Bilinguals are constantly juggling conflicting information from multiple languages, including syntactic constructions that can mismatch (e.g., the red car, la voiture rouge). To investigate this, we used eye tracking to examine whether French-English (n = 25) and English-French (n = 21) bilinguals activate non-target language syntax during L2 (Experiment 1) and L1 (Experiment 2) reading, and whether this differed from functionally monolingual English reading (Experiment 3, n = 26). Across experiments, people read English sentences containing syntactic constructions that were either partially shared across languages (adjective-noun constructions), or completely unshared (object-pronoun constructions). Further, these constructions were presented in intact form, or in a violated form that was French-consistent or French-inconsistent.
During L2 reading, French-English bilinguals read French-consistent adjective-noun word order violations relatively quickly, suggesting cross-language influence for these constructions. However, the same participants read French-consistent object-pronoun violations relatively slowly, suggesting no cross-language influence for those constructions. Similar effects were obtained for L1 reading, though cross-language influence occurred earlier than during L2 reading. Moreover, individual differences in L2 experience modulated both L2 and L1 reading. Thus, it appears that cross-language syntactic influence is modulated by several factors at play in single word reading. Surprisingly, English readers who were exposed to French in their lifetime but functionally monolingual exhibited a data pattern consistent with cross-language influence for adjective-noun constructions.
Taken together, the data for both adjective-noun and object-pronoun constructions suggest that syntactic cross-language activation during natural reading may be generally less robust than other forms of cross-language activation (i.e., single words). However, they also suggest that several important factors modulate whether and how such effects occur during comprehension, including whether people are reading in their L2 or L1, individual differences in L2 experience, and perhaps most importantly, the type of syntactic construction and how it differs across the two languages of interest.