Bilingual Processing of Comparative Structures in Spanish
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Lexically-Encoded Information
1.2. Comparative Structures
1. | El cantante obtiene más premios que el pianista en el festival |
‘The singer gets more awards than the pianist at the festival.’ |
2. | El cantante obtiene más premios que el pianista en el festival |
‘The singer gets more awards than the pianist at the festival’ | |
3. | El cantante obtiene más premios que críticas en el festival |
The singer gets more awards than criticism at the festival |
2. Processing of Comparative Clauses
2.1. Methods
2.1.1. Preliminary Norming Study
4. | a. | Subject | |
En este sentido, el PP está más a la izquierda que el PSOE. | (76 19-OR) | ||
b. | Direct Object | ||
Lógicamente, pues, la novedad del ambiente seminarista le causó más placeres que nostalgias. | (5 19-F) | ||
c. | Indirect Object | ||
Sin embargo, al importante dios tebano Amón se le otorgó más importancia que a otras divinidades. | (17 19-AC) | ||
d. | Adverb | ||
Es decir, y además que en Cochabamba tuvo más votos que en ninguna parte. | (1 19-OR) | ||
e. | Complement | ||
Las tintas de imprenta se parecen más a la pintura que a la tinta para escritura, pues se componen de pigmentos […] | (104 19-AC) | ||
2.1.2. Participants
2.1.3. Materials and Procedures
5. | a. | Subject Comparative Condition | |||||||||
El | cantante | obtiene | más | premios | que | el pianista | en | el | festival | ||
The | singer | gets | more | awards | than | the pianist | at | the | festival | ||
b. | Object Comparative Condition | ||||||||||
El | cantante | obtiene | más | premios | que | críticas | en | el | festival | ||
The | singer | gets | more | awards | than | criticism | at | the | festival |
2.2. Hypotheses
2.3. Analyses and Results
3. Discussion and Conclusions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | |
2 | I follow here Gutierrez Ordóñez (1997) who argues that the comparative structure following que in the structure presented in (1) (i.e., que el pianista en el festival) is a subordinate clause because this part of the comparative structure is dominated by an elided verb (i.e., El cantante obtiene más premios que el pianista [obtiene] en el festival) that provides case to the second element of the comparison. |
3 | It is common in the heritage literature to avoid the use of L1 and L2 to define heritage speakers and to use LA (i.e., language A) and LB (i.e., language B) instead when the acquisition of both languages happens simultaneously (Montrul 2013). |
4 | Data frequencies were obtained at the Corpus del Español (Davies 2002) database, the same source of information for the Preliminary Corpus Study, to maintain consistency of the data source. |
5 | It is important to point out that the differences in length at the critical area can have a direct effect on the results and their interpretation. I address this in the Analysis and Discussion section below. |
6 | A reviewer has suggested that, although controlling for the number of characters at the critical area was important, it does not take away the fact that the two areas of interest differ in the number of words and that can be another factor driving the results beyond length. I conducted the residual reading time analysis that follows to quantify the possible effect of differences in length at the DP, but I was not able to analyze the effects of number of words taking into consideration the nature of the materials. We are currently investigating this difference and whether the results can be replicated with the same number of words in both conditions. |
Type of Continuation | n | Percentage | Expected n | Standardized Residuals |
---|---|---|---|---|
Subject | 290 | 35.8% | 162 | +10.06 |
Direct Object | 262 | 32.3% | 162 | +7.86 |
Indirect Object | 24 | 3% | 162 | −10.84 |
Adverb | 177 | 21.9% | 162 | +1.18 |
Complement | 57 | 7% | 162 | −8.25 |
TOTAL | 810 | 100% |
GROUP MEANS | ANOVA | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Native | Heritage | Learners | F | p | |
n | 20 | 20 | 22 | ||
Age | 26.40 [range: 18–26] | 21.45 [range: 18–40] | 23.32 [range: 19–39] | 5.23 | 0.009 |
Proficiency Spanish (x/10) | |||||
Speaking | 9.26 | 8 | 7.05 | 13.91 | 0.000 |
Reading | 9.11 | 7.75 | 7.77 | 8.4 | 0.001 |
Listening | 9.47 | 9.40 | 7.77 | 33.82 | 0.000 |
Exposure Spanish (%) | |||||
Overall | 47.37 | 31.45 | 24.48 | 9.11 | 0.000 |
Reading | 50.79 | 70.70 | 61.90 | 6.24 | 0.004 |
Speaking | 41.16 | 24.30 | 41.62 | 3.79 | 0.028 |
DELE (x/50) | 37.90 | 29.00 | 26.45 | 22.38 | 0.000 |
SUBJECTS | ITEMS | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mean Reading Times (ms) | Mean Reading Times (ms) | ||||||
AREA | WORD | Subject | Object | p * | Subject | Object | p * |
1 | El | 459.22 | 468.57 | 0.344 | 462.96 | 465.56 | 0.781 |
2 | cantante | 619.21 | 630.92 | 0.408 | 624.08 | 631.26 | 0.620 |
3 | obtiene | 604.96 | 606.39 | 0.932 | 605.32 | 617.10 | 0.506 |
4 | más | 469.57 | 484.59 | 0.101 | 473.33 | 485.89 | 0.269 |
5 | premios | 539.52 | 558.71 | 0.139 | 540.18 | 562.95 | 0.058 |
6 | que | 441.20 | 443.65 | 0.776 | 446.03 | 442.97 | 0.765 |
7 | el pianista / críticas | 993.65 | 639.71 | 0.000 | 999.68 | 628.71 | 0.000 |
8 | en | 443.75 | 472.62 | 0.009 | 448.89 | 468.54 | 0.137 |
9 | el | 418.63 | 433.89 | 0.241 | 426.23 | 433.43 | 0.538 |
10 | festival. | 668.07 | 645.24 | 0.207 | 657.41 | 638.77 | 0.350 |
SUBJECTS | ITEMS | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mean Reading Times (ms) | Mean Reading Times (ms) | ||||||
AREA | WORD | Subject | Object | p ** | Subject | Object | p ** |
1 | El | −22.18 | −13.07 | 0.379 | −17.89 | −16.91 | 0.913 |
2 | cantante | −41.57 | −36.37 | 0.710 | −40.95 | −30.55 | 0.440 |
3 | obtiene | −6.14 | −5.46 | 0.958 | −5.71 | 5.74 | 0.451 |
4 | más | −2.97 | 12.64 | 0.096 | -.40 | 12.92 | 0.212 |
5 | premios | −54.33 | −36.83 | 0.135 | −54.56 | −32.46 | 0.053 |
6 | que | −16.89 | −15.13 | 0.789 | −14.17 | −16.18 | 0.834 |
7 | el pianista/críticas | 7.99 | −26.63 | 0.023 | 21.67 | −31.61 | 0.005 |
8 | en | 13.61 | .30 | 0.254 | 6.71 | −8.68 | 0.245 |
9 | el | −13.59 | −7.24 | 0.452 | −9.74 | −8.12 | 0.889 |
10 | festival. | 34.82 | 54.42 | 0.338 | 28.26 | 26.56 | 0.927 |
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Villegas, Á. Bilingual Processing of Comparative Structures in Spanish. Languages 2018, 3, 35. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030035
Villegas Á. Bilingual Processing of Comparative Structures in Spanish. Languages. 2018; 3(3):35. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030035
Chicago/Turabian StyleVillegas, Álvaro. 2018. "Bilingual Processing of Comparative Structures in Spanish" Languages 3, no. 3: 35. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030035