Utterance structure in context: language and cognition during acquisition in a cross-linguistic perspective – Langacross_2

1) To study cross-linguistic differences in how information is organized at the sentence and discourse levels, as measured by controlled production tasks ;
2) To study underlying cognitive processes, as measured by various complementary methodologies borrowed from experimental psycholinguistics in order to access speakers’ internal representations on-line (eye-tracking, reaction times, categorization, memory), to be related to controlled productions.

The project comprises a number of sub-projects involving contrasted languages and different types of speakers (children and adults, monolingual and bilingual). The overall results show so far: 1) a massive effect of language-specific typological properties on all groups of speakers in production tasks; 2) the role of cognitive factors in children, irrespective of the language; 3) a partial effect of language-specific factors on non-verbal cognitive process in children, native adults, and adult learners.

A detailed synthesis of the results obtained across sub-projects, as well as further research presently in progress, will allow generalizations of the first conclusions across languages and types of speakers. New data collection should also clarify the nature of the relationship between language and cognition in light of the variable degree of language effects obtained through various tasks in different sub-projects (production, non-verbal tasks, on line measures).

1) International multipartner productions French-German (FG) and other (OTH):
Journals: 3 (FG) + 11 (OTH)
Volumes and chapters: (FG) + 10 (OTH)
Conferences: 13 (FG) + 16 (OTH)

2) International French (F) and German (G) productions:
Journals: 12 (7F + 5G)
Volumes and chapters: 11 (6F + 5G)
Conferences: 43 (36F +7G)

The overarching aim of LANGACROSS_2 is to study cognitive and linguistic determinants of language acquisition in a cross-linguistic perspective that takes into account discourse factors in language use. The project is framed within a large comparative approach that combines many languages (and language families) and different types of speakers (children and adults) focusing on effects of diversity. LANGACROSS_2 (2011-2013) extends the preceding LANGACROSS project (2008-2010) in two ways: it pursues some of the research already begun over the last three years, as well as investigate new questions that have emerged from it particularly around the question of the relation between language and cognition.

The project investigates two research domains: I-Space/Time, II- Contrastive and additive relations in discourse. It considers two main research themes: 1) typological constraints across languages and uncovering their cognitive implications for native speakers; 2) processes of conceptualization and reconceptualization during L1/L2 acquisition and in bilingualism. In addition, it simultaneously addresses two specific research questions in each domain: 1) the study of cross-linguistic differences in speakers’ output, as measured in production tasks aiming at studying the impact of language-specific properties on how speakers organize information in discourse; 2) the study of the cognitive underpinnings underlying these different outputs, as measured by a variety of psycholinguistic tools aiming at providing access to speakers’ internal representations (e.g. eye movements, categorization, memory), mainly in relation to productions elicited in controlled situations. Finally, it examines these questions in two types of data bases for which some corpora are already available or in progress and others will be collected in new experimental situations and in new languages: 1) native speakers of different languages and 2) different types of learners, including children acquiring their first language, bilingual children acquiring two languages simultaneously, adults acquiring a second language, and balanced bilingual adults.