Acceso usuarios
Daniel J. Olson
Aims and objectives:While a significant body of research has examined bilinguals’ preferences with respect to the acceptability of different structures in intrasentential code-switching, this line of work has largely ignored the potential effect of language experience on bilinguals’ judgments. Within bilingual language experience, two particular variables have garnered significant attention: language dominance and code-switching experience. The current study presents a constructive replication of three prior studies and examines the potential modulating role of language experience.
Design/methodology:Seventy-one Spanish–English bilinguals participated in a constructive replication of three previously published studies. Experiment 1, replicating the study by Stadthagen-González et al. (2019), examines comparative judgments of noun–adjective order. Experiment 2, replicating the work of Balam et al. (2020), analyzes bilingual verbs. Experiment 3, replicating the study by Stadthagen-González et al. (2018), examines the adjacency condition. Bilinguals provided code-switching judgments via a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task and information about their language experience via a language-dominance questionnaire and a code-switching experience questionnaire.
Data and analysis:Relative rankings of the different bilingual constructions, using Thurstone’s law of comparative judgments, allowed for comparison with previous studies. The effect of language dominance and code-switching experience was assessed using binomial logistic regressions.
Findings/conclusions:Broad agreement with results from each of the replicated studies was found. In addition, results show a significant impact of language dominance on acceptability judgments across all three experiments and an impact of code-switching experience in one of the three experiments.
Originality:This study responds directly to an ongoing call for replication studies in the field of bilingualism and is among the first to consider the role of prior language experiences on acceptability judgments.
Significance/implications:The strong replicability of prior results serves to support prior findings in the literature. Moreover, this study highlights the potential impact of prior linguistic experiences, including language dominance and code-switching experience, on bilingual behaviors.
