Cross-linguistic transfer and borrowing in bilinguals

Cross-linguistic borrowing (overt use of words from the other language) and transfer (use of semantic or syntactic structures from the other language without active switching to that language) were examined during language production in Russian–English bilinguals. Grammatical category (noun/verb) and level of concreteness were found to influence language interaction. More cross-linguistic borrowings were found for nouns than for verbs and more cross-linguistic transfers were found for verbs than for nouns, suggesting that grammatical categories are differentially vulnerable to covert and overt language interaction. Moreover, concrete nouns and verbs were transferred more than abstract nouns and verbs, suggesting that level of concreteness influences lexical access in bilinguals. Overall, bilinguals transferred more when speaking their second and less proficient language and borrowed more when speaking their first and less recent language (especially if the described event took place in the other language). We suggest that language architecture (e.g., semantic representation, lexical access) and language environment influence the nature of cross-linguistic interaction. In bilinguals, the two languages are known to interact and mutually influence each other throughout the processing stream, with bilinguals frequently borrowing (e.g., Myers-Scotton, 1992), transfering (e.g., Gass, 1996; Jarvis & Odlin, 2000; Jones, 2005; Treffers-Daller & Mougeon, 2005), and code switching1 (e.g., Macnamara & Kushnir, 1971; Poplack, 1980) from one language into the other. Although crosslinguistic influences are often examined in structured laboratory tasks, spontaneous discourse offers opportunities to study language interaction in naturalistic contexts. The objective of the present research was to examine the processes of transfer and borrowing in bilingual language production, and to explore variables that influence patterns of language interaction in spontaneous speech. Borrowing is an overt verbal behavior consisting of the speaker “switching” into the other language and actively using single words or entire phrases from that language. Transfer is a covert behavior consisting of the speaker using the target language in a way that is semantically or syntactically appropriate for the other language (but not for the target language), without overtly switching languages (Odlin, 1989). Although most studies of transfer have focused on the © 2007 Cambridge University Press 0142-7164/07 $15.00 Applied Psycholinguistics 28:2 370 Marian & Kaushanskaya: Cross-linguistic interaction influence of first language (L1) on second language (L2), recent research suggests that language interaction is bidirectional, and that the L2 can also influence the L1 (e.g., Bernardini & Schlyter, 2004; Heredia & Altarriba, 2001; Pavlenko & Jarvis, 2002; Wolff & Ventura, 2003). Although traditionally viewed as a stepping-stone on the way to L2 proficiency (Schachter, 1983), transfer and borrowing are not always tied to proficiency, and may offer unique insights into bilingual cognitive architecture by revealing how languages interact during bilingual production. MECHANISMS DRIVING BILINGUAL LANGUAGE INTERACTION Generally speaking, cross-linguistic interaction can stem from differences in the bilinguals’ language environment, as well as from differences in the structures of the two languages. In the current study, influences from both the language environment (exogenous, extrinsic to properties of language) and the linguistic architecture (endogenous, intrinsic to properties of language) were examined. Influences of language environment on bilingual language interaction include language at the time of speaking, as well as language in which the described experience originally took place. We refer to language environment at the time of speaking as the “interview language,” and use it to denote narratives in either the first and more proficient language or the second and less proficient language. We predicted that patterns of language borrowing and transfer would vary across bilinguals’ two languages. We refer to the linguistic environment in which the described experience took place as the “encoding language,” and use it to denote the language in which the content of a narrative was formed. Although it is difficult to accurately measure previous language use, autobiographical narratives provide a unique opportunity to examine such linguistic influences because bilinguals can usually recall with accuracy what language was spoken when a particular event took place (using cues such as age, location, and people present at the time of event). Previous studies have shown that memory for semantic and episodic information is improved by a match between the languages of retrieval and encoding (Marian & Fausey, 2006; Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2004; Marian & Neisser, 2000). We predicted that patterns of language borrowing and transfer would be similarly influenced by the language in which the content was encoded and that bilinguals would show more cross-linguistic interaction when speaking about an event that took place in the other language. Influences of linguistic architecture on bilingual transfer and borrowing stem from the fact that languages vary across semantic and syntactic properties. These structural cross-linguistic differences influence the organization of the bilingual lexicon, with languages interacting either on-line via a processing-based account, or/and off-line via a representation-based account. The dichotomy of processing versus representational influences on bilingual language interaction is consistent with Paradis’ (1993) two levels of bilingual interference: functional (dynamic) and representational (static). The processing-based account