word, control non-word or real word); within-subject prime x target factors, between-subject language group
N
N=45 · 22 Spanish-English bilinguals and 23 English monolinguals, matched on age, non-verbal reasoning and working memory
Population
Young adults at and around Northwestern University; bilinguals were native Spanish speakers who learned English at age 5 or later and still used Spanish daily
Outcome
Lexical decision reaction time and accuracy to written targets as a function of prime type, target type and language group

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Key findings

Monolinguals were faster overall than bilinguals, who were working in their second language. Only bilinguals showed a reliable advantage for Spanish-rule targets: after cognate primes they were faster on 'es' non-words than control non-words (848.45 vs 922.29 ms on average), and after non-cognate primes they were faster on both 'es' and 'e'-only non-words than controls. The 'e'-only effect after cognates was only marginal, so, against the authors' prediction, non-cognates produced cleaner evidence of rule activation than cognates. Monolinguals showed only a small priming effect in one condition that could be explained by shared English letters.

Methodology

Spanish forbids words from starting with s plus a consonant, so speakers add an 'e' (English 'stable' is Spanish 'estable'). The researchers played English words that were either cognates (stable), non-cognates (strong) or controls (workers), then showed a letter string and asked participants to decide quickly whether it was an English word. Targets were non-words starting with 'es' plus consonant (sharing the Spanish rule and form), non-words starting with just 'e' (sharing only the rule), ordinary control non-words, or real English words. Bilinguals and monolinguals were compared on reaction time.

Limitations

The samples are small, 22 bilinguals and 23 monolinguals, and several key effects were marginal. All critical targets were non-words, so the study does not show that the Spanish rule speeds recognition of real English or Spanish words; the authors call for a replication with real-word targets. It cannot distinguish whether bilinguals activated the rule itself or perceptually 'repaired' what they heard into an e-initial form. Only late bilinguals and one phonotactic rule were tested, so it is unclear whether earlier bilinguals or other rules show the same pattern.

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