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Lost in translation, apparently: Bilingual language processing of evidentiality in a Turkish–English Translation and judgment task

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

Sümeyra Tosun Open the ORCID record for Sümeyra Tosun [Opens in a new window]  and
Luna Filipović
Sümeyra Tosun*
Affiliation:
Medgar Evers College, CUNY Brooklyn, NY, USA
Luna Filipović
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, UK
*
Author for correspondence: Sümeyra Tosun, Department of Psychology, Medgar Evers College, New York, NY. E-mail: stosun@mec.cuny.edu Tel: 470 418 5814.
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Abstract

We investigated how bilingual speakers process evidentiality information in a dual language activation setting (Green & Abutalebi, 2013) using a translation production and confidence judgment task. Due to interaction of multiple factors in bilingual processing a multifactor model CASP (Complex Adaptive System Principles) for Bilingualism (Filipović & Hawkins, 2019) was used as a theoretical frame. Evidentiality indicates the source of information about past events, i.e., whether they were witnessed firsthand or non-firsthand and it is marked obligatorily in the grammar of Turkish and optionally in English using verbs, adverbs or constructions. The results show that firsthand information is translated more correctly than the non-firsthand in both directions and that different bilingual populations all gravitate towards a shared pattern in both languages but in different ways due to the different proficiency (English vs. Turkish as the stronger (L1) language) and different acquisition histories (early heritage vs. migrant late bilingualism).

Keywords

CASP for Bilingualismevidentialityheritage bilingualsjudgmentsmigrant bilingualsTurkishtranslation
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 25 , Issue 5 , November 2022 , pp. 739 - 754
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

1

We thank three anonymous reviewers for the extensive comments and suggestions that helped us improve the paper significantly. We are also grateful to the editor for supportive and efficient handling of the review process. Any remaining errors are exclusively the authors’.

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