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Psycholinguistics: a Cross-Language Perspective

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Psycholinguistics: a Cross-Language Perspective PSYCHOLINGUISTICS: A CROSS-LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVE Elizabeth Bates University of California, San Diego Antonella Devescovi University of Rome 'La Sapienza' Beverly Wulfeck San Diego State University and University of California, San Diego Technical Report CRL-0009 May 2000 Center for Research in Language University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0526 Annual Review of Psychology, 2001, 52, 369-396 PSYCHOLINGUISTICS: A CROSS-LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVE Elizabeth Bates University of California, San Diego Antonella Devescovi University of Rome 'La Sapienza' Beverly Wulfeck San Diego State University and University of California, San Diego Support was provided by “Cross-linguistic studies of aphasia” (DC00216), “Center for the Study of the Neural Bases of Language & Learning” (NS22343), “Origins of Communication Disorders” (DC01289). Thanks to Meiti Opie for assistance in manuscript preparation. Please address all correspondence to Elizabeth Bates, Center for Research in Language, Dept. 0526, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 ([email protected]). 2 PSYCHOLINGUISTICS: A CROSS-LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVE Elizabeth Bates, Antonella Devescovi, and Beverly Wulfeck ABSTRACT Cross-linguistic studies are essential to the identification of universal processes in language development, language use and language breakdown. Comparative studies in all three areas are reviewed, demonstrating powerful differences across languages in the order in which specific structures are acquired by children, the sparing and impairment of those structures in aphasic patients, and the structures that normal adults rely upon most heavily in real-time word and sentence processing. It is proposed that these differences reflect a cost-benefit trade-off among universal mechanisms for learning and processing (perception, attention, motor planning, memory) that are critical for language, but are not unique to language. The purpose of psycholinguistic research is to ized in Slobin’s 5-volume work, The cross-linguistic uncover universal processes that govern the develop- study of language acquisition (Slobin 1985-1997), most ment, use and breakdown of language. However, to the of them emphasizing the analysis of free speech (see extent that research in a given subfield of psycholin- also Sokolov & Snow 1994, and virtually any volume guistics is dominated by English, we cannot distinguish of Journal of Child Language). Case studies of speech between universal mechanisms and English-specific production in agrammatic Broca’s aphasics in many facts. Below we will present a brief and selective different languages can be found in Menn and Obler review of cross-linguistic research on language (1990). An increasing number of descriptive and/or development in children, language symptoms in brain- experimental studies of aphasia in various languages injured adults, and language processing in normal can be found in the journal Brain and Language. adults, in an order that reflects the impact that cross- Finally, studies of word and sentence processing in language variations have had on theoretical frameworks healthy adult native speakers of languages other than within each field. English have increased in frequency in the last few Cross-linguistic studies of monolinguals come in years, including special issues devoted to the processing 1 two varieties. One approach treats language as a of morphology (Sandra & Taft 1994), and grammatical between-subjects variable, applying the same experi- gender (Friederici et al. 1999). mental design in two or more languages to determine Studies from both points of view will be how theoretically relevant linguistic differences affect considered here. But first, let us consider some concrete performance. Examples from child language include examples of structural contrasts with powerful cross-linguistic comparisons of tense and aspect in implications for psycholinguistic theory, and use them narratives (Berman & Slobin 1994), the use of “path to illustrate how cross-linguistic research can be used in verbs” vs. “manner verbs” to describe an action-packed the search for universal mechanisms. cartoon (Slobin 1996), the acquisition of spatial loca- Cross-Language Contrasts and their Relevance for tives (Bowerman & Choi 1994), and differential use to Processing word order, semantics and grammatical morphology to We assume that psycholinguistic universals do assign agent-object relations in a “Who did the action?” exist. Languages like English, Italian and Chinese draw task (Bates et al., 1999; Devescovi et al., 1998, Mac- on the same mental/neural machinery. They do not Whinney & Bates 