Predictive Language Processing in Russian Heritage Speakers: Task Effects on Morphosyntactic Prediction in Reading

This study investigates the effect of task demands on the predictive processing of morphosyntactic cues (word class, noun/adjective gender, case, and number) in reading among Heritage Speakers of Russian (N = 29), comparing them with Russian language learners (N = 29) and monolingual Russian speaker...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Languages (Basel) 2024-05, Vol.9 (5), p.158
Main Authors: Parshina, Olga, Ladinskaya, Nina, Gault, Lidia, Sekerina, Irina A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjectives
Bilingualism
Computational linguistics
Cues
Educational activities
Eye movements
eye-tracking
Fluency
Gender
Grammar, Comparative and general
Heritage language
heritage speakers
L2 learners
Language
Language processing
Linguistics
Literacy
Methods
Monolingualism
Morphology
morphosyntactic prediction
Morphosyntax
Natural language interfaces
Nouns
Phonology
reading
Reading processes
Russian
Russian language
Second language learning
Second language reading
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Summary:This study investigates the effect of task demands on the predictive processing of morphosyntactic cues (word class, noun/adjective gender, case, and number) in reading among Heritage Speakers of Russian (N = 29), comparing them with Russian language learners (N = 29) and monolingual Russian speakers (N = 63). Following the utility account of bilingual prediction, we hypothesized that the predictive use of morphosyntactic cues would be more evident in a less-demanding reading cloze task (Experiment 1) than in a more-challenging eye-tracking reading task (Experiment 2), and for cues that RHSs regard as more reliable (word class and number vs. gender and case cues). The results confirmed our predictions: In Experiment 1, Heritage Speakers (and L2 learners) used all cues predictively to generate the upcoming lexical item, with higher accuracy for word class and number cues compared to gender and case cues. In Experiment 2, in contrast to monolingual readers, neither Heritage Speakers nor L2 learners used gender cues on adjectives to anticipate the gender of the upcoming noun. The results are discussed in respect to the interplay between task demands, cue weight, oral fluency, and Russian literacy experience.
ISSN:2226-471X
2226-471X
DOI:10.3390/languages9050158