Search

Previous studies have shown that foreign languages can change people's responses to moral dilemmas, making them more likely to choose harm (e.g., to kill one individual in order to save a few lives). Regional languages have also been shown to make sacrificial choices more likely. Regional languages are typically acquired early and used routinely among family and acquaintances, thus differing from foreign languages that are typically acquired later and used rather sporadically. Using a process dissociation procedure, we show in the present study that regional and foreign languages weaken the contribution of the deontological view in similar ways. Furthermore, the effects of both languages were modulated by proficiency, so that less proficient bilinguals showed a stronger decrease of the deontological tendency. These similarities suggest that the effects induced by both languages stem from what these languages have in common. Both languages are not experienced in contexts critical in forging moral views (e.g., public institutions, media, schools). We propose that the effects of foreign and regional languages stem from the lack of experience in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined moral judgments in three types of language: a native national language (Italian), a non-native foreign language (English), and a native regional language (Venetian, oral and colloquial). We used the Moral Foundation Questionnaire to investigate cross-linguistic differences in multiple aspects of morality. Higher scores in the Harm, Purity and Fairness dimensions were obtained in the foreign and the regional language with respect to the national language. In addition, higher scores in the Ingroup dimension were obtained in the foreign language with respect to the native language. The effects of language on morality can thus be quite pervasive, involving a variety of aspects of morality. The differences we observed across these languages are explained in terms of their sociolinguistics – specifically, the greater use of national languages with moral values and beliefs. It is proposed that language effects arise because the language that is used activates information associated with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work has demonstrated that the distribution of morphophonological patterns in the lexicon influences how unimpaired speakers inflect novel nonwords (Albright & Hayes [2003]. Rules vs. Analogy in English past tenses: A computational/experimental study. Cognition, 90(2), 119–161). Here, we investigated whether morphophonological patterns impact the language production of a group of individuals with acquired language impairment (n = 16). Using a past-tense production task, we found that both accuracy and error patterns were impacted by the distribution of morphophonological patterns. Participants were more accurate producing regular verbs when more phonologically similar verbs also take the regularised past tense form. Additionally, regularisation errors for irregular verbs (e.g. runned) occurred more frequently when the regularised form occurred more in phonologically similar verbs. These effects occurred across and within allomorphic subgroups of the regular past tense (i.e. stem+/t/, stem+/d/, stem+/əd/). Taken together, these results indicate that speakers are sensitive to the distribution of morphophonological patterns in the language at a high degree of granularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]