Understanding bilinguals? innovations through implicit learning

CARANDO, A.; MANOILOFF, L.; DEFAGÓ, C.; CARANDO, C.; WAGNER, M.

Simposio; New Directions in Implicit and Explicit Learning; 2015

Lancaster University

This study explores the hypothesis that implicit learning is an internal mechanism motivating processes of convergence in bilinguals. We focus on linguistic innovations in Spanish produced by Spanish-English bilinguals. Innovations involve both changes in the frequency of alternative constructions and existing patterns produced in new contexts modeled on English equivalents. From structural priming techniques that model convergence, the data assess the extent of English influence on Spanish, in a contact setting (New York, United States) and a non-contact setting (Córdoba, Argentina). In the field of language contact, convergence may manifest itself as an increase in the use of native language patterns shared with the contact language. Another outcome of convergence is grammatical replication, where native language structures acquire a new context of use resembling the contact language (Heine & Kuteva, 2005). Structural priming (Bock, 1986) is the tendency for speakers to repeat previously processed structures. Cross-linguistic priming has been shown to increase the use of shared constructions (Schoonbaert et al., 2007); this investigation tests the applicability of priming to the study of grammatical replication. Three experiments examine the voice, reciprocal, and dative alternations. First, a picture description task in Spanish and English establishes baseline frequencies: the voice and reciprocal alternations have a similar distribution in English and Spanish; the dative alternation, however, differs between the two languages. Second, a within-language priming task (Spanish-to-Spanish) confirms strong priming effects for all three alternations and yields extremely low rates of grammatical replication. Third, a cross-language priming task demonstrates that English primes Spanish and increases grammatical replication rates, only with the alternations that have similar cross-linguistic distributions (voice, reciprocal). The priming effect did not differ between the contact and non-contact groups, but the bilinguals in the contact setting had higher grammatical replication rates. The data support the view that structural priming could be a catalyst facilitating language change in bilingual communities. We argue that this process is better explained with priming as implicit learning (Loebell & Bock, 2003): we found that English primes encouraged patterns with novel subcategorizations for particular verbs. To the extent that implicit learning supports generalization, it allows for the possibility that the use of procedures for assembling patterns in one language would encourage the use of the same procedures in the other language, even when they are not traditionally associated with the grammatical context in question. The data also support models of contact as an accelerant of processes already in motion in the native language, rather than as a trigger for the creation of completely new patterns.