Discussion of Labotka et al. (2023)

Lab meeting presentation by Pablo Bernabeu

Slides at https://osf.io/fhq2g
Summary of the paper
and additional insights
throughout.
Comments and questions
welcome throughout.
References available
in the paper unless
provided herein.

Cross-linguistic similarities:
Types of congruence
• In form, in function, in neither or in both
• Facilitative or non-facilitative
Form but not function
(false friends/cognates)
Function but not form
Form and function
(cognates)
Norwegian greit ‘OK’,
dress ‘suit’
Norwegian maleri ‘painting’,
sannsynligvis ‘probably’
Norwegian vindu ‘window’,
rød ‘red’, hatt ‘hat’

Congruence in Creole genesis
• About creoles
• multilingual settings
• socially dominant language: superstrate
• speakers’ first languages: substrates

Congruence in Creole genesis
• About creoles
• multilingual settings
• socially dominant language: superstrate
• speakers’ first languages: substrates
• Historically assumed: congruent forms favoured
to be selected by the emerging Creole.

The complexity of congruence
Labotka et al. (2023): “Siegel argues that stei was selected to
participate in the formation of Hawaiian Creole due to congruence
between English ‘stay’ and Portuguese estar ‘to be/to stay’ expressing a
resultant state”.

Labotka et al. (2023): “Siegel argues that stei was selected to
participate in the formation of Hawaiian Creole due to congruence
between English ‘stay’ and Portuguese estar ‘to be/to stay’ expressing a
resultant state”.
PORTUGUESE ENGLISH
estar stay
no continuation continuation
longer duration than ‘be’

‘Stay’ → Portuguese
• 1. (remain) ficar
• 2. (as guest) hospedar-se
• 3. (spend some time) demorar-se
…
‘Stay’ is not one of the meanings of estar
Collins Dictionary
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-
portuguese/stay)

Estar → English
• 1. (lugar) to be
(em casa) to be in
• 2. (estado) to be
…
Estar is not one of the meanings of ‘stay’
Collins Dictionary
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/portuguese-
english/estar)

• Be wary of translations, and even more of reported translations.
Labotka et al. (2023): “Siegel argues that stei was selected to participate in the
formation of Hawaiian Creole due to congruence between English ‘stay’ and
Portuguese estar ‘to be/to stay’ expressing a resultant state”
The complexity of congruence:
Ste in Hawaiian Creole

Labotka et al. (2023): “Siegel argues that stei was selected to participate in the
formation of Hawaiian Creole due to congruence between English ‘stay’ and
Portuguese estar ‘to be/to stay’ expressing a resultant state”
Sense of ‘stay’ not in current standard Portuguese estar,
nor in Siegel (2008a), who refers to estar as
“the Portuguese verb estar ‘to be’” (p. 70).

Labotka et al. (2023): “Siegel argues that stei was selected to participate in the formation of
Hawaiian Creole due to congruence between English ‘stay’ and Portuguese estar ‘to be/to stay’
expressing a resultant state”
Sense of ‘stay’ not in current standard Portuguese estar,
nor in Siegel (2008a), who refers to estar as
“the Portuguese verb estar ‘to be’” (p. 70).
Siegel (2008a, p. 70): “the range of functions of ste in HC [Hawaiian Creole] seems
to closely match those of estar”.
Siegel (2008a) then documents the following functions of ste: (1) copula in locative
sentences, (2) copula with adjectives denoting non-permanent or non-intrinsic
characteristics, and (3) preverbal progressive marker, none matching with English
‘stay’.

PORTUGUESE ENGLISH
estar stay
no continuation continuation
longer duration than ‘be’
HAWAIIAN CREOLE
ste
Siegel (2008a)

• Partial, ambiguous congruence exists and is compatible with the
selection of a form. This degree of congruence is only partially
facilitative.
PT estar + EN ‘stay’ → ste
[As documented in Siegel (2008a), ste is the
infinitive form, and the conjugated forms
alternate between stei and stay.]

facilitative.
PT estar + EN ‘stay’ ≠ ste

facilitative.
PT estar + EN ‘stay’ ≠ ste
• Relevant to the classification of congruence in terms of facilitation

Congruence
• Hanson and Carlson (2014): acquisition of object clitics in preverbal
position by English and Romanian L2 learners of Spanish.

Congruence
• Object clitics can take preverbal position in Spanish and Romanian
but not in English.

O caută băiatul
her seeks the boy

O caută băiatul
her seeks the boy
The boy seeks / is seeking her

O caută băiatul
her seeks the boy
The boy seeks / is seeking her
OR
It’s the boy that seeks / is seeking her

Pronominal clitic in preverbal position

Different sentence,
different source language,
same bias

Congruence
• Object clitics can take preverbal position in Spanish and Romanian
but not in English.
• Romanian speakers acquired the property in Spanish better than
English speakers.

Transfer
• In L2 acquisition: if any transfer takes place, it is from L1.
• In L3/Ln: if any transfer takes place, it can be from L1,
from L2 or from both.

Transfer in L3 acquisition
L2 Status Factor Model (Bardel & Falk, 2012): L2 source by default
• Declarative memory for L2 and subsequent languages
L2
Sources

Transfer in L3 acquisition
L2 Status Factor Model (Bardel & Falk, 2012): L2 source by default
• Declarative memory for L2 and subsequent languages
Cumulative Enhancement Model (Berkes & Flynn, 2012)
• Property-by-property and only facilitative
Linguistic Proximity Model (Westergaard et al., 2017)
• Property-by-property, with facilitative and non-facilitative cases
Typological Primacy Model (Rothman, 2013)
• Holistic (i.e., full) transfer following learner’s realisation of structural proximity
L2
L1
or
L2
Sources

• Confounds in natural language settings: frequency, language type,
speakers’ proficiency levels, semantic transparency, perceptual
saliency, etc.

• Confounds in natural language settings: frequency, language type,
speakers’ proficiency levels, semantic transparency, perceptual
saliency, etc.
• Workaround: artificial languages
• Important similarities in linguistic processing (Fehér et al., 2016)
• Learners privilege regularities in the input (Hudson et al., 2005)
• It may take multiple training sessions for standard syntactic responses to
appear in ERPs (González Alonso et al., 2020; Pereira Soares et al., 2022)

Varying form and function
Baptista et al. (2016)
• Congruent condition: similar form and function
• Reversed condition: similar form but different function
• Novel condition: different form and function

Baptista et al. (2016)
• Congruent condition: similar form and function
• Reversed condition: similar form but different function
• Novel condition: different form and function
• Ease of acquisition: congruent > novel > reversed
congruent > reversed > novel
• Recall case study of Portuguese estar + English ‘stay’
→ Hawaiian Creole ste with meaning of estar

1. Acquisition of lexical forms is costly.
2. Mapping new functions onto existing lexical forms is possible.

Labotka et al. (2023)
• Hypothesis: speakers will acquire more easily the morphemes that
are similar—in form and meaning—across the languages in contact.

• Hypothesis: speakers will acquire more easily the morphemes that
are similar—in form and meaning—across the languages in contact.
Group
(N = 40)
(N = 40)
(N = 41)
(N = 42)

predicted (p. 5)
1. “that morphemes that were congruent between English and one or two
of the artificial languages would be more easily acquired than
incongruent morphemes. This would apply to the E-Z-F congruent
condition and the E-Z congruent condition.”

predicted (p. 5)
1. “that morphemes that were congruent between English and one or two
of the artificial languages would be more easily acquired than
incongruent morphemes. This would apply to the E-Z-F congruent
condition and the E-Z congruent condition.”
2. “that the morpheme congruent between the two artificial languages (in
the Z-F congruent condition) would be acquired more easily than in the
incongruent condition, where the forms between English, Zamperese,
and Flugerdu were all incongruent.”

• Participants: 163 monolingual L1 English speakers
• Materials
• Rated similarity between English morphemes and those of artificial languages
• Flugerdu and Zamperese were similar in most respects
• Four nouns, three verbs, plural morpheme, negation morpheme
• Procedure
• Training in one language after the other, in counterbalanced order
• Input was paced (see below). Actions were animated.
• Five test tasks (see below)

Training blocks
1. All the sentences with no grammatical morphemes
2. All the sentences with plural morpheme
3. All the sentences with negation morpheme
4. All the sentences with both morphemes

[ Bird throw hat ] [ Bird throw hat ]

Five tasks
1. Vocabulary recognition
2. Sentence completion
3. Grammaticality judgement
4. Sentence translation
1. Negation morpheme
2. Placement of negation morpheme in the sentence

Results 1/2 (quoted from p. 8)
[…] participants in the E-Z-F congruent condition outperformed the
incongruent condition in vocabulary recognition, negation completion,
and grammaticality.

and grammaticality. Participants in the E-Z-F congruent condition
likewise outperformed the E-Z congruent condition in vocabulary
recognition and grammaticality,

and grammaticality. Participants in the E-Z-F congruent condition
likewise outperformed the E-Z congruent condition in vocabulary
recognition and grammaticality, and outperformed the Z-F congruent
condition in plural completion (in Flugerdu) and grammaticality.

In Zamperese, participants in the E-Z congruent condition outperformed
the Z-F congruent condition in negation completion and negation
translation form production.

In Zamperese, participants in the E-Z congruent condition outperformed
the Z-F congruent condition in negation completion and negation
translation form production. Participants in the Z-F congruent condition
did not differ from the participants in the incongruent condition in any
analysis.

Observations on the analysis
Factors increasing likelihood of false positives:
1. No information about random slopes (Brauer & Curtin, 2018)

2. Anti-conservative calculation of p values (Luke, 2017)

2. Anti-conservative calculation of p values (Luke, 2017)
3. Twenty significance tests on effects of negation congruence,
i.e., 2 mini-languages x 2 between-group comparisons x
5 tasks. Thus, 1 - (1 - .05)20 x 100 = 64% family-wise error rate.
Adjustment of p values to be considered (see Armstrong, 2014).

Discussion
1. Prediction “that morphemes that were congruent between
English and one or two of the artificial languages would be
more easily acquired than incongruent morphemes. This
would apply to the E-Z-F congruent condition and the E-Z
congruent condition.”

Discussion
1. Prediction “that morphemes that were congruent between
English and one or two of the artificial languages would be
more easily acquired than incongruent morphemes. This
would apply to the E-Z-F congruent condition and the E-Z
congruent condition.”
2. Prediction “that the morpheme congruent between the two
artificial languages (in the Z-F congruent condition) would be
acquired more easily than in the incongruent condition,
where the forms between English, Zamperese, and Flugerdu
were all incongruent.”

Discussion
• English-Zamperese congruence group, tested on Zamperese through
sentence completion task: greater accuracy than Zamperese-Flugerdu
congruence group.

Discussion
congruence group.
• Congruence advantage may be due to cognitive economy, and
reveals consistency with natural language processing.

Discussion
congruence group.
• Lack of congruence advantage between artificial languages
• primacy of L1? / insufficient training? (see González Alonso et al., 2020;
Pereira Soares et al., 2022)

Discussion
congruence group.
• Lack of congruence advantage between artificial languages
• primacy of L1? / insufficient training? (see González Alonso et al., 2020;
Pereira Soares et al., 2022)
• Spillover effects in vocabulary recognition task & grammaticality task
• Despite same stimuli across groups, E-Z-F presented an advantage
• Form-function overlap → widespread effect on learning (reinforcement)

References not present in the paper
Armstrong, R. A. (2014). When to use the Bonferroni correction. Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics, 34(5), 502-508.
https://doi.org/10.1111/opo.12131
Brauer, M., & Curtin, J. J. (2018). Linear mixed-effects models and the analysis of nonindependent data: A unified
framework to analyze categorical and continuous independent variables that vary within-subjects and/or
within-items. Psychological Methods, 23(3), 389–411. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000159
Luke, S. G. (2017). Evaluating significance in linear mixed-effects models in R. Behavior Research Methods, 49(4),
1494–1502. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0809-y
Westergaard, M., Mitrofanova, N., Mykhaylyk, R., & Rodina, Y. (2017). Crosslinguistic influence in the acquisition of a
third language: The Linguistic Proximity Model. International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(6), 666-682.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006916648859

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