Version 22-03-8

Vortrag: Running a conceptual replication of a Visual Word eye-trackig study online and offline

Probing effects in Özge et al. (2019, 2021) in German-Turkish heritage speakers

Özge et al. (2019) and Özge et al. (2021) found consistent effects that monolingual child and adult speakers of Turkish and German can use case-marking predictively to determine the thematic roles (agent vs theme) of given NPs (subject vs object) in sentences with non-canonical word orders. It is unclear whether these effects replicate with bilingual heritage speakers. We assume that most heritage speakers are fully competent bilingual speakers who have fully acquired core grammatical features like case in both their languages. Therefore, we derive the following predictions:
1. Based on Özge et al. (2019, 2021), we predict that our monolingual Turkish-speaking participants will use case-marking predictively to determine thematic roles in non-canonical sentences using the VWP.
2. Heritage speakers of Turkish will be also able to use case-marking predictively to determine thematic roles in incremental sentence-processing of SOV and OSV sentences.
3. Based on Özge (2021), heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany will be able to use case-marking predictively in their majority German to determine thematic roles in incremental sentence-processing of SOV and OSV sentences.
4. Consequently, speaker group (monolingual vs. heritage) and language (German vs. Turkish) will not be significant predictors for speakers' capability to use case-marking to predict thematic roles.
We further test whether the effects found in Özge et al. (2019) and Özge et al. (2021) can be replicated using online eye-tracking vs. in-lab eye-tracking.
5. With recent advances in webcam-based eye-tracking in mind, we expect a replication across elicitation modes although a less nuanced effect will show for online eye-tracking.
In this talk, we will focus on the conceptual and methodological backgrounds of conducting this replication study. In line of the aims of this conference, we will discuss the design, and acquisition of ethics approval, and outline the tools and software that we are using. Lastly, we will highlight the relevance of running replication studies to tackle the ongoing replication crisis in our field (Sönning & Werner, 2021). Several conclusions will follow from this talk that might help future work with similar aims.

References

Özge, D., Kornfilt, J., Maquate, K., Küntay, A. C., & Snedeker, J. (2022). German-speaking children use sentence-initial case marking for predictive language processing at age four. Cognition, 221, 104988. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104988

Özge, D., Küntay, A., & Snedeker, J. (2019). Why wait for the verb? Turkish speaking children use case markers for incremental language comprehension. Cognition, 183, 152–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.10.026

Sönning, L., & Werner, V. (2021). The replication crisis, scientific revolutions, and linguistics. Linguistics, 59(5), 1179–1206. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0045