Sentence Processing in High Proficient Kannada--English Bilinguals: A Reaction Time Study

The present study aimed at exploring the semantic and syntactic processing differences between native and second languages in 20 early high proficient Kannada--English bilingual adults through accuracy and reaction time (RT) measurements. Subjects participated in a semantic judgement task (using 50 semantically correct and 50 semantically incorrect sentences) and a syntactic judgement task (using 50 syntactically correct and 50 syntactically incorrect sentences) in both Kannada and English. The stimuli were presented through DMDX software and the subjects were asked to respond by pressing keys in the DMDX software. The accuracy and RTs were measured and compared within and between languages. Results revealed that accuracy rate was better in L1 than in L2 for all three types of sentences, while the overall speed of processing was better in L2 than in L1 across three types of sentences. Results also revealed that participants processed semantic violations with greater accuracy and speed of processing compared to syntactic violations. These results support the good enough approach to language processing which assumes that the sentence processing takes place at shallow level. The results are discussed in relation to the factors such as age of second language acquisition, proficiency levels and exposure levels in bilinguals.