Language Switching and Constituent Structure

Abstract

Four experiments employing two groups of bilinguals, Korean-English and Spanish-English, and two modalities of presentation, visual and auditory, were performed. Split-language sentences were presented to the bilingual subjects. The point in the sentence at which the language changed was varied. One group was asked to respond true or false to sentences in which the change in language occurred between constituents. Another group was asked to respond to sentences in which the language change occurred within one of the constituents. Longer response times resulted from the sentences in which the language change occurred within a constituent.