Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers' lexical access more than age of onset.

ABSTRACT: Probabilistic associations make language processing efficient and are honed through experience. However, it is unclear what language experience factors explain the non-monolingual processing behaviors typical of L2 learners and heritage speakers (HSs). We investigated whether AoO, language proficiency, and language use affect the recognition of Spanish stress-tense suffix associations involving a stressed syllable that cues a present suffix (SALta "s/he jumps") and an unstressed syllable that cues a past suffix (SALtó "s/he jumped"). Adult Spanish-English HSs, English-Spanish L2 learners, and Spanish monolinguals saw a paroxytone verb (stressed initial syllable) and an oxytone verb (unstressed initial syllable), listened to a sentence containing one of the verbs, and chose th

SUBMITTER: Sagarra N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10292756 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature