The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Z. Pearson ◽  
Sylvia C. Fernandez ◽  
Vanessa Lewedeg ◽  
D.Kimbrough Oller
Keyword(s):  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Parent Report ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Bilingual Child ◽  
Communicative Development ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Lexical Learning ◽  
Language Input ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Source Of Information

ABSTRACTThe bilingual child is seen as a unique source of information about the relation between input and intake. The strength of the association between language exposure estimates and vocabulary learning was examined for 25 simultaneous bilingual infants (ages 8 to 30 months) with differing patterns of exposure to the languages being learned. Using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories, standardized parent report forms in English and Spanish, the percentage of all words that were known in each language was calculated and then plotted against the estimates of language input (also in percentages). A significant correlation was found, r(25)= .82, p < .001. The correlation was also strong when examined point-by-point, even for children whose language environments changed by more than 20%; between observations, although it was not reliable at lower levels of exposure to Spanish. Especially for children with less input in the minority language, the factors which appeared to affect the strength of the association between input and amount learned in a language are discussed.

Early lexical development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Jackson-Maldonado ◽  
Donna Thal ◽  
Virginia Marchman ◽  
Elizabeth Bates ◽  
Vera Gutierrez-Clellen
Keyword(s):  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Parent Report ◽  
Infants And Toddlers ◽  
Personal Interview ◽  
Waiting Room ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Communicative Development ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Spanish Language Acquisition

ABSTRACTThis paper describes the early lexical development of a group of 328 normal Spanish-speaking children aged 0;8 to 2;7. First the development and structure of a new parent report instrument,Inventario del Desarollo de Habilidades Communcativasis described. Then five studies carried out with the instrument are presented. In the first study vocabulary development of Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers is compared to that of English-speaking infants and toddlers. The English data were gathered using a comparable parental report, theMacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. In the second study the general characteristics of Spanish language acquisition, and the effects of various demographic factors on that process, are examined. Study 3 examines the differential effects of three methods of collecting the data (mail-in, personal interview, and clinic waiting room administration). Studies 4 and 5 document the reliability and validity of the instrument. Results show that the trajectories of development are very similar for Spanish-and English-speaking children in this age range, that children from varying social groups develop similarly, and that mail-in and personal interview administration techniques produce comparable results. Inventories administered in a medical clinic waiting room, on the otherhand, produced lower estimates of toddler vocabulary than the other two models.

Parental reports of communicative development at the age of 36 months: The Estonian CDI-III

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-83
Author(s):  
Tiia Tulviste ◽  
Astra Schults
Keyword(s):  
Day Care ◽  
Parent Report ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Communicative Skills ◽  
Communicative Development ◽  
Language Difficulties ◽  
Parental Reports ◽  
Language Measures ◽  
The Impact

Parental reports are a widely-used source of information about infants’ and toddlers’ communicative skills, but parent-report instruments valid for children older than 30 months are less known. This study explored individual variability in children’s communicative skills at the age of 3;0 via parental reports using the Estonian (E) CDI-III. The validity of ECDI-III was established through correlations with another parent-report instrument (ECDI-II) and a standardized examiner-administered language assessment (New Reynell Developmental Language Scales; NRDLS). A hundred Estonian-speaking children ( M age = 35.77 months, age range from 34 to 39 months; 20 of them with reported language difficulties) participated in the study. Relations between different communicative skills and the impact of such factors as the child’s gender, maternal and paternal education, reported language difficulties, the number of siblings, and day care attendance on variability in vocabulary size were also considered. The results showed that the ECDI-III components were moderately to strongly associated with each other, with the ECDI-II and NRDLS. Children with reported language difficulties scored lower on all language measures, except for orthographic awareness. Girls, children of more educated mothers, children with older siblings, and those who had attended day care for more months obtained higher vocabulary scores.

scholarly journals The role of majority and minority language input in the early development of a bilingual vocabulary

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
JELSKE DIJKSTRA ◽  
FOLKERT KUIKEN ◽  
RENÉ J. JORNA ◽  
EDWIN L. KLINKENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Language Minority ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Home Language ◽  
The North ◽  
Language Input

The current longitudinal study investigated the role of home language and outside home exposure in the development of Dutch and Frisian vocabulary by young bilinguals. Frisian is a minority language spoken in the north of the Netherlands. In three successive test rounds, 91 preschoolers were tested in receptive and productive vocabulary in both languages. Results showed a home language effect for Frisian receptive and productive vocabulary, and Dutch productive vocabulary, but not for Dutch receptive vocabulary. As for outside home exposure, an effect was found on the receptive vocabulary tests only. The results can be explained by the amount of L2-input that participants received. The Dutch input is higher for participants with Frisian as home language compared to the Frisian input for participants with Dutch as home language. The conclusions lead to further implications for language professionals working in language minority contexts.

Non-Structural Cracking Analysis of early Age of Reinforcement Concrete Wall

2012 ◽  
Vol 446-449 ◽  
pp. 251-259
Author(s):  
Ting Yao ◽  
Jian Ye Zhang ◽  
Jia Ping Liu ◽  
Qian Tian
Keyword(s):  
Structural Engineering ◽  
Maximum Temperature ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Mass Concrete ◽  
Concrete Wall ◽  
Crack Control ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Real Behavior ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Source Of Information

Structure monitoring has been increasingly valuable in recent years and has taken a leading role in the field of structural engineering. Date collected by early age monitoring represent a unique source of information for understanding the real behavior. In this paper, the temperatures evolution and concrete deformation evolution are obtained by real-time continuous monitoring of Reinforcement concrete(RC) wall. The result shows that the early age thermal cracking is one of the most important origin of several phenomena that imperil durability and shorten the lifespan of the structure. Though the wall is not considered as mass concrete, and has a big radiating surface, the maximum temperature can even reach up to 52°C due to heat generation of cement and the insulation of formwork, which can lead to shrinkage deformation when the temperature decreases. The measured experimental date can provide useful reference for early crack control and durability of RC concrete structure, and they can also be use to verify and improve the accuracy of the numerical results for RC wall, which is available in the future for basis to similar projects and research.

