Project 2: Exploring Variability in Heritage Bilingual Grammars: A Neurocognitive Investigation
1.1. What is our goal?
The overall aim of the present study is to better understand variability in heritage speaker (HS) grammars by exploring:
- What is the qualitative nature of native language processing among monolingually-raised and heritage bilingually-raised speakers?
- Under what testing modalities can we better capture both similarities and differences in grammatical processing between these groups?
- What is the relative contribution of language-experience factors, such as dominance, competence, and engagement, in understanding differences (i.e., variability) for grammatical processing in their native (and heritage) language?
We plan to address these questions by investigating both knowledge and processing of different grammatical structures in the heritage language (HL) that have been particularly difficult to acquire and, thus, often result in a great deal of variability in heritage bilingual trajectories and outcomes. We plan to do so from a multidimensional perspective by (i) using a combination of behavioral and neurocognitive methods, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs), and (ii) approaching heritage bilingualism as a continuum of diverse life experiences.
1.2. What heritage bilingual community do we plan to work with?
For this study, we will be working with Spanish heritage bilingual speakers with different levels of experience with the HL that live in a context where Spanish is not the majority societal language, such as Norway, the United Kingdom (UK), and/or the United States (US).
1.3. What grammatical structures do we plan to explore?
We plan to examine these questions by investigating commonality and variability in knowledge and processing of grammatical agreement and specifically of number and gender agreement among heritage bilingual speakers of Spanish with different levels of experience with their HL.
Attainment of grammatical agreement, in particular for gender agreement, has been shown to vary considerably among Spanish heritage bilinguals. We believe such variability can be (partially) explained by differences in access and opportunity to actively and meaningfully engage with their heritage language. In order to test this further, we will assess the knowledge/processing of these two domains of grammar by using a combination of experimental tasks.
1.4. How are we going to collect this data?
To get the most complete answer possible, we will be using a combination of experimental methods from linguistics, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. By doing so, we will be able to get a multi-dimensional picture of the language abilities of our heritage bilingual participants as well as to better understand what happens in their minds/brains as they use their heritage language in real-time.