Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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No description available.

Bilingualism has been studied extensively in multiple disciplines, yet we are still trying to figure out how exactly bilinguals think. A bilingual advantage has been observed in various experimental studies, but also has not been observed in many other studies. A bilingual advantage has been shown in tasks using selective attention. These tasks study the effects of language interference, where two types of interference are observed: interlingual (between-languages) and intralingual (within one language). This study examined language interference in Spanish-English bilinguals, using an auditory-visual simultaneous translation experimental setup. 16 college English monolinguals and 17 college Spanish-English bilinguals were tested. The task was to ignore the word in the headphones and to translate/repeat the word on the screen into English. Distractor words went to either the right, left, or both headphone ears. Subjects were given 72 words to translate, words were randomized, and ear of the distractor word was randomized. The monolingual group was not affected by any independent variables tested except screen word length. Bilinguals did worse when the word and audio were in Spanish, and when the word and audio were different words. No ear advantage was observed. Proficiency levels and first language had no effects on bilingual performance. More intralingual interference was observed for bilinguals only, no significant interference occurred for monolinguals. A slight bilingual advantage was found but not fully, because of the high load of the task and introduction of another language. In conclusion, bilinguals did not have a cognitive advantage in this experiment setup.

<p>The Recycling Hypothesis of verb-phrase ellipsis states that elided verb phrases with non-parallel antecedents are interpreted by reconstructing the appropriate verb phrase structure using the information available in the antecedent (Arregui, Frazier, Clifton, & Moulton, 2006). The hypothesis predicts that structurally more complex antecedents will involve more complicated reconstruction operations, which will lower the acceptability of the sentences. The experiments reported in this thesis tested two underlying assumptions of the Recycling Hypothesis as well as one prediction that follows from the proposal. First, the hypothesis assumes that elided verb phrases with parallel antecedents are interpreted by copying the structure of the antecedent into the ellipsis site (Frazier & Clifton, 2001). Second, Arregui et al. (2006) argued that changes in verbal morphology were “really easy (p. 242)” to recover from, suggesting that verbal morphology is not a factor in determining parallelism between the antecedent and elided verb phrases. Results from three written survey experiments in which participants were asked to judge the acceptability of verb-phrase ellipsis with matching or non-matching verbal morphology contradicted these assumptions. Morphologically more complex antecedents were rated less acceptable than simpler antecedents, regardless of whether the antecedent morphology matched the morphology on the elided verb phrase. The fact that verbal morphology affected acceptability ratings suggests that this factor plays a critical role in determining parallelism in ellipsis. Furthermore, the fact that parallel antecedents patterned with non-parallel antecedents suggests that the two must be processed in a similar fashion. Finally, if more complex antecedents require more complicated reconstruction operations, it might be predicted that word-by-word reading times at the ellipsis site should be correlated with the level of difficulty (Gibson, 1998). One self-paced reading experiment using the same materials showed no such correlation. These results are discussed with reference to two other psycholinguistic theories of verb-phrase ellipsis comprehension.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DXN021887.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-151). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-288). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Rose A. Sevcik, committee chair; MaryAnn Romski, Rihana Williams-Smith, Robin D. Morris, committee members. Electronic text (99 p. : ill.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 28, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-99).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.