The Influence of Community-Specific Code-Switching Norms on Online Comprehension in Early Spanish-English Bilinguals

Abstract

In research on Spanish-English bilingual code-switching (CS), bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) have been shown to occur at different frequencies in distinct bilingual communities. This paper proposes production frequencies play an important role in the online processing of Spanish-English CS. Sixteen early Spanish-English bilinguals participated in a reading-while-eye-tracking study where they read sentences containing BCVs that are attested in their bilingual community and those that are syntactically plausible, yet unattested in the same community. Participants were expected to show a processing cost for the light verb (LV) condition with the switch occurring at the lexical infinitive, as this switch is unattested in this participant group’s speech community. Participants were also expected to display this sensitivity during earlier stage processing when compared to age-matched learners of Spanish. The results showed a trend of longer reading time for the LV at lexical infinitive switch that became most robust in the spillover region. A z-scored analysis of an offline acceptability assessment of the presented stimuli revealed a strong dispreference for the unattested switch. These results indicate that prior exposure to language had an important impact in online and offline processing of Spanish-English CS.