Code-switching costs from Chinese-English relative clauses processing

Abstract

Read online

IntroductionThe source of costs is a primary concern in code-switching, yet a consensus has not yet been reached. This study investigates whether code-switching during syntactic processing in Chinese-English dual languages results in a cost.MethodsWe use Chinese and English relative clauses in either object (Experiment 1) or subject (Experiment 2, which has a more complex structure) positions to test the costs in syntactic processing. Forty-seven Chinese-English bilinguals and 17 English-Chinese bilinguals participated in acceptability judgment tests and self-paced reading experiments.ResultsThe statistical findings indicate that syntactic processing is a source of the costs incurred in code-switching, as evidenced by the code-switching costs observed in the head movement during relative clause comprehension.DiscussionThe outcomes are consistent with the implications of the 4-Morpheme Model and the Matrix Language Framework. Additionally, the experiment shows that the processing of relative clauses depends on the underlying structures, which is consistent with the Dependency Locality Theory.

Keywords

• code-switching cost
• Chinese-English bilingual
• relative clause
• syntactic processing
• bilingualism