The processing of Negative Polarity Items in Turkish-German bilingual speakers

Seçkin Arslan (1) , Sol Lago (2) , Aydoğan Yanilmaz (3) , John E. Drury (3) , Claudia Felser (2)

1 BCL, équipe Langage et Cognition
2 University of Potsdam = Universität Potsdam
3 SBU - Stony Brook University [SUNY]

This study investigates the processing of Turkish negative polarity items (NPIs) using a self-paced reading experiment with end-of-sentence acceptability judgements. Our participants included adult Turkish monolinguals, as well as Turkish-German early (i.e. heritage speakers) and late bilinguals. We explored whether intrusion effects from illusory NPI licensors extended to bilingual Turkish speakers who had acquired German either early or late in their lives. Stimuli included 30 sets of sentences in six experimental conditions, with the presence of both an NPI and of a suitable licenser (verb negation) systematically manipulated. Our results indicate that bilingual Turkish readers show intrusion effects in their processing of NPIs. Our findings suggest that the structural conditions for NPI licensing in Turkish might be degraded or less stable in heritage bilinguals.

Domaines: Linguistique; Psychologie; Sciences cognitives

Seçkin Arslan, Sol Lago, Aydoğan Yanilmaz, John E. Drury, Claudia Felser. The processing of Negative Polarity Items in Turkish-German bilingual speakers. Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes; Cristina Suárez-Gómez. Proceedings of GALA 2017: Language Acquisition and Development, pp.117 - 133, 2019, 978-1-5275-2190-2. ⟨hal-02054644⟩