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Integrated knowledge of agreement in early and late English–Spanish bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2010

REBECCA FOOTE
REBECCA FOOTE*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Rebecca Foote, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, University of Illinois, 4080 Foreign Languages Building, MC-176, 707 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail: rfoote@illinois.edu
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Abstract

Research suggests that late bilinguals may have persistent difficulties with the automatic access and use of some second language structures because of a lack of underlying integrated knowledge of those structures. In contrast, early bilinguals show advantages in aspects of language use that require this type of automatic knowledge. This study investigated whether early and late English–Spanish bilinguals evidence integrated knowledge of agreement in Spanish by examining their sensitivity to agreement errors while reading for comprehension. The results of a pilot and two experiments indicate that both early and late bilinguals do possess integrated knowledge of subject–verb number agreement and noun–adjective gender agreement in Spanish, although sensitivity to agreement errors interacts with properties of the experimental stimuli.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 187 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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