Second Language Acquisition Colloquium Talk – Huynh

Grammatical processing of L1 Vietnamese and L2 English in heritage language and L1-dominant speakers

Juliet Huynh, University of Texas, Arlington

This talk discusses whether there are any differences between the grammatical
processing of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) based on the relative
dominance between these two languages. Two groups of language speakers are
compared — (1) heritage language speakers, who acquired their heritage language as an
L1 but later become dominant in their L2; and (2) L1-dominant speakers, who acquired
their L2 at a later age. Both groups had Vietnamese as their L1 and English as their L2.
In order to investigate the grammatical processing of these two groups, these two
speaker groups were examined to see whether they decomposed L1 Vietnamese and L2
English compounds into their individual constituents and whether the meanings of the
constituents influenced the decomposition of the compound. Findings suggest that both
speaker groups seem to decompose compounds into their individual constituents
regardless of the relationship in meaning of the overall compound and individual
constituents.