This research investigates the increasing importance of the Kazakh language in Kazakhstan, a process referred to as Kazakhization, and its implications for employment opportunities and economic...Show moreThis research investigates the increasing importance of the Kazakh language in Kazakhstan, a process referred to as Kazakhization, and its implications for employment opportunities and economic outcomes. The study highlights several key factors contributing to this linguistic shift, including governmental language policies, educational reforms, and the rising bilingual requirements in the job market. Concurrently, the study highlights that demographic shifts, particularly the decreasing proportion of ethnic Russians and the increasing share of ethnic Kazakhs, further bolster the use of Kazakh. Contrary to earlier findings that suggested a significant income gap between Russian and Kazakh speakers caused by language proficiency in Russian, this research demonstrates that income disparities are more influenced by demographic and socio-economic factors such as age and regional economic conditions rather than linguistic factors.Show less
The discussion on the existence of a bilingual advantage in executive functioning is still going on to this day. But even if this advantage does exist, can we speak of a true advantage? In other...Show moreThe discussion on the existence of a bilingual advantage in executive functioning is still going on to this day. But even if this advantage does exist, can we speak of a true advantage? In other words, how does this advantage resonate in real-life? This study translated executive functions into real-world competences and tested whether bilinguals score better on these as well as on their school performances. Results show very little to no evidence of the existence of a bilingual advantage in real life. The most likely explanations are that there either is no advantage or the advantage is very small and therefore masked by other factors influencing executive functioning and bilingualism.Show less
The bilingual brain has the ability to control and switch between languages at any given moment. This alternation between two languages is known as code-switching (Bullock & Toribio, 2009),...Show moreThe bilingual brain has the ability to control and switch between languages at any given moment. This alternation between two languages is known as code-switching (Bullock & Toribio, 2009), which requires cognitive control mechanisms to inhibit the first language once the second language is encountered (Green & Wei, 2014). During the process of switching from one language to the other, costs have been observed, which are assumed to mirror the effort required to access the target language schema. With this background in mind, this study examined the influence of intra-sentential code-switch types on cognitive control costs on (N= 70) L1 Greek L2 English bilinguals. We used an executive function task, where participants were presented with code-switched and non-code-switched sentences that were followed by either a comprehension question or a Flanker trial. Comprehension findings showed that higher scores in Accuracy lead to greater cognitive effort, and thus, costs on monolingual conditions, and in the presence of a code-switch, the costs and levels of Accuracy were decreased. Results from the Flanker task demonstrated a significant link between code-switching type and direction: the performance on Alternational Conditions demanded greater levels of inhibition, and entailed larger costs compared to Insertional Conditions, that caused lower costs. However, the overall performance was better when on the direction of the switch occurred from the L2 to L1, in all levels. Lastly, it was observed that after a code-switch sentence, the performance on Flanker Congruency was faster and more accurate in incongruent than congruent trials. These results provide evidence of the processing demands that intra-sentential code-switch types generate in terms of domain-general cognitive control cost mechanisms.Show less
Nowadays, more and more people are raised bilingually, often with English as a second language. A widely accepted hypothesis about how bilinguals choose between languages for production, is the...Show moreNowadays, more and more people are raised bilingually, often with English as a second language. A widely accepted hypothesis about how bilinguals choose between languages for production, is the language non-selective access account, which states that bilinguals always initially activate both languages, and later (partially) suppress the non-target language based on contextual factors. Based on this account, it is expected that a speaker’s first and second language interfere while executing a language task. The present study replicates a covert phoneme monitoring experiment in Dutch, to see whether English (L2) interferes with Dutch (L1). The study focuses on covert lexical production with a task in which the participants have to accept or reject the presence of certain visually-presented phonemes in a picture name. Previous studies did not come to conclusive results (Geambaşu, 2010; Van Hinsberg, 2019), which may be due to the degree of bilingualism of the participants. To test whether participants