Browsing by Author "McLoughlin, Jayde Caitlyn"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Parallel vs sequential activation during spoken-word recognition tasks : an eye-tracking study
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) McLoughlin, Jayde Caitlyn; Bylund, Emanuel; Berghoff, Robyn; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Through previous spoken word-recognition tasks, bilinguals have demonstrated an ability to access both languages in a simultaneous/parallel manner. Parallel activation contrasts with sequential activation (where only one language is active at any given time). Afrikaans-English bilingual speakers have never been tested for parallel activation and, additionally, both African languages and early bilinguals have been neglected when studying bilinguals’ parallel activation. In this thesis, the extent to which the Afrikaans-English early bilingual mind accesses and makes use of both Afrikaans and English simultaneously is established through an eye-tracking, spoken-word recognition task. Furthermore, this parallel activation is recognised as correlated to the bilingual’s proficiency in English, as well as the age of acquisition (AoA) of English. Thirty-one Afrikaans-English early bilinguals were tested, and were found to have activated Afrikaans through their proportion of looks (eye fixations) made to an Afrikaans phonetically-similar competitor object (e.g., venster, Afrikaans for “window”) when asked to look to the English target (fairy). Participants’ English AoAs were determined through the Language History Questionnaire, and their proficiency in English was tested by means of the standardised LexTALE test. Within these Afrikaans-English early bilinguals, a lower second-language English proficiency was found to increase parallel activation of the Afrikaans first language, as well as an older English age of acquisition (AoA), independently. It is proposed in this thesis that bilingual parallel activation exists rather as a continuum (from purely sequential activation to purely parallel activation of languages), dependent on a range of interacting, individual, structural, and context-specific variables.