Narrative competence of Italian–English bilingual children between 5 and 7 years

ABSTRACTThe study explored narrative production and comprehension in typically developing Italian–English sequential bilinguals. Thirty 5- to 6-year-olds and 32 6- to 7-year-olds were presented with story telling and retelling tasks, each followed by comprehension questions in Italian (their first language) and English (their second language). The macrostructure of narratives produced was analyzed, considering total amount of relevant information, story complexity, and mental state terms. Comprehension questions focused on implicit story information (i.e., characters’ mental states and goals). The results indicated that (a) older children outperformed younger ones on all measures; (b) an advantage of first language (Italian) over second language (English) emerged for younger children; and (c) comprehension and production were both more accurate in story retelling than in telling. Theoretical and methodological implications of these results are discussed.

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Narrative abilities in early successive bilingual Slovak–English children: A cross-language comparison

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716415000454 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 145-164 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

SVETLANA KAPALKOVÁ ◽

KAMILA POLIŠENSKÁ ◽

LENKA MARKOVÁ ◽

JAMES FENTON

Keyword(s):

Narrative Research ◽

First Language ◽

Nonword Repetition ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

Skill Transfer ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Narrative Skills ◽

English Bilingual ◽

Narrative Performance ◽

Cross Language

ABSTRACTThis study investigates macrostructure skill transfer in successive bilingual children speaking Slovak and English, a new language combination for narrative research. We examined whether narrative performance reflected language dominance and assessed relationships between nonword repetition (NWR) and narrative skills within and across languages. Forty typically developing Slovak–English bilingual children (mean age = 5 years, 10 months) were evaluated for microstructure and macrostructure performance in both languages through story telling and retelling tasks. In addition, NWR was assessed in Slovak, the children's first language (L1). Macrostructure scores were higher in their L1 than in their second language (L2), but comprehension did not differ across languages. L1 NWR was significantly related to L1 microstructure scores, but not to L1/L2 macrostructure or L2 microstructure. Implications for assessing bilingual children's language are discussed.

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Motion Lexicalization in Chinese among Heritage Language Children in Canada

Heritage Language Journal ◽

10.46538/hlj.15.3.1 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 272-296

Author(s):

Youran Lin ◽

Elena Nicoladis

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Heritage Language ◽

First Language ◽

Age Groups ◽

Mainland China ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

Older Children ◽

Second Language Speakers ◽

Heritage Language Speakers ◽

Two Age Groups

Heritage language speaking children often show signs of attrition, particularly as they get older and are educated in the majority language of the society where they live. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that simplification is one process of attrition for heritage language speakers. We tested this hypothesis on the expression of motion events among children who are first language speakers of Mandarin Chinese and early second language speakers of English, the majority language in this community. We compared their motion expressions to those of monolingual Mandarin-speaking children living in mainland China. Two age groups were included: younger children (4-6 years, not yet in school) and older children (8-10 years; in school for two to five years). The children watched a cartoon and recounted the story. We coded the motion expressions used in their retellings. The results showed that the older bilingual children showed clear signs of attrition, particularly simplification, but also some signs of cross-linguistic influence from English. These results suggest that attrition in a heritage language can quickly follow the onset of schooling in the majority language.

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Comparison of VOTs in Mandarin–English bilingual children and corresponding monolingual children and adults

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658319851820 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 3-26

Author(s):

Jing Yang

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Voice Onset Time ◽

First Language ◽

Onset Time ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

Language Difference ◽

English Bilingual ◽

The Difference ◽

Phonetic Realization ◽

Time Continuum

Word-initial stops in Mandarin and English show a distinctive phonological categorization but a similar phonetic realization along the VOT (Voice Onset Time) continuum. Previous research reported that native Mandarin adults produce measurably longer long-lag VOTs than native English adults. The present study examined whether and how the difference between Mandarin and English VOTs is manifested in monolingual children and Mandarin–English bilingual children. The participants included 15 five- to six-year-old sequential bilingual children, 24 corresponding monolingual children (15 Mandarin, 9 English), and 22 monolingual adults (12 Mandarin, 10 English). The bilingual children were divided into two groups (Bi-low and Bi-high) based on the amount of experience in English. Each participant was recorded producing 18 Mandarin words and/or 18 English words containing six stops in each language. The VOT values were measured from the beginning of stop burst to the onset of the voicing. The results showed that the language difference in VOT in the monolingual children was manifested in a pattern similar to the monolingual adults. However, Mandarin and English VOTs showed less separable distributions in the two groups of bilingual children. Further analysis suggested that both groups of bilingual children tended to separate Mandarin and English short-lag VOTs but only the Bi-low children showed different long-lag VOTs between the two languages. These results suggested that due to the bilingual effects and L1–L2 (first language – second language) interactions, even though the bilingual children tried to separate the two VOT systems, they implemented the separation in a different manner than the monolingual speakers.