would show slower RTs for graphemes occurring in their L2 than for unrelated graphemes, and whether this difference would be bigger for balanced than for unbalanced bilinguals, two groups of Dutch high school students were tested on their ability to monitor graphemes: those that are taught in Dutch(unbalanced bilinguals), and those that are taught in English (balanced bilinguals). The results did not show any significant differences in reaction times between the groups, suggesting that the degree of bilingualism does not affect interference. However, evidence suggests that the age of acquisition of English as L2 plays a role: the earlier one becomes actively bilingual, the more interference from the L2 s/he encounters in the L1. The graphemes that occurred only in the L2 English word, but not in the L1 Dutch, were most difficult to monitor for the early English learners, explicitly showing that L2 English interferes with L1 Dutch. However, interference is found not only in stimuli types where interference of English L2 was expected, but also throughout the whole L1 task: people who learned their L2 earlier in life, made more mistakes on the task than people who started learning their L2 later, indicating that an early bilingual speaker needs to put more effort into an L1 task to constantly suppress the L2.Show less
This study examines the voice onset time (VOT) in voiced and voiceless plosives of Dutch late-language learners of English. Dutch contrasts prevoicing with short-lag VOT, while English has a short...Show moreThis study examines the voice onset time (VOT) in voiced and voiceless plosives of Dutch late-language learners of English. Dutch contrasts prevoicing with short-lag VOT, while English has a short-lag and long lag VOT contrast, making them an interesting language pair to look at for bilingual research. In order to find naturalistic VOT values, the data used for this study was found by analysing five speakers as case studies on YouTube. The data was collected in Dutch, English and code-switched sentences. Although there were individual differences, some speakers managed to produce native-like English VOT values for both the voiceless and the voiced plosives. In code-switched utterances, the VOT values for the voiceless plosives were slightly higher than the Dutch values, while the voiced plosives were still produced with prevoicing. Some speakers were thus able to maintain separate categories in both languages, although there was more L1 interference in code-switched contexts. The data also showed that the velar and alveolar plosives followed by a sonorant consonant in English and code-switched contexts contained higher VOT means than those followed by a vowel, suggesting that these are easier to acquire for an L2 learner.Show less
Intrasentential code-switching requires cognitive control in production (Verreyt et al., 2016) as well as comprehension (Adler et al., under review). The first language needs to be inhibited as...Show moreIntrasentential code-switching requires cognitive control in production (Verreyt et al., 2016) as well as comprehension (Adler et al., under review). The first language needs to be inhibited as soon as the second languages is encountered. The neurological system that is associated with cognitive control may stay active for a while after being triggered. Cognitive control is used for any (cognitive) task that requires inhibition, selected attention or decision making. An example of such a task is the Flanker task, in which a participant has to determine the direction of an arrow surrounded by four (congruent or incongruent) distractors. In general, when the arrows all point in the same direction (congruent condition) participants have a shorter reaction time than when the surrounding arrows point in the opposite direction of the target arrow (incongruent condition). The effect of code-switches on Flanker trials has been studied behaviourally. These studies show that processing a code-switch has a positive effect on the reaction time on the incongruent Flanker trials. In this study, we support previous behavioural findings with an electrophysiological investigation of the effect of code-switch detection on cognitive control. We recorded the EEG of 34 participants while they alternated between reading sentences (with and without code-switches) and Flanker trials. In the analysis of the EEG, we were specifically interested in the P300 component, which is associated with shifts in attention. The P300 amplitude is higher when more cognitive control is required (Neuhaus et al., 2010). Since incongruent Flanker trials require more cognitive control than congruent trials, the classic Flanker effect is that the incongruent trials produce a larger P300. However, after being activated by a code-switch, if the cognitive control mechanism indeed stays active for a while, the P300 amplitude of an incongruent Flanker after a code-switch would be lower than one after a sentence without a code-switch. The mean ERP amplitudes were analysed with a 4-way repeated measures ANOVA. Significant interactions were found between sentence type and congruency. There was a significantly larger P300 in the congruent condition than in the incongruent condition, but only when the preceding sentence did not have a code-switch. The P300 was significantly larger after sentences with a code-switch than after sentences without a code-switch, but only in the incongruent condition. There was no effect of sentence type in the congruent condition. These results provide electrophysiological support for previous findings by Adler et al., (under review).Show less
