Focus in Dutch reading: an eye-tracking experiment with heritage speakers of Turkish

This study examines whether heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands interpret focus in written Dutch sentences differently from L1 speakers of Dutch (controls). Where most previous studies examined effects from the dominant L2 on the heritage language, we investigated whether there are effec...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language, cognition and neuroscience Vol. 32; no. 8; pp. 984 - 1000
Main Authors: van Rijswijk, Remy, Muntendam, Antje, Dijkstra, Ton
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Abingdon Routledge 14.09.2017
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects:
Bilingual people
Bilingualism
Cues
Cultural heritage
Dutch language
Eye
Eye movements
Eye tracking
Focus
Heritage language
heritage speakers
Information
L1 transfer
Language
Language instruction
Prosody
Syntactic processing
Syntax
Syntax discourse relationship
syntax-discourse interface
Tracking
Turkish language
Turkish-Dutch bilinguals
ISSN:2327-3798, 2327-3801
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This study examines whether heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands interpret focus in written Dutch sentences differently from L1 speakers of Dutch (controls). Where most previous studies examined effects from the dominant L2 on the heritage language, we investigated whether there are effects from the weaker heritage language on the dominant L2. Dutch and Turkish differ in focus marking. Dutch primarily uses prosody to encode focus, whereas Turkish uses prosody and syntax, with a preverbal area for focused information and a postverbal area for background information. In written sentences no explicit prosody is available, which possibly enhances the role of syntactic cues in interpreting focus. An eye-tracking experiment suggests that, unlike the controls, the bilinguals associate the preverbal area with focus and the postverbal area with background information. These findings are in line with transfer from the weaker L1 to the dominant L2 at the syntax-discourse interface.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:2327-3798
2327-3801
DOI:10.1080/23273798.2017.1279338