| 1. |
- Bylund, Emanuel Spångberg
(författare)
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Ultimate attainment of event segmentation and temporal structuring patterns in speakers of L2 Swedish
- 2011
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Ingår i: Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics. - 1697-0381. ; 8, s. 29-53
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigates ultimate attainment of patterns of segmentation and temporal structuring of events in L2 speakers. The participant group consists of 35 L1 Spanish - L2 Swedish adult bilinguals living in Sweden, with ages of L2 acquisition ranging from 1 to 19 years. Fifteen native speakers of Swedish and 15 native speakers of Spanish were engaged as controls. The participants provided online-retellings of a film excerpt. The results showed that the L2 speakers resorted to an event segmentation strategy with an intermediate degree of event resolution, which fell in between the monolingual Spanish high degree of resolution and the monolingual Swedish low degree of resolution. Regarding temporal structuring patterns, the results showed that the L2 speakers converged with the Swedish-speaking controls, linking the events by means of anaphoric adverbials (i.e., x then y). There was no effect of age of L2 acquisition on the L2 speakers' degree of conformity with Swedish native speaker behaviour.
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| 2. |
- Bylund Spångberg, Emanuel, 1979-
(författare)
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Age differences in first language attrition : A maturational constraints perspective
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates age-related differences in first language (L1) attrition in a second language (L2) setting. The thesis is based on four individual studies. The aim of each of the studies has been to examine aspects of age differences that to date have remained in the background of attrition research: Study I gives an overview of research on age differences in L1 attrition and suggests a reinterpretation of age effects in attrition, using as a point of departure critical period constructs. Study I also formulates hypotheses regarding the contour and timing of attrition susceptibility and its interplay with non-biological factors. Study II investigates L1 residual knowledge and L2 ultimate attainment in international adoptees. The results suggest that a) that L1 remnants may be found if relearning activities have taken place prior to testing; b) L2 learners who have experienced a complete cut-off in L1 contact do not attain higher L2 proficiency levels than learners who have stayed in contact with the L1. The results also indicate that the level of L1 reactivation and L2 ultimate attainment are related to age of adoption. Study III examines age effects on the retention of L1 event construal patterns. The results show that the onset of puberty is a turning point for the degree of conformity with native behaviour, i.e. those who arrived in the L2 setting before puberty were more likely to exhibit non-converging patterns than those who arrived after puberty. This finding suggests that in attrition conceptual proficiency is equally affected by age as are formal language skills. Finally, Study IV explores the role of language aptitude in prepubescent attriters. The results show that nativelike grammatical intuitions are connected to language aptitude, and that speakers with high levels of language aptitude rely less on L1 contact than do speakers with low levels of language aptitude in their retention of nativelike grammatical intuitions in the L1.
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| 3. |
- Bylund Spångberg, Emanuel, 1979-
(författare)
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Conceptualización de eventos en español y en sueco : Estudios sobre hablantes monolingües y bilingües
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis deals with language-specific patterns in the selection and organization of information (i.e., conceptualization) reflected in the expression of events by monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and Swedish. Previous research on language specificity in event conceptualization shows that speakers of languages with grammatical aspect exhibit fine-grained event segmentation and deictic temporal linkage patterns, whereas speakers of non-aspect languages resort to coarse-grained segmentation patterns and anaphoric linkage. This finding has led to the hypothesis that grammatical aspect induces specific event conceptualization patterns. The overall aim of the current thesis is, first, to test this hypothesis on Spanish and Swedish, and second, to extend this line of research to the domain of bilingualism. The thesis is based on four individual studies: Study I examines monolingual speakers of Spanish and Swedish. The results show that event conceptualization in these languages patterns with the dichotomy +/- grammatical aspect; Study II explores the relationship between endpoint encoding patterns and proficiency with aspectual contrasts in the Spanish of Spanish-Swedish bilinguals. The findings show that the less Spanish-like a participant’s endpoint encoding frequencies are, the less sensitive he/she is to aspectual contrasts; Study III explores the degree to which language-specific patterns of segmentation and temporal linking of events are fused/separated in Spanish-Swedish bilinguals. The results show that whereas the bilinguals resort to an event segmentation pattern that is midway between the Spanish fine-grained patterns and the Swedish coarse-grained patterns, they exhibit nativelike temporal linking patterns in both Spanish and Swedish; Study IV contextualizes some of the author’s studies from a general viewpoint, with the intention of illustrating the fruitfulness of extending the research on event conceptualization to the domain of bilingualism.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Bylund Spångberg, Emanuel, 1979-
(författare)
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Ultimate attainment of event construal patterns in speakers of L2 Swedish
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics. - 1697-0381. ; 8, s. 28-53
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigates ultimate attainment of patterns of segmentation and temporal structuring of events in L2 speakers. The participant group consists of 35 L1 Spanish – L2 Swedish adult bilinguals living in Sweden, with ages of L2 acquisition ranging from 1 to 19 years. Fifteen native speakers of Swedish and 15 native speakers of Spanish were engaged as controls. The participants provided online-retellings of a film excerpt. The results showed that the L2 speakers resorted to an event segmentation strategy with an intermediate degree of event resolution, which fell in between the mono lingual Spanish high degree of resolution and the monolingual Swedish low degree of resolution. Regarding temporal structuring patterns, the results showed that the L2 speakers converged with the Swedish-speaking controls, linking the events by means of anaphoric adverbials (i.e., “x then y”). There was no effect of age of L2 acquisition on the L2 speakers’ degree of conformity with Swedish native speaker behaviour.
