Summary
The project CLEAR (Cross-Linguistic influence during real-time procEssing in child heritAge speakeRs) investigates the role of crosslinguistic influence in real-time sentence processing to fill the gap in the ongoing debate about whether languages interact in the mind of a bilingual child. Some argue that the general bilingualism effect, rather than the cross-linguistic influence, affects language comprehension. What is lacking in this field of research, however, is a systematic understanding of what happens in real-time processing. We focus on cross-linguistic influence in pronoun interpretation by testing severely understudied bilingual population, i.e. child heritage speakers of Croatian. We approach the phenomenon in a new and unique way by examining the crosslinguistic influence in relation to the implicit causality bias, which is assumed to facilitate language comprehension. CLEAR takes a novel methodological approach by comparing children in three European countries – Croatia, Italy and Norway. The two language combinations, Croatian-Italian (null-subject languages) and Croatian-Norwegian (non-null-subject language) allow us to gain insight into the role of structural overlap between languages. To better understand the phenomenon, both children’s eye movements and offline responses will be measured. CLEAR will make a significant contribution to research on heritage language bilingualism by revealing whether the languages a child acquires influence each other or whether difficulties in language comprehension are due to the general bilingualism effect, i.e. limited processing abilities. The project addresses aspects that are of great importance for teachers of second/foreign languages as well as for speech and language pathologists by promoting bilingualism and interculturality across Europe. By carrying out this project, I will gain considerable expertise in the field and become an independent and internationally recognised researcher.
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| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101154247 |
| Start date: | 18-09-2024 |
| End date: | 17-09-2026 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | - 210 911,00 Euro |
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Original description
The project CLEAR (Cross-Linguistic influence during real-time procEssing in child heritAge speakeRs) investigates the role of crosslinguistic influence in real-time sentence processing to fill the gap in the ongoing debate about whether languages interact in the mind of a bilingual child. Some argue that the general bilingualism effect, rather than the cross-linguistic influence, affects language comprehension. What is lacking in this field of research, however, is a systematic understanding of what happens in real-time processing. We focus on cross-linguistic influence in pronoun interpretation by testing severely understudied bilingual population, i.e. child heritage speakers of Croatian. We approach the phenomenon in a new and unique way by examining the crosslinguistic influence in relation to the implicit causality bias, which is assumed to facilitate language comprehension. CLEAR takes a novel methodological approach by comparing children in three European countries – Croatia, Italy and Norway. The two language combinations, Croatian-Italian (null-subject languages) and Croatian-Norwegian (non-null-subject language) allow us to gain insight into the role of structural overlap between languages. To better understand the phenomenon, both children’s eye movements and offline responses will be measured. CLEAR will make a significant contribution to research on heritage language bilingualism by revealing whether the languages a child acquires influence each other or whether difficulties in language comprehension are due to the general bilingualism effect, i.e. limited processing abilities. The project addresses aspects that are of great importance for teachers of second/foreign languages as well as for speech and language pathologists by promoting bilingualism and interculturality across Europe. By carrying out this project, I will gain considerable expertise in the field and become an independent and internationally recognised researcher.Status
SIGNEDCall topic
HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-01Update Date
22-11-2024
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