This study tested whether native Chinese (L1) readers whose second language (L2) was English could activate L2 translations of L1 words during L1 sentence reading. Chinese–English bilinguals read Chinese sentences silently, each containing a target word whose parafoveal preview was manipulated. To test cross-language semantic activation, each target word was paired with an identical, an unrelated and a translation-related preview that shared an L2 translation (e.g., 政黨, party as a political group) with the target word (e.g., 派對, party as a social gathering). Compared to the unrelated previews, the translation-related previews induced shorter target-word viewing times, despite no phonological/orthographic overlap. Furthermore, the highly proficient L2 readers showed earlier priming effects than did the average readers. Our results suggest that bilinguals activate lexical representations in both languages automatically and non-selectively, even when the task requires activation of one language only, and that the L2 lexical activation is modulated by L2 proficiency.

Previous research has shown that motor information influences visual and semantic tasks. However, not much is known about the specific influence of structural, action-relevant information on language processing. In the current study, participants were instructed to observe a prime graspable object (e.g., a frying pan) that could be presented with the action-relevant component (that is its handle) oriented either toward the left or toward the right. Subsequently, they performed a property verification task on a following target word, which could describe an action-relevant (e.g., handle) or action-irrelevant (e.g., ceramic) characteristic of the just-encountered object. They were required to make a keypress response with either a key on the same side as the depicted action-relevant component of the prime object (that is compatible key) or on the opposite side (that is incompatible key). Results show that property verification judgements for action-relevant words were faster in the spatially compatible condition than in the spatially incompatible condition, whereas judgements for action-irrelevant target words were not affected by spatial compatibility. These findings suggest that spatialized object properties are not mandatorily linked to manual response biases. Rather, this link seems to be modulated by trial-by-trial changes in conceptual focus.

Language-switching sometimes causes delayed responses, especially when switching from the later-acquired languages (here, L2) to the dominant native language (L1). It is well-established that language proficiency plays a role in production, but what about language context (i.e., the ratio of L1 and L2)? We investigated language context within two language production processes: “top-down” (naming pictures) and “bottom-up” (reading words aloud). We suggest that switch cost asymmetry was not only affected by language context, but also by production modality. In picture naming, the degree of inhibition relies largely on the activation level of the predominant language in the language context, whereby affects the asymmetry. However, the asymmetry disappears when language processing only requires reading aloud words with orthographically unique and constrained to one language. We provide evidence with dynamics of inhibition in different language contexts, suggesting that future study should continue to explore the flexibility of production processes in bilingual speakers.

undate is an ambitious, in-progress effort to develop a pragmatic Python package for computation and analysis of temporal information in humanistic and cultural data, with a particular emphasis on uncertain, incomplete, and imprecise dates and with support for multiple calendars. The development of undate is grounded in domain-specific work on digital and computational humanities projects from multiple institutions, including Shakespeare and Company Project, Princeton Geniza Project, and Islamic Scientific Manuscript Initiative. With increasing support for different formats and calendars, Undate aims to bridge technical gaps across different communities and methodologies. In this article, we describe the undate software package and the functionality of the core Undate and UndateInterval classes to work with dates and date intervals. We discuss why this software exists, how it expands on and generalizes prior work, how it compares to other approaches and tools, and its current limitations. We describe the development methodology used to create the software, our plans for active and continuing development, and the potential undate has to impact computational humanities research.

Translation is key to the political economy of neorural revival in contemporary Italy. Drawing on fieldwork with neorural farmers, I show how translations across semiotic domains and displays of linguistic and pragmatic untranslatability simultaneously produce capitalist value and temporary disruptions of the subsumption of life under capital. To understand this apparent paradox, I analyze the complex relationship between contemporary neorural revivalists and mid-twentieth-century neodialect poets. Driven by a reaction against the post-war encompassment of regional linguistic varieties within a national standard, the metapragmatics of untranslatability developed by the neodialect literary movement has indirectly provided contemporary neoruralists with semiotic resources to conjure profitable forms of agrolinguistic incommensurability. However, unlike the poets’ nostalgic and anticapitalist sabotage of the collusion between centripetal linguistic standardization and intensive agribusiness scalability, the farmers’ interactional disruptions of pragmatic regimentation and seamless intertranslatability are both a project of capitalist valorization and an exit strategy from unfulfilling wage-labor arrangements.

