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The role of word order in bilingual speakers’ representation of their two languages: the case of Spanish–Kaqchikel bilinguals

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Abstract

When bilingual speakers plan to speak in one of their languages, the other language remains active and exerts an influence on the chosen language. However, the factors that modulate this influence, and particularly the extent to which syntactic structures and word order need to be the same in both languages for this influence to occur, are not yet fully understood. In this study, we explore the role of free word order in bilinguals’ representation of their two languages by analyzing the connections of linguistic representations in Spanish–Kaqchikel early bilinguals, two languages that allow word order variation in transitive sentences. In Experiment 1, a structural priming experiment within Kaqchikel was conducted with voice and word order of prime as independent variables. Results showed priming of both structure and word order, independently from each other. In Experiment 2, cross-linguistic structural priming was used from Spanish to Kaqchikel. Results showed priming of voice, regardless of word order, but not priming of word order. Taken together, these results suggest that, in languages with greater flexibility in their basic word orders, structural selection and word order choice seem to be independent processes.

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Notes

  1. Tagalog allows for both VSO and VOS word orders (see Sauppe et al. (2013) for more details).

  2. Hatzidaki et al. (2018) also showed that differences in word order between L1 and L2 give rise to errors in a sentence completion task, thus suggesting that the L1 word order is active and competing when only the L2 has to be produced. Interestingly, the effects were not modulated by the relative distance in word order between the L1 (either Spanish or Dutch) and the L2 (English).

  3. Glosses in Kaqchikel examples will be the following: COM = Completive aspect; PASS = Passive voice; E = Ergative; A = Absolutive; S = Singular; P = Plural.

  4. Ki-passives are similar to standard passives in the sense that the patient will take the subject role, while the agent will be placed as a complement. However, in contrast to standard or perfective passives, the ki-passives retain the marking of ergative and absolutive elements. However, the ergative marking does not show agreement with the subject (the patient) but shows a third person plural marking (ki) (Kubo 2016; for a detailed explanation of Ki passives, see Broadwell and Duncan 2002)

    figure f

    :

  5. An ambiguity that is present in many of the VSO/VOS sentences in Kaqchikel (England 1991).

  6. The exact question was “age in which you started learning each language with respect to… oral expression”. As it can be seen in Table 1, self-assessed AoA is quite high. This is also true for Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, it could be due to a wide range of ages, but it is also true in both experiments that the earliest age that participants report in either of their languages is elevated (3 or 4 years old), showing a problem with the self assessed nature of this report. Therefore, we consider that the important factor we might need to take into consideration is whether or not there are differences between Kaqchikel and Spanish, rather than the exact reported AoA.

  7. As mentioned previously, VOS is a topicalized word order in Spanish, with event acting as the topic. Therefore, in order to make it more appropriate to the context of describing pictures we added the adverb “Here” at the beginning of all sentences, both in Kaqchikel (in Experiments 1 and 2) and in Spanish (in Experiment 2).

  8. Responses with different verbs that entailed the same meaning as the one provided were kept as correct.

  9. The question this time was simply “At what age did you start talking Spanish/Kaqchikel?”. Note that, similarly to Experiment 1, reported AoA is high in general, due to individual differences in the way in which they considered they started speaking that language with some speakers reporting an AoA o 6 or 7 years old for both of their languages. The difference in reported AoA between Kaqchikel and Spanish was taken to determine their L1, rather than the specific age they reported.

  10. All of the agents were human arguments while 7 pictures depicted an animal patient (4 primes and 3 target sentences).

  11. The number of items is twice as many as in Experiment 1 because Experiment 1 was part of a larger set of experiments and we could only allocate half of the items. The set of items in this experiment consists of the same 48 pictures (consisting of 12 depictable actions) from Experiment 1 plus another 48 pictures (another 12 depictable actions).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Lolmay Pedro Oscar García Mátzar, Juan Esteban Ajsivinac Sian, Ixsu’m Antonieta Gonzáles Choc, Filiberto Patal Majzul and Yoshiho Yasugi for their invaluable support in all stages of material creation and analysis, as well as their support on-site. Likewise, we would like to thank Takuya Kubo for his support with analysis, Ayaka Tamura for helping in data collection and José Manuel Igoa for his invaluable feedback during the creation of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japanese Society for the promotion of Science (PI: Masatoshi Koizumi, #22222001, #15H02603 and #19H05589).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Pennsylvania State University, 032 Burrowes building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Laura Rodrigo

  2. Konan Women’s University, 6 Chome-2-2-3 Morikitamachi, Higashinada, Kobe, 658-0001, Japan

    Mikihiro Tanaka

  3. Tohoku University, 27-1 Kawauchi Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8576, Japan

    Masatoshi Koizumi

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  1. Laura Rodrigo
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Correspondence to Laura Rodrigo.

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Rodrigo, L., Tanaka, M. & Koizumi, M. The role of word order in bilingual speakers’ representation of their two languages: the case of Spanish–Kaqchikel bilinguals. J Cult Cogn Sci 4, 275–291 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-019-00034-4

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