Tolerance for syntactic slips: The effect of child and foreign accented speech on sentence comprehension in native English speakers in multilingual and monolingual societies
Open Access
- Author:
- Kline, Jennifer Rebecca
- Area of Honors:
- Interdisciplinary in Letters, Arts, and Sciences and Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Janet Van Hell, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Jeffrey M Love, Thesis Honors Advisor
Dr. Jack L Selzer, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- Linguistics
psychology
semantics
pragmatics
bilingualism - Abstract:
- Research suggests that listeners modify their expectations about speech based on pragmatic cues and social stereotypes (Van Berkum, van den Brink, Tesink, Kos, & Hagoort, 2008). ERP data indicates that listeners infer stereotypes about speakers based on voice in the earliest stages of meaning construction (Van Berkum, van den Brink, Tesink, Kos, & Hagoort, 2008). However, what if the content of the speech is not only pragmatically anomalous, but semantically incorrect? To address this question, Hanulikova, Van Alphen, van Goch, and Weber (2012) conducted an ERP study examining reactions to grammatical errors spoken by accented second language Dutch speakers and native Dutch speakers. The researchers found that Dutch listeners are less likely to react to gender pronoun errors spoken by Turkish- accented Dutch speakers than errors spoken by Dutch native speakers. Importantly, this study examined multilingual speakers who have extensive experience in learning and speaking foreign languages. They know firsthand how hard speaking a foreign language without grammatical errors or without an accent can be. To determine if tolerance for semantic errors from nonnative speakers extends to those without foreign language exposure, the participant pool should widen to include participants from a largely monolingual society. However, nonnative speakers are not the only speaking group who commonly make semantic errors. Children across all cultures develop their language processes over a period of years. Semantic errors are inevitable as they slowly learn the syntax, grammar, and vocabulary of their native language. The present study furthers Hanulikova, Van Alphen, van Goch, and Weber’s (2012) research by comparing English native speakers living the Netherlands (a multilingual society) and English native speakers living in State College, Pennsylvania (a monolingual society). Both participant groups heard grammatically correct and grammatically incorrect sentences spoken by adult native English speakers, adult Chinese-accented English speakers, and child native English speakers. The grammatically incorrect sentences contained a gender pronoun that failed to align with the gender of the subject of the sentence. The results of this experiment suggest that participants living in a monolingual community and participants living in a multilingual community were both intolerant of speech errors regardless of speaker condition.