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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Academic Paper

Title:	Language distance and non-native syntactic processing: Evidence from event-related potentials
Author:	Adam Zawiszewski
Institution:	University of the Basque Country
Author:	Eva Gutierrez
Institution:	University of California, Davis
Author:	Beatriz Fernández
Institution:	University of the Basque Country
Author:	Itziar Laka
Email:	click here to access email
Institution:	University of the Basque Country
Linguistic Field:	Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics
Subject Language:	Basque Spanish
Abstract:	In this study, we explore native and non-native syntactic processing, paying special attention to the language distance factor. To this end, we compared how native speakers of Basque and highly proficient non-native speakers of Basque who are native speakers of Spanish process certain core aspects of Basque syntax. Our results suggest that differences in native versus non-native language processing strongly correlate with language distance: native/non-native processing differences obtain if a syntactic parameter of the non-native grammar diverges from the native grammar. Otherwise, non-native processing will approximate native processing as levels of proficiency increase. We focus on three syntactic parameters: (i) the head parameter, (ii) argument alignment (ergative/accusative), and (iii) verb agreement. The first two diverge in Basque and Spanish, but the third is the same in both languages. Our results reveal that native and non-native processing differs for the diverging syntactic parameters, but not for the convergent one. These findings indicate that language distance has a significant impact in non-native language processing.

	This article appears in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition Vol. 14, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST .

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