German-dominant Vietnamese heritage speakers use semantic constraints of German for anticipation during comprehension in Vietnamese

• Published in: Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) England), 2024-01, Vol.27 (1), p.57-74
• Main Authors: Ito, Aine, Nguyen, Huong Thi Thu, Knoeferle, Pia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1366-7289; 1469-1841
• DOI: 10.1017/S136672892300041X

To test effects of German on anticipation in Vietnamese, we recorded eye-movements during comprehension and manipulated i) verb constraints (different vs. similar in German and Vietnamese) and ii) classifier constraints (absent in German). In each of two experiments, participants listened to Vietnamese sentences like “Mai mặc một chiếc áo.” (‘Mai wears a [classifier] shirt.’), while viewing four objects. Between experiments, we contrasted bilingual background: L1 Vietnamese–L2 German late bilinguals (Experiment 1) and heritage speakers of Vietnamese in Germany (Experiment 2). Both groups anticipated verb-compatible and classifier-compatible objects upon hearing the verb/classifier. However, when the (verb) constraints differed (e.g., Vietnamese: mặc ‘wear (a shirt/#earrings)’ – German: tragen ‘wear (a shirt/earrings)’), the heritage speakers were distracted by the object (earrings) compatible with the German (but not the Vietnamese) verb constraints. These results demonstrate that competing information in the two languages can interfere with anticipation in heritage speakers.