A social theory of bilingual adaptations: How language experience and linguistic register variation modulate the processing of agreement attraction errors

Identifier:  TDX:4401

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX4401

Authors:  Masullo, Camilla

Abstract:
This dissertation delves into the social dimension of bilingualism and language processing through different steps. First, I present a systematic review of 368 studies on bilingual cognitive adaptations to see how frequently factors related to the social and sociolinguistic dimensions of the bilingual experience are considered as well as how often studies ascribe their findings to a cognitive, social, or mixed origin. The results reveal that 73.41% of studies attribute their findings to specific social and sociolinguistic factors of bilingualism. This underscores the importance of operationalizing as many sociolinguistic factors as possible to achieve a better understanding of where different bilingual effects on cognition stem from. Secondly, I inquire into the sociolinguistic dimension of bilingual language processing through an experiment that compares how different language groups process Subject-Verb agreement mismatches through a timed acceptability judgment task. The sample includes Italian monolinguals, Italian-Spanish bilinguals, and two groups of Italian bidialectals, namely Italian-Pavese and Italian-Agrigentino bidialectals. The results reveal differences in accuracy and reaction times between monolingual and bidialectals and within the bidialectal groups, which are explained by the different sociolinguistic dynamics and language practices of each group. Lastly, I examine the effect of linguistic register variation on the processing of Subject-Verb agreement mismatches, jointly and independently from speakers’ linguistic background.