Exploring Bilingual Adaptation to Structural Innovations: Evidence from Canadian French
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Bilinguals have been shown to adapt to syntactic innovations (i.e., structures that deviate from the standard grammar) either by producing such structures more or by processing them faster after repeated exposure. However, research on whether they adapt by increasing their acceptability ratings for innovations is limited. We consider this to be a crucial gap in the literature, since it could provide insights into how speakers adapt their perception for innovations that they might otherwise not adapt to in their production and/or processing. On this basis, the present study investigates overall acceptability and trial-by-trial acceptability (adaptation) for different types of innovations in Canadian French with grammatical structural equivalents in English. Structure type and individual differences in language experience (dominance, proficiency, exposure, etc.) are considered as factors that influence these processes, as previous research has shown that they play a role in the acceptability of innovations in bilinguals. For this purpose, we employed a timed acceptability judgment task (TAJT), where adult bilingual speakers of French and English in Canada were asked to rate innovative sentences in French and their standard (grammatical) counterparts as fast and spontaneously as possible. Both acceptability ratings (offline measure) and response times (RTs) (online measure) across trials were measured to test whether speakers show adaptation on both levels. Results revealed that innovations were rated lower and for most structure types slower than their standard counterparts, with the different types of innovations showing differences. Crucially, adaptation on a group level was reflected only in response times and not in acceptability ratings. On an individual level, though, some participants adapted their ratings, but not consistently across all innovation types. Moreover, ratings and RTs were influenced by individual language experience, with participants with a higher contact with French (higher French Score) being faster and less accepting of innovative sentences compared to participants with a lower contact with French.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".