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Bilingual referential choice in cognitively demanding situations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2020

Carla Contemori Open the ORCID record for Carla Contemori [Opens in a new window]  and
Iva Ivanova
Carla Contemori*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at El Paso
Iva Ivanova
Affiliation:
University of Texas at El Paso
*
Address for correspondence: Carla Contemori, E-mail: ccontemori@utep.edu
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Abstract

Under the Interface Hypothesis, bilinguals’ non-nativelike referential choices may be influenced by the increased cognitive demands and less automatic processing of bilingual production. We test this hypothesis by comparing pronoun production in the L2 of nonbalanced Spanish–English bilinguals to that of English monolinguals in two cognitively challenging contexts. In Experiment 1, both monolinguals and bilinguals produced more explicit references when part of the information was unavailable to their addressee (privileged ground) than when all information was shared (common ground), evidencing audience design. In Experiment 2, verbal load led to more unspecified references than visual load and no load (an effect statistically indistinguishable between groups but numerically driven by the monolingual group). While bilinguals produced overall more pronouns than monolinguals in both experiments, there was no indication that bilinguals’ referential choice was disproportionally affected by increased cognitive demand, contrary to the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis.

Keywords

L2 language productionnon-native speakerspronoun productionperspective-takingprivileged groundcommon grounddual taskworking memory load
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 83 - 95
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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