Processing Code-Switching in Algerian Bilinguals: Effects of Language Use and Semantic Expectancy

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Sociolinguistics

Background:

• Bilingual language processing involves complex interactions between languages.
• Code-switching, the alternation between two languages, is common in bilingual communities.
• Understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying code-switching is crucial for psycholinguistics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how sentence constraint and language use affect expectancy of language switches in bilingual listeners.
• To examine the influence of typical (Algerian Arabic-French) versus atypical (Standard Arabic-French) code-switching contexts on processing.
• To explore the role of code-switching habits and L2 proficiency in modulating semantic constraint effects.

Main Methods:

• Cross-modal naming paradigm with 65 Algerian bilinguals (Algerian Arabic-French speakers).
• Participants listened to sentence fragments in either Algerian Arabic or Standard Arabic, followed by a French target noun phrase.
• Speech onset times were recorded to measure processing efficiency under varying semantic constraint and language contexts.

Main Results:

• A significant semantic constraint effect was observed: French switches were processed faster in high-constraint contexts.
• The effect of semantic constraint was more pronounced in the typical Algerian Arabic-French code-switching context.
• Semantic constraint effects were reduced in frequent code-switchers and those with higher proficiency in L2 French.

Conclusions:

• Language use and habitual code-switching patterns significantly influence the processing of language switches.
• Semantic predictability plays a key role in facilitating cross-lingual processing.
• Findings contribute to models of bilingual language processing and control mechanisms in code-switching.