The acquisition of ser, estar (and be) by a Spanish–English bilingual child: The early stages

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARMEN SILVA-CORVALÁN ◽  
SIMONA MONTANARI
Keyword(s):  
Distributional Analysis ◽  
Bilingual Child ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Language Input

This article studies the acquisition of copulas by a Spanish–English bilingual between the ages of 1;6 and 3;0, examines the possibility of interlanguage influence, and considers the distributional frequencies of copular constructions in the speech of the child and in the language input from adults. The study is of interest because the bilingual child needs to acquire semantic and syntactic contrasts in Spanish that are not explicitly marked in English. This difference raises questions about the timing of acquisition of the Spanish copulas under pressure from a stronger language, in addition to the language-internal questions concerning the acquisition of the semantics and syntax of these verbs. The results show that copular constructions develop autonomously, but with a slight delay in the acquisition of estar interpreted as a possible type of influence from English. The distributional analysis reveals parallels between the child's and the adults' uses of copulas, thus supporting a process of acquisition guided by the nature of the interactions that the child enters into with the adults who surround him.

scholarly journals Cross-language synonyms in the lexicons of bilingual infants: one language or two?

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Zurer Pearson ◽  
Sylvia Fernández ◽  
D. K. Oller
Keyword(s):  
Parent Report ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Early Age ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
Bilingual Child ◽  
Empirical Claim ◽  
Language System ◽  
Strong Principle ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Rule Out

ABSTRACTThis study tests the widely-cited claim from Volterra & Taeschner (1978), which is reinforced by Clark's Principle Of Contrast (1987), that young simultaneous bilingual children reject cross-language synonyms in their earliest lexicons. The rejection of translation equivalents is taken by Volterra & Taeschner as support for the idea that the bilingual child possesses a single-language system which includes elements from both languages. We examine first the accuracy of the empirical claim and then its adequacy as support for the argument that bilingual children do not have independent lexical systems in each language. The vocabularies of 27 developing bilinguals were recorded at varying intervals between ages 0;8 and 2;6, using the MacArthur GDI, a standardized parent report form in English and Spanish. The two single-language vocabularies of each bilingual child were compared to determine how many pairs of translation equivalents (TEs) were reported for each child at different stages of development. TEs were observed for all children but one, with an average of 30% of all words coded in the two languages, both at early stages (in vocabularies of 2–12 words) and later (up to 500 words). Thus, Volterra & Taeschner's empirical claim was not upheld. Further, the number of TEs in the bilinguals' two lexicons was shown to be similar to the number of lexical items which co-occurred in the monolingual lexicons of two different children, as observed in 34 random pairings for between-child comparisons. It remains to be shown, therefore, that the bilinguals' lexicons are not composed of two independent systems at a very early age. Furthermore, the results appear to rule out the operation of a strong principle of contrast across languages in early bilingualism.

Carbonaceous chondrites: tracers of the prebiotic chemical evolution of the Solar System

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja C. Andersen ◽  
Henning Haack
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Early Earth ◽  
Carbonaceous Chondrites ◽  
Subsequent Evolution ◽  
Prebiotic Chemical ◽  
Unique Source ◽  
Sugar Derivatives ◽  
Source Of Information

The astrobiological relevance of carbonaceous chondrites is reviewed. It is argued that the primitive meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites provide a unique source of information about the materials and conditions in the Solar System during the earliest phases of its history, and its subsequent evolution. Presolar dust grains extracted from the carbonaceous chondrites provide direct information on the previous generations of stars that provided the materials present for planet formation. The organic material found in carbonaceous chondrites consist of amino acids, carboxylic acids and sugar derivatives. Part of the amino acids found show L-enantiomeric excesses, which indicates that homochirality on Earth could be a direct result of input from meteoritic material to the early Earth.

Concurrent Validity of the Language Development Survey: Associations With the MacArthur—Bates Communicative Development Inventories

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Rescorla ◽  
Nan Bernstein Ratner ◽  
Peter Jusczyk ◽  
Anne Marie Jusczyk
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Concurrent Validity ◽  
Screening Tool ◽  
Parent Report ◽  
Language Delay ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Rank Ordering ◽  
Communicative Development ◽  
Vocabulary Score

This study examined the concurrent validity of the Language Development Survey (LDS), a 310-word parent report screening tool for language delay in toddlers, by testing its associations with the MacArthur—Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Sentences (CDI:WS), a 680-word parent report instrument. Participants were 239 toddlers 23–25 months of age. The correlation between total vocabulary score on the 2 instruments was .95, and correlations across comparable semantic categories ranged from .84 to .94. The correlation between the LDS and the CDI:WS for mean length of phrases calculated on 3 examples of the child’s longest and best phrases was .90. Both instruments demonstrated that parents reported higher vocabulary and mean phrase length scores for girls. The study indicates that information obtained from the LDS about rank ordering of toddlers in terms of their reported vocabulary and mean length of phrases is equivalent to that obtained from the longer CDI:WS.

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