The Impact of Syntax on Sentence Comprehension in Bilinguals: A Comparative Study of English and Dhatki Language

Abstract

This study investigates the role of syntax in sentence comprehension among English-Dhatki bilingual speakers and the mental processes involved when comprehending sentences in two languages with contrasting syntactic structures. English employs the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure, while Dhatki follows the Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) structure. The study is concerned with how bilingual speakers comprehend syntactically complex sentences and whether syntactic transfer from one language to the other plays any role. Data were gathered from 40 bilinguals participant through a sentence judgment task, measuring comprehension accuracy and reaction time. Bilinguals showed faster comprehension when the sentence was less complex structurally but also had more difficulties and took more time to comprehend when syntactically more complex, especially with Dhatki. The results provided insights into cognitive processing in bilingualism and the effects of syntactic transfer, with implications for bilingual education and cognitive linguistics [Kroll &Bialystok, 2013;Odlin, 1989],