This thesis focuses on theoretical accounts of code-switching with regard to Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals. It examines two contrasting theories, the Matrix Language Framework model (Myers-Scotton,...Show moreThis thesis focuses on theoretical accounts of code-switching with regard to Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals. It examines two contrasting theories, the Matrix Language Framework model (Myers-Scotton, 2002) and the Minimalist Program (Cantone and MacSwan, 2009), and compares them by examining which accounts for what happens at conflict sites in occurrences of Papiamento-Dutch code-switching, looking specifically at switching in noun-adjective word-order conflict sites. An event-related potential study was carried out at Leiden University with Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals. Its aim was to provide an objective measure of the neurocognitive processes underlying code-switching in bilinguals (Parafita Couto, Pablos, Boutonnet, de Jong, Perquin, de Haan and Schiller, under review). The two theories were tested using code-switched sentences which comprised six conditions: two control sentences that were not code-switched, two code-switched conditions where the predictions of the theories differed, and two code-switched conditions where the predictions of the theories matched. It was predicted that the results would support the Myers-Scotton MLF model, as that was the case with a similar project carried out with Welsh-English bilinguals ((Parafita Couto, Boutonnet, Hoshino, Davies, Deuchar and Thierry, 2013). The results of the Papiamento-Dutch experiment showed a slight trend in support of the Minimalist Program. These results differed from those of the project regarding Welsh-English bilinguals which found significant results in support of the Matrix Language Framework model (Parafita Couto, Boutonnet, Hoshino, Davies, Deuchar and Thierry, 2013). The disparity between the conclusions in these two experiments could be due to the difference in the types of bilinguals which participated. Further research will benefit from considering the sociolinguistic features of the bilingual group which participated in the Papiamento-Dutch study discussed in this thesis.Show less
In this thesis, two factors were examined that could have an influence on the acquisition of English for bilinguals in the Dutch province of Friesland: lexical closeness and held attitudes. First,...Show moreIn this thesis, two factors were examined that could have an influence on the acquisition of English for bilinguals in the Dutch province of Friesland: lexical closeness and held attitudes. First, it is examined whether knowledge of Frisian helps children acquire English lexicon and, second, whether there is a correlation between the attitude towards English and the (self-perceived) proficiency in this language. This was examined on the basis of a vocabulary test and a questionnaire. The results have indicated that the lexical closeness between Frisian and English does not (necessarily) facilitate the lexical acquisition process of English, but that a positive attitude towards English does positively influence the acquisition of English.Show less
This thesis attempts to determine whether adults who were raised with simultaneous bilingualism and live in a monolingual country still know two languages in a native-like manner, even if one of...Show moreThis thesis attempts to determine whether adults who were raised with simultaneous bilingualism and live in a monolingual country still know two languages in a native-like manner, even if one of the two has become more dominant in daily life. Twenty simultaneous bilinguals were asked to carry out a picture-naming task. For this test, the bilinguals had to name objects in Dutch and English and the time it took them to switch between languages was measured. In general, an L1 is suppressed more severely than an L2 when the other language is spoken, and it therefore takes more time to switch from an L2 to an L1 than vice versa. The participants did not take significantly longer to switch from one language to the other than vice versa, suggesting that simultaneous bilinguals are capable of retrieving both of their languages in a native-like manner even if they live in a monolingual environment.Show less
Due to a gap between gender language ideology and actual language use, knowledge of linguistic features that are indexed as feminine or masculine and their uses might not be as accurate as it could...Show moreDue to a gap between gender language ideology and actual language use, knowledge of linguistic features that are indexed as feminine or masculine and their uses might not be as accurate as it could be. This is problematic for learners of Japanese as a foreign language, for they require proper learning materials that focus on more than stereotypical norms in order to obtain pragmatic skills.Show less
