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HEIndividual fellowship2023–2025

TomRis · Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Sentence processing and comprehension by child heritage bilinguals

Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2023-09-01 → 2025-10-31
EU contribution
€226,751
Participants
1
Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

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Results in brief

Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Sentence processing and comprehension by child heritage bilinguals

Understanding how children learn multiple languages is essential for creating fair and effective education systems in Europe. European societies are increasingly multilingual, with a growing number of children acquiring more than one language from an early age. Many children use their native language at home, receive education in a different societal language, and acquire additional languages in school. Despite this diversity, educational systems largely rely on monolingual norms when assessing language development and academic performance. These conditions can lead to misunderstandings about multilingual learners’ abilities and result in unequal educational opportunities. The TomRis project addresses this challenge by investigating how multilingual children process and use an additional language, focusing on children exposed to a home language. TomRis examined how different linguistic systems influence each other during comprehension and production. The project aimed to generate evidence that reflects the real experiences of multilingual learners. Situated at the intersection of linguistics, psychology, and education, TomRis contributes to the social sciences and humanities by offering insights into online language processing, learning, and variation in multilingual contexts. These insights are directly relevant to European and national priorities, which emphasise inclusion, equal access to education, and recognition of linguistic diversity. Empirically grounded knowledge from TomRis supports equitable assessment practices and educational approaches that reflect the realities of multilingual classrooms. The project contributes to long-term goals in EU and Norwegian language and education policy, including social cohesion, educational equity, and informed decision-making.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The project TomRis (Cross-linguistic influence in Third language acquisitiOn: Sentence processing and coMprehension by child heRItage bilingualS) advances our knowledge about the functioning of a child's multilingual brain and uncovers how a multilingual heritage speaker processes and comprehends a third language in real-time. TomRis is the first study to investigate how typological primacy and structural proximity between the involved languages affect cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the processing and comprehension of a third language during reading sentences. The question is whether the (mis)matched properties in morpho-syntactic structures in the prior languages, which are typologically close (Norwegian/ Dutch) to or distant (Turkish) from English, facilitate the processing of L3 English sentences or not. TomRis offers a groundbreaking approach to capturing the traces of L1 and L2 in processing L3 English by focusing on the same heritage language (Turkish) in two different linguistic contexts (Norway/ the Netherlands). Also, it keeps the task constant in obtaining offline (grammaticality judgement) and online (eye-tracking) processing data during reading. A further novelty in TomRis is the focus on two distinct development stages of language learning to compare the degree and source of CLI in L3 English processing and comprehension at different stages of acquisition. Also, I will match the participants not only based on their proficiency in the L3 (thus isolating potential effects of CLI from previously acquired languages) but also based on their language proficiency in the background languages. Gaining a deep understanding of the factors that facilitate or interfere with CLI in multilingual children is a good investment for the further development of the field. The results will be crucial for all who have to deal with the challenges of multilingual children's language learning such as language educators, policymakers, language therapists, and parents.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • UNIVERSITETET I TROMSOE - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET · TromsoCoordinatorNorway

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union