Bilingual reference production: A cognitive-computational account
View / Open Files
Journal Title
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
ISSN
1879-9264
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Tsimpli, I., Torregrossa, J., & Bongartz, C. Bilingual reference production: A cognitive-computational account. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.35200
Abstract
We investigate reference production in bilingual children. Based on Kibrik (2011), we analyze the production of referring expressions in discourse in terms of activation of a referent. We propose a novel approach, which calculates activation by taking into account different activation-lending factors and their respective weight. This allows us to compare the activation encoded by referring expressions across languages and groups of speakers, and to run correlational analyses with the speakers’ cognitive profiles. In particular, the study addresses the correlation between activation and lexical processing among bilinguals, based on the distribution of referring expressions in narratives by 20 German-Greek bilingual children, compared to their monolingual peers. We found that bilingual pronouns correspond to a lower activation than monolingual ones. Speed of lexical retrieval is a predictor of the bilingual performance. Our model of analysis accounts for how reference production varies across individuals and which cognitive mechanisms underlie this variation
Sponsorship
THALES, NSRF funding (PI Tsimpli) & DFG-funded project (PIs: Torregrossa and Bongartz)
Identifiers
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.35200
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/287886
Rights
Licence:
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.