NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
50 Years of ERIC
50 Years of ERIC
The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is celebrating its 50th Birthday! First opened on May 15th, 1964 ERIC continues the long tradition of ongoing innovation and enhancement.

Learn more about the history of ERIC here. PDF icon

Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ777909
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-Mar
Pages: 16
Abstractor: Author
Reference Count: 0
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1366-7289
The Effect of Exposure on Syntactic Parsing in Spanish-English Bilinguals
Dussias, Paola E.; Sagarra, Nuria
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, v10 n1 p101-116 Mar 2007
An eye tracking experiment examined how exposure to a second language (L2) influences sentence parsing in the first language. Forty-four monolingual Spanish speakers, 24 proficient Spanish-English bilinguals with limited immersion experience in the L2 environment and 20 proficient Spanish-English bilinguals with extensive L2 immersion experience read temporarily ambiguous constructions. The ambiguity concerned whether a relative clause (RC) that appeared after a complex noun phrase (NP) was interpreted as modifying the first or the second noun in the complex NP ("El policia arresto a la hermana del criado que estaba enferma desde hacia tiempo"). The results showed that whereas the Spanish monolingual speakers and the Spanish-English bilinguals with limited exposure reliably attached the relative clause to the first noun, the Spanish-English bilingual with extensive exposure attached the relative to the second noun. Results are discussed in terms of models of sentence parsing most consistent with the findings. [The writing of this paper was supported in part by College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State University.]
Cambridge University Press. The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK. Tel: 800-872-7423; Tel: 845-353-7500; Tel: +44-1223-326070; Fax: 845-353-4141; Fax: +44-1223-325150; e-mail: subscriptions_newyork@cambridge.org; Web site: http://www.cambridge.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health (DHHS), Bethesda, MD.
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: N/A