Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Advisor

John Foreman

Second Advisor

Ramses Ortin

Third Advisor

Jose Hernandez

Abstract

Languages vary in how they signal the presence of an embedded clause. Both English and Spanish use what are termed complementizers—that in English and que in Spanish—but in English, the complementizer is often optional while in Spanish, it is generally required. This thesis tested if the presence of que in a Spanish sentence could induce a bilingual speaker to insert a previously omitted that into an English sentence using a syntactic priming task. The results of these trials showed that this was the case, finding a statistically significant priming effect, supporting the idea that syntax is cognitively shared across languages in the bilingual mind (Hartsuiker, 2016).

Additionally, participants were given a bilingual language survey to determine if priming may be influenced by their level of self-reported language dominance, proficiency, usage or age of acquisition in either English or Spanish. The only factor determined to play a role was age of acquisition. The later one learned English, the weaker the effect of que priming. The priming effect still occurred, but the divide between the within language and cross linguistic priming grew. This is likely due to inhibition in a forced switching environment, where the native language is suppressed to more easily complete the task.

Comments

Copyright 2026 Aziz Abraham Quenun. All Rights Reserved. https://proquest.com/docview/3371108263

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