Analyzing the relationship between argument structure construction (ASC) use and language learning has been an important area of investigation in second language (L2) studies from a usage-based constructionist approach. Previous studies have shown that advanced L2 learners’ language use demonstrates greater ASC diversity, less frequent ASC-verb combinations, and stronger ASC-verb associations. However, these investigations have been limited by methodological challenges in identifying ASCs and have predominantly focused on the written texts. To address these limitations, we employ a fine-tuned model to automatically extract ASCs from target and reference corpora, considering their semantic aspects. We then calculate ASC-based indices and, both alone and in combination with other lexicogrammatical indices, use them to predict L2 oral proficiency scores assigned by human judges. Our findings show that ASC-based indices alone explain 44% of the variance in scores. When combined with other indices, they provide complementary insights that enhance multivariate modeling of L2 oral proficiency.

The questions of whether first language (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners can both predict what follows based on given linguistic cues and what factors may influence this predictive processing are still underexplored. Prior research has focused on the success or failure of predictions in real-time processing, paying relatively less attention to the speed of prediction. This study addresses these gaps by investigating the role of word co-occurrence frequency and proficiency in L1 and L2 predictive processing, using the Korean classifier system. In a webcam-based visual-world eye-tracking experiment, both L1-Korean speakers and L2-Korean learners showed sound predictive processing, with the frequency of co-occurrence between classifiers and nouns playing a crucial role. Higher co-occurrence frequency expedited predictive processing for L1-Korean speakers and boosted the ability to make online predictions for L2-Korean learners. The study also revealed a proficiency effect, where more advanced L2-Korean learners made predictions regardless of co-occurrence frequency, unlike their less advanced counterparts. Our findings suggest that predictive mechanisms in L1 and L2 operate in a qualitatively similar way. In addition, the use of webcam eye-tracking is expected to create a more inclusive and equitable research environment for (applied) psycholinguistics.

It has been established that bilinguals activate both languages even when only one language is being used. However, little is known about how the two languages are co-activated during simultaneous interpreting (SI), a demanding task involving intensive code-switching. This study investigated (1) the effect of task on cross-language co-activation and (2) the time course of co-activations triggered by form and meaning. Thirty-one professional interpreters were recruited to complete a cross-language task (English-to-Chinese SI) and a within-language task (English-to-English shadowing) with their eye movements tracked. Participants heard English passages which contained critical spoken words, each paired with a visual display of four Chinese words. One of the words was a competitor that resembled the translation equivalent of the spoken word in either form or meaning, and the other three were unrelated distractors. We found that participants directed more visual attention to both types of competitors at an early stage in shadowing, while the word-form competitor effect occurred during SI preceded that of the semantic competitor. Our findings support the parallel account of SI processing, with implications provided for the relationship between cross-language interactions and the time lag between input and output during interpreting.

This study aimed to explore the effect of various feedback types on word learning in preschool children, with consideration of the word’s morpho-phonological structure. Sixty-three five-year-old children participated in three sessions of learning artificial words derived from pseudo-roots in Hebrew, with half constructed using established morpho-phonological patterns. Participants received either no feedback, verification feedback, corrective feedback, or verification plus corrective feedback. The training encompassed word identification and production. Accuracy and reaction time (RT) were measured. The results indicated that corrective feedback produced the highest accuracy and fastest RTs. Providing verification feedback led to improved performance compared to no feedback. While words with existing morpho-phonological patterns were learned more efficiently, the positive impact of corrective feedback remained consistent across both word types. These findings offer practical implications for optimizing word learning conditions, highlighting the importance of corrective feedback in word learning, and more broadly, aligning the feedback type to the learning task.

Exposure to multiple languages may support the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) in neurotypical (NT) and autistic children. However, previous research mainly applied group comparisons between monolingual and bilingual children, and the underlying mechanism of the observed difference remains unclear. The present study, therefore, sheds light on the effect of bilingualism on ToM in both NT and autistic children by measuring language experiences with a continuous operationalization. We measure ToM with a behavioral, linguistically simple tablet-based task, allowing inclusive assessment in autistic children. Analyses revealed no difference between monolingual and bilingual NT and autistic children. However, more balanced exposure to different languages within contexts positively predicted first-order false belief understanding in NT children but not autistic children. Mediation analysis showed that the impact in NT children was a direct effect and not mediated via other cognitive skills.