Investigating effects of bilingualism on syntactic processing: Testing structural sensitivity theory

The present study compared Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals within three age groups to examine whether bilinguals have an advantage in syntactic processing. Participants were tested on morphosyntactic awareness, word-order awareness, artificial syntax learning, and general cognitive abilities. Bilinguals within the three age groups performed better than their monolingual peers in acquiring a novel syntax and in processing morphosyntax specific to English. The bilingual adults also outperformed their monolingual peers in processing language-specific word order. Overall, the findings give credence to the structural sensitivity theory in accounting for bilingual syntactic processing. A bilingual advantage in language processing appears not confined to knowledge of and strategies specific to the additional language but constitutes a more abstract representation of underlying linguistic structure. Bilingual effects are also qualified by cross-language differences in linguistic features, age, and the amount of bilingual experience. Copyright © 2022 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan.