Insights into the time course of evidentiality processing in Turkish heritage speakers using a self-paced reading task

Introduction Studies with heritage language speakers (HLS) have often used offline measurements, investigating the post-interpretive effects which emerge after processing has been completed. Relatively few studies investigated using time-sensitive methods that allow collection of evidence regarding real-time rather than judgments. Using a self-paced-reading paradigm, we aimed to expand our understanding HLS by evidentiality-the linguistic marking information source, is grammatically expressed in Turkish, but not English. Method Participants were 54 bilingual Turkish and English: 24 (English onset: 0-5 yrs) 30 emigrant (ES) who grew up Turkey before emigrating Australia onset = 6-17 yrs). read sentences evidential-marked verb forms either matched or mismatched source context. Word-by-word reading times end-of-sentence acceptability judgment speed accuracy measured. Results The results showed although HLS' responses slower less accurate ES both judgments, they similarities online patterns. Both groups faster at mismatching compared matching sentences; however, this pattern emerged during time course first for indirect condition ES, only later direct evidential conditions. Only target region shown be acquired earlier childhood, did mastered later. In contrast, data while group responded indirect, effect was missing HLS. Nevertheless, there similar patterns across conditions: more evidential. Discussion Overall, use paradigm allowed insights into evidentiality above beyond their generally reference group. This study provides further differences observed vs. post interpretive measures HLS, reinforcing importance combining these methodologies competence performance.