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| 6. |
- Norrman, Gunnar, 1981-
(författare)
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Age and Constraints on Language Learning : First Language Retention and Second Language Acquisition in International Adoptees
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates the influence of age of acquisition on the long-term second language development of international adoptees. Because age of acquisition typically coincides with the onset of bilingualism, the study of maturational age effects in second language acquisition has been empirically and conceptually entangled with changes in language input and use. For international adoptees, however, because the adoptive language is acquired under similar linguistic conditions as non-adopted peers – albeit at a later age of acquisition – questions of age and second language acquisition can be investigated without confounding influences of bilingualism. Study I presents the theoretical argument that, because of the delay in acquisition, the language development of international adoptees should be regarded as a special case of second language acquisition. Furthermore, consistent with the contemporary study of second language acquisition, the effects of this delay should be investigated through ultimate attainment observed in adults. Study II shows that adults in Sweden who had been adopted from Spanish-speaking countries, and Spanish-Swedish bilinguals with the same age of acquisition (3-8 years), have greater difficulty in perceiving Swedish vowel distinctions that do not exist in Spanish compared to native Swedish speakers. This suggests that age of acquisition is a decisive factor for speech perception in a second language. In Study III, Chinese-Swedish adoptees are found to deviate from native Swedish speakers in their production of Swedish vowels that are phonologically identical in Chinese, but not in vowels that are distinctive in both languages. While these results are consistent with predictions based on assumptions of transfer and interference in bilingual speakers, they cannot be explained based on these premises. Instead, the results suggest that early language-specific experiences will affect the pronunciation of vowels in the second language regardless of whether the native language is in use or not. In Study IV, the neural underpinnings of the behavioral results are investigated electrophysiologically, using EEG. This study shows that adult adoptees retain increased neural sensitivity to a native Chinese lexical tone contrast without any exposure to the language for over 15 years. This is reflected in a fast neural response stemming from the auditory cortex and is indexed by the mismatch negativity event-related potential. This suggests that native language sensitivity is not only retained, but is continuously involved in the moment-to-moment processing of speech sounds. Neural oscillations furthermore reveal the involvement of inhibitory processes to attenuate this sensitivity. Finally, positive correlations between neural responses to the native and the adoptive language show that native language retention is not in itself an impediment for second language acquisition. The results from these three studies show how language-specific experiences lead to irreversible specialization in the brain, which will affect the long-term acquisition of a second language. This finding invites a re-evaluation of the hypothesis of a critical period for second language acquisition, based on the notions of probabilistic epigenesis and flexible behavioral adaptation following experience-based functional neural reorganization in early childhood.
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| 7. |
- Stölten, Katrin, et al.
(författare)
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The L1 production and perception of VOT in Spanish-Swedish bilinguals: The role of age and L1 use
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study investigates the effects of age of reduced contact (ARC) and L1 use on L1 stop production and perception in Spanish-Swedish bilinguals. Results revealed that ARC had an impact on voice onset time (VOT) in the production of Spanish /p t k/, but not on the categorical perception of Spanish /p–b/, /t–d/, /k–ɡ/. While maturation may explain the ARC effects, it alone does not provide a satisfying explanation for the discrepancy between production and perception. It is proposed that perception may be less prone to change than production due to differences in activation levels, as predicted by the Activation Threshold Hypothesis (ATH). Furthermore, results showed that L1 use influenced stop production, but not perception, especially in early bilinguals. It is concluded that early bilinguals depend on advantageous factors such as high-frequency L1 use in order to compensate for ARC effects, but only in production.
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