1989, Slobin & Bever 1982). Studies “live” in different parts of the brain, and children do not of aphasia from this perspective are summarized in differ in the mechanisms required to learn each one. Bates et al. (1991b). Studies of word and sentence However, languages can differ (sometimes quite drama- processing in normal adults that treat language as a tically) in the way this mental/neural substrate is taxed between-subjects variable are reviewed in MacWhinney or configured, making differential use of the same basic & Bates (1989) and Hillert (1998). mechanisms for perceptual processing, encoding and A second approach treats languages as experiments retrieval, working memory, and planning. It is of of nature, exploiting particular properties of a single course well known that languages can vary quali- target language to ask questions that could not be tatively, in the presence/absence of specific linguistic answered in (for example) English. A host of child features (e.g. Chinese has lexical tone, Russian has language studies from this point of view are summar- nominal case markers, English has neither). In addition, languages can vary quantitatively, in the 1 challenge posed by equivalent structures (lexical, Because of length limitations, this review is restricted phonological, grammatical) for learning and/or real- entirely to research on monolinguals. However, the literatures time use. For example, passives are rare in English, but on bilingual development, bilingual aphasia, and processing in bilingual adults are certainly relevant to basic science in extremely common in Sesotho, and relative clause psycholinguistics, especially those studies that treat the constructions are more common in English than Italian. contrast between a bilingual’s two languages as a within- To the extent that frequency and recency facilitate subjects variable. structural access, these differences should result in 3 earlier acquisition and/or a processing advantage. As (it) eats Giovanni,” with the normal reading in which we shall see later, this seems to be the case for passives people eat pasta, not the other way around). Because of in Sesotho, and for relative clauses in Italian. these contrasts, word order (e.g. Noun-Verb-Noun) is a Holding frequency constant, equivalent lexical, highly reliable cue to agent-object relations in English phonological and/or grammatical structures can also but a relatively poor cue in Italian. vary in their reliability (“cue validity”) and proces- In direct contrast with the situation for word order, sibility (“cue cost”). These two constructs figure subject-verb agreement is a weak cue to agent-object prominently in the Competition Model (Bates & Mac- relations in English, but a powerful cue in Italian. For Whinney 1989, MacWhinney 1987), a theoretical example, English has only two contrasting inflected framework developed explicitly for cross-linguistic forms in the present indicative paradigm (singular: I research on acquisition, processing and aphasia. Like EAT, YOU EAT, HE EATS; plural: WE EAT, YOU- other interactive-activation or constraint-based theories, ALL EAT, THEY EAT), compared with six in Italian the Competition Model assumes parallel processing, (singular: IO MANGIO, TU MANGI, LUI MANGIA; with detailed and bidirectional interactions among plural: NOI MANGIAMO, VOI MANGIATE, LORO different information types. Within this framework, MANGIANO). Looking at the full verb paradigm, cue validity refers to the information value of a given Italian verbs can take up to 47 different forms, com- phonological, lexical, morphological or syntactic form pared with only five in English (e.g. EAT, EATING, within a particular language, while cue cost refers to the EATS, ATE, EATEN). Such extensive verb marking amount and type of processing associated with the provides the listener with a rich source of information activation and deployment of that form (e.g. per- about “Who did what to whom” that is not available in ceivability, salience, neighborhood density vs. English. structural uniqueness, demands on memory, demands In contrast with both English and Italian, Chinese on speech planning and articulation). These two has no inflectional paradigms at all (e.g. no plural principles co-determine the nature of linguistic inflections on nouns or tense inflections on verbs). It representations in a particular language and the nature does have function words and particles to convey some of the dynamic processes by which form and meaning of the functions carried out by inflections in other are activated and mapped onto each other in real time. languages. However, these particles come in a single Linguistic information is represented as a broadly unalterable form, are optional in all but a handful of distributed network of probabilistic connections among contexts, and most are homophones or near-homo- linguistic forms and the meanings
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