Overlapping and non-overlapping agreement features processing
When bilinguals know two languages, those languages often share some features but differ in others. So, how do those features influence and interact with each other when bilinguals use one language? This question is derived from the fact that when bilinguals use one language, the other one is active. It is not turned off completely in the speaker’s mind. Halimah seeks to answer this question: how context and proficiency influence the interactions between shared and unshared features between bilinguals’ languages. In other words, how do bilinguals use the earlier acquired language’s features that are similar to those in their later learned language, and how do they use the different ones?
English and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) share number agreement features, such as “This is a good worker” versus “These are good workers,” but they differ in gender. In MSA, the words this and worker have two features that indicate gender: masculine and feminine. However, in English, you can’t tell whether the worker refers to a female or a male. Interestingly, this also happens when Arabic speakers use MSA and their own dialect, because those varieties of language are acquired in different stages. Arabic speakers usually speak their dialect first, and then later they learned MSA.