Language Separation in Bidialectal Speakers: Evidence From Eye Tracking

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Linguistic Variation

Background:

• Understanding dialectal variation processing is crucial for psycholinguistics.
• Norwegian dialects exhibit differences in grammatical gender systems.
• Online processing of linguistic input is key to language comprehension.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how speakers process dialectal variations in grammatical gender markers.
• To determine if speakers can predict upcoming nouns using gender markers across dialects.
• To assess speakers' ability to adjust predictions based on dialect mode.

Main Methods:

• An eye tracking study using the Visual Word Paradigm was conducted.
• Three groups of Norwegian speakers participated: Oslo, stable Sogn, and unstable Sogn dialect speakers.
• Participants processed linguistic input in both their native and the other dialect.

Main Results:

• Sogn speakers predicted upcoming words in both local and Oslo dialects.
• Only stable Sogn speakers adjusted predictions based on dialect mode.
• Unstable Sogn speakers and Oslo speakers showed limited cross-dialectal prediction abilities.

Conclusions:

• Stable Sogn speakers exhibit bilingual-like proficiency in processing both dialects.
• Unstable Sogn speakers accommodate by using a generalized grammar for both dialects.
• Oslo speakers lack the proficiency to utilize gender markers effectively in the Sogn dialect.