Thinking ahead: Predictive processsing of gramamtical mood in mono- and multilinguals
Open Access
- Author:
- Pahis, Ashley
- Graduate Program:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 14, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Michael Putnam, Outside Unit & Field Member
John Lipski, Major Field Member
Rena Cacoullos, Major Field Member
Karen Miller, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Matthew Carlson, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Paola Migliaccio-Dussias, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- predictive processing
multilingualism
grammatical mood
subjunctive
Brazilian Portuguese
Spanish - Abstract:
- Findings from language processing research has shown that humans are not tacit listeners that only react when information is received. Rather, there is substantial evidence that individuals make predictions about what they are going to hear based on what they have already heard. These predictions are based on information or ‘cues’, such as what kind of object might logically follow the verb “to eat”. This ability to extract, decode, and use information provided by these cues is referred to as predictive processing. Predictive processing has been exhibited in both monolingual and bilingual populations, with experimental results concluding that cues such as prosodic information, verbal semantics, word order, among many other linguistic characteristics, can be used by listeners to guide their prediction about what they might hear next in the input. The current dissertation adds to this literature by offering an exploratory analysis of the cue reliability of matrix verbs to signal upcoming verbal morphology during mood selection. It has been argued that the most important factor for the use of the subjunctive is the identity of the matrix verb. This dissertation asks whether or not listeners are aware of this relationship during language processing. For this assessment, native (L1) speakers of both Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, as well as L1 Spanish speakers who’s third (L3) language is Brazilian Portuguese, were recruited to take part in a self-paced listening task. This instrument was designed to inform the question of whether or not matrix verbs in subjunctive constructions (referred to as governors) are used to predict upcoming subordinate verb morphology (e.g., subjunctive or indicative mood). The results from this online language comprehension task offer a glimpse into the complex ways in which multilinguals navigate their interwoven linguistic system.