Publications

Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives of the present research were to investigate and cross-check if immersion in a bilingual situation over a certain period of time had any modulatory effect on bilingual processing in an immigrant population. The main aim of the experiment was to test the performance in L1 in comparison to their L2.

Approach: Theoretically, we tested two dominant bilingual processing theories — Bilingual Language Interaction Network for Comprehension of Speech (BLINCS) and Adaptive Control Hypothesis (ACH) — in a parallel language activation paradigm using MouseTracker as a tool in a non-Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) population. Bilingual language comprehension was tested using a "listen, look and click" lexical access task in a mouse-tracking hand movement experiment in which participants listened to the spoken word and clicked on the matching picture on the computer screen, and bilingual language production was tested using both semantic and phonetic verbal fluency tasks.

Data and analysis: Data were collected in a controlled situation from 55 undergraduate and postgraduate students from Nepal who were studying in a technical college in South India. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed for Initiation Time and Response Time for mouse movement trajectories in the lexical access task and for phonetic and semantic word production in the verbal fluency task. Demographic profile and language measures of the participants were analyzed.

Findings: Our results showed L2 immersion had no modulatory effect on bilingual processing. Irrespective of length of stay duration in a foreign country, the participants did not show much processing difference in mouse initiation and response time in the lexical access language comprehension mouse-tracking task. However, in the language production task, the less immersed group produced more words in both phonetic and semantic fluency. Our study showed that even an extended duration of L2 immersion is not detrimental to L1 mental lexicon.

Originality: This is the first study of parallel language activation using a mouse-tracking paradigm on a Nepali–English bilingual population immersed in an L2 context in a foreign country.

Significance: This study extends our earlier understanding of bilingual processing and challenges earlier claims of a modulatory effect of L2 immersion on L1 by providing counter-evidence to findings in previous studies.

Twenty-five L1 Nepali-speaking participants living in Trondheim, Norway who spoke English as L2 and Norwegian as L3 (late adult learners) participated in this study. Participants' L2 proficiency was established as advanced in LexTALE. We administered language comprehension and production tasks in a trilingual design. In a mouse-tracking trilingual parallel activation experiment, participants performed a language comprehension task in which they listened to the spoken word in their L1, L2 and L3 and clicked on the matching target picture. Mouse trajectories of their response pattern were recorded and analyzed. The language production task included a phonological and a semantic verbal fluency task (VFT), which also served as an executive control task. VFT showed their dominance in L1 and L2 compared to L3. This study contributes novel knowledge on trilingual parallel activation and suggests that in the presence of a non-dominant L3, a dominant L1 and a dominant L2 are processed faster than the non-dominant language in phonologically competing conditions.

The extent to which languages share properties reflecting the non-linguistic constraints of the speakers who speak them is key to the debate regarding the relationship between language and cognition. A critical case is spatial communication, where it has been argued that semantic universals should exist, if anywhere. Here, using an experimental paradigm able to separate variation within a language from variation between languages, we tested the use of spatial demonstratives—the most fundamental and frequent spatial terms across languages. In n = 874 speakers across 29 languages, we show that speakers of all tested languages use spatial demonstratives as a function of being able to reach or act on an object being referred to. In some languages, the position of the addressee is also relevant in selecting between demonstrative forms. Commonalities and differences across languages in spatial communication can be understood in terms of universal constraints on action shaping spatial language and cognition.