suggests that the nontarget language influences selection of structures in the target language during on-line lexical access. The representation-based account suggests that language interaction is a product of permanent change to the mental representation. These changes are manifested when L2 structures are used during L1 production after Applied Psycholinguistics 28:2 371 Marian & Kaushanskaya: Cross-linguistic interaction acquisition of a L2 (e.g., Wolff & Ventura, 2003), or when L1 structures are used during L2 production as a result of calcified representations acquired through the L1 (e.g., Waxman, 2004; Waxman & Braun, 2005). We predicted that representational and processing differences in language architecture would result in cross-linguistic interaction between linguistic structures associated with the two languages. LANGUAGE ARCHITECTURE AND CROSS-LINGUISTIC INTERACTION Semantic/syntactic structure In bilinguals, semantic systems pertaining to the two languages appear to be integrated, with concepts shared across both languages (e.g., Basden, BonillaMeeks, & Basden, 1994; Snodgrass & Tsivkin, 1995). However, because different languages may conceptualize the same notion in different ways (e.g., Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2003; Bowerman & Choi, 2001; Gumperz & Levinson, 1996), and because concepts may be viewed as sums of multiple features (De Groot, 1989), the semantic representations in bilinguals may remain somewhat distinct for the two languages. That is, although lexical translation equivalents share many conceptual features, they do not always share all of them (Van Hell & de Groot, 1998). Activation of a lexical item activates all conceptual features associated with it, including those that are idiosyncratic to the nontarget language. Therefore, preparation of a message in a target language includes activation of both shared and idiosyncratic features, coactivating the lexical item in the nontarget language, as empirical evidence confirms (e.g., Colome, 2001; Costa, Miozzo, & Caramazza, 1999). When parallel activation of a lexical item in the nontarget language entails a meaning not subsumed by the target language, semantic transfer may occur. In addition to semantic transfer, bilinguals also experience transfer that stems from application of syntactic rules of one language while using the other language. Evidence of syntactic transfer can be found in studies of L2 acquisition in children (e.g., Muller, 1998) and of language processing in bilingual adults (e.g., Ellis, 1994; Odlin, 1990). In an adult bilingual cognitive system, the syntax of the two languages is somewhat integrated, with shared aspects of grammar represented in the system once and used when speaking both languages, but language-specific aspects of grammar represented separately for two languages (e.g., Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004). The languages spoken by the bilinguals tested in the present study differ along a number of syntactic properties. For instance, Russian grammaticizes aspect and gender, and has an extensive case system. English, conversely, possesses a more extensive verb tense system. When syntactic rules differ across the two languages, syntactic expression in the target language can be influenced by the stored syntactic knowledge for the nontarget language, thus yielding a detectable syntactic transfer. Grammatical category Given that differences in semantic and syntactic representations drive language interaction, any systematic variability in organization of the lexicon will then Applied Psycholinguistics 28:2 372 Marian & Kaushanskaya: Cross-linguistic interaction manifest itself in borrowing and transfer patterns. One of the main organizing principles of conceptual and syntactic representations relies on differences between grammatical categories, most notably between nouns and verbs. Previous studies have shown that nouns and verbs differ in a number of ways; for instance, nouns depict entities, which can often be identified by a set of sensory properties, whereas verbs depict relations between entities and are more difficult to define by sensory properties (Gentner, 1981, 1982; Joanette & Goulet, 1991; Paivio, 1986; Zingeser & Berndt, 1990). Moreover, actions and relations, which are expressed by verbs, are encoded by other grammatical categories as well, and vary more drastically across languages (Gentner, 1981, 1982; Slobin, 1996). Nouns are acquired earlier than verbs (at least in English; e.g., Bates et al., 1994; Choi, 1997; Gentner, 1982; Nelson, 1973), are easier to access than verbs (e.g., De Bleser & Kauschke, 2003), and are thought to be more tied to real-world referents than verbs (e.g., Gentner, 1981, 1982). Consistent with these differences between nouns and verbs in monolinguals, the two grammatical categories also show different organization patterns in the bilingual lexicon. Using a bilingual word-association task, Van Hell and de Groot (1998) found that nouns elicited more similar responses and shorter reaction times across languages than verbs, suggesting that verbs may be represented in language-specific conceptual stores, whereas conceptual representations for nouns may be more integrated in the bilingual lexicon. Further, it has been suggested that memory for nouns is superior to memory for verbs (Earles & Kersten, 2000; Engelkamp, Zimmer, & Mohr, 1990; Kintsch, 2001), and that memory for verbs is more dependent on reinstating the linguistic context of the original encoding than memory for nouns (Kersten & Earles, 2004). Because fluent bilinguals switch between languages, the changing linguistic context may influence encoding of nouns and verbs, and may result in different cross-linguistic interaction patterns for the two grammatical classes, with verb encoding more influenced by language change than noun encoding.