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Regular and Irregular Inflection in Different Groups of Bilingual Children and the Role of Verbal Short-Term and Verbal Working Memory

Languages ◽

10.3390/languages6010056 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 56

Author(s):

Elma Blom ◽

Evelyn Bosma ◽

Wilbert Heeringa

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Parental Education ◽

Digit Span ◽

Verbal Working Memory ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

Inflectional Morphology ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Older Children ◽

Short Term ◽

Linguistic Distance

Bilingual children often experience difficulties with inflectional morphology. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate how regularity of inflection in combination with verbal short-term and working memory (VSTM, VWM) influences bilingual children’s performance. Data from 231 typically developing five- to eight-year-old children were analyzed: Dutch monolingual children (N = 45), Frisian-Dutch bilingual children (N = 106), Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (N = 31), Tarifit-Dutch bilingual children (N = 38) and Arabic-Dutch bilingual children (N = 11). Inflection was measured with an expressive morphology task. VSTM and VWM were measured with a Forward and Backward Digit Span task, respectively. The results showed that, overall, children performed more accurately at regular than irregular forms, with the smallest gap between regulars and irregulars for monolinguals. Furthermore, this gap was smaller for older children and children who scored better on a non-verbal intelligence measure. In bilingual children, higher accuracy at using (irregular) inflection was predicted by a smaller cross-linguistic distance, a larger amount of Dutch at home, and a higher level of parental education. Finally, children with better VSTM, but not VWM, were more accurate at using regular and irregular inflection.

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Perspective influences eye movements during real-life conversation: Mentalising about self vs. others in autism

10.31234/osf.io/7druh ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Mahsa Barzy ◽

Heather Jane Ferguson ◽

David Williams

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Real Life ◽

Social Background ◽

Relevant Information ◽

Mental States ◽

Social Attention ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Cognitive Mechanisms ◽

Verbal Responses ◽

Socially Relevant

Socio-communication is profoundly impaired among autistic individuals. Difficulties representing others’ mental states have been linked to modulations of gaze and speech, which have also been shown to be impaired in autism. Despite these observed impairments in ‘real-world’ communicative settings, research has mostly focused on lab-based experiments, where the language is highly structured. In a pre-registered experiment, we recorded eye movements and verbal responses while adults (N=50) engaged in a real-life conversation. Conversation topic either related to the self, a familiar other, or an unfamiliar other (e.g. "Tell me who is your/your mother’s/Marina’s favourite celebrity and why?”). Results replicated previous work, showing reduced attention to socially-relevant information among autistic participants (i.e. less time looking at the experimenter’s face, and more time looking around the background), compared to typically-developing controls. Importantly, perspective modulated social attention in both groups; talking about an unfamiliar other reduced attention to potentially distracting or resource demanding social information, and increased looks to non-social background. Social attention did not differ between self and familiar other contexts- reflecting greater shared knowledge for familiar/similar others. Autistic participants spent more time looking at the background when talking about an unfamiliar other vs. themselvesFuture research should investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying this effect.

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Some cases of linguistic interference in Bulgarian in English-Bulgarian bilingual children and english native speakers learning Bulgarian as a second language

Proglas ◽

10.54664/wojk6523 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Iliyana Dimitrova ◽

◽

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Native English Speakers ◽

English Speakers ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

English Bilingual ◽

Linguistic Interference ◽

Children's Speech

he study examines some linguistic errors in the process of learning Bulgarian by Bulgarian-English bilingual children and by native English speakers who study Bulgarian as a second language. The emphasis is on some typical interference errors which are common (identical) for both the bilingual children’s speech and the speech of native English speakers learning Bulgarian as a second language. Based on the analyzed aberration corpus, the opinion we give is that many of the processes taking place during the acquisition of the Bulgarian language are the same for both bilingual children with English and native English speakers.

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Sentence interpretation by typically developing Vietnamese–English bilingual children

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716410000093 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 507-529 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

GIANG PHAM ◽

KATHRYN KOHNERT

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Word Order ◽

Comparison Group ◽

First Language ◽

Typically Developing ◽

English Only ◽

Group Variation ◽

Bilingual Group ◽

Sentence Interpretation ◽

Simple Sentences

ABSTRACTWe examined developing bilinguals' use of animacy and word order cues during sentence interpretation tasks administered in each of their languages. Participants were 6- to 8-year-old children who learned Vietnamese as a first language and English as a second language (n = 23). Participants listened to simple sentences and identified the agent or “doer” of the action. English-only peers (n = 23) served as a comparison group. Results indicated that the bilingual group relied more on animacy than the English-only group when interpreting sentences in English and that the bilingual group used a blending or “amalgamation” of cues to interpret English and Vietnamese sentences. Significant within-group variation in cue preference was investigated as a function of age and proficiency in the first language and second language.

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Decontextualized language production in two languages: An investigation of children's word definition skills in Korean and English

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716411000671 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 211-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

JENNIFER YUSUN KANG

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

Language Production ◽

First Language ◽

Home Language ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

English Bilingual ◽

Korean And English ◽

Schooling Experience ◽

Cross Language ◽

Word Definition

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to identify factors that contribute to bilingual children's decontextualized language production and investigate how schooling experience and bilingualism affect the development of this skill. The word definition skills of seventy Korean–English bilingual children whose first language was Korean, yet who had been schooled in English, were analyzed. The findings indicate that contrary to the results from previous studies, the participants' decontextualized language production was much better in their home language than in their school language, when considering both the formal linguistic structure and the communicative adequacy of their word definitions. In addition, limited cross-language transfer across tasks was present and cross-language contribution was observed only in the children's ability to achieve communicative adequacy, but not in their ability to construct conventional definition syntax. The results are discussed in terms of the linguistic and typological distance between the two languages and the potential effects of language-learning contexts.

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Macrostructure, microstructure, and mental state terms in the narratives of English–Hebrew bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716415000466 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 165-193 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

CARMIT ALTMAN ◽

SHARON ARMON-LOTEM ◽

SVETA FICHMAN ◽

JOEL WALTERS

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Preschool Children ◽

Mental State ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

Bilingual Children ◽

Second Languages ◽

The Road ◽

Mental State Terms ◽

Narrative Performance

ABSTRACTChildren's bilingual status is important because the interest here is in narrative performance in both languages of bilingual children, in particular the within-subject, cross language comparisons. As Paradis (2010) has argued, there are some structures where performance differences will point to a temporary lack of opportunity for mastery, whereas other structures will be markers of underlying difficulties. We expect the discriminators to be language specific, depending on attested vulnerabilities for each of the languages involved. Narratives were examined for macrostructure (goals, attempts, and outcomes), microstructure (e.g., length, lexis, and morphosyntax), and mental state terms (MSTs). Thirty-one preschool children (TLD = 19, SLI = 12) retold stories accompanied by six pictures that were matched across content (Baby Birds/Baby Goats) and to the extent possible across languages (first language/second language) for macrostructure, microstructure, and MSTs in the framework of the Working Group on Narrative and Discourse Abilities in COST Action 0804 Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment. The macrostructure results confirmed previous findings showing similar performance in both languages for children with TLD and those diagnosed with SLI. Consistent with previous findings on narrative abilities among bilingual children, microstructure analysis of verbal productivity, length of communication units, and lexical diversity distinguished children with TLD from those with SLI. An analysis of MSTs yielded more MSTs in children's second language, in particular more mental verbs. The most prevalent MSTs used in all narratives were early acquired perceptual and motivational verbs (“see” and “want”). Overall, distinctions between narratives of children with TLD and SLI were found primarily for microstructure features, where error analysis was particularly important in uncovering possible markers, especially in second languages.

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Listeners’ Linguistic Experience Affects the Degree of Perceived Nativeness of First Language Pronunciation

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717615 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Lisa Kornder ◽

Ineke Mennen

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Speaker ◽

First Language ◽

Spontaneous Speech ◽

Language Background ◽

Linguistic Experience ◽

English Bilingual

The aim of this study was to explore if and to what extent Austrian-English late sequential bilinguals who have been living in a second language (L2) environment for several decades are perceived to sound native in their first language (L1) when being compared to monolingual Austrian German (AG) control speakers. Furthermore, this investigation aimed to identify if listeners differ in their judgments of nativeness of L1 pronunciation depending on their own language background. For this purpose, two groups of native Austrian German listeners (N = 30 each), who differed regarding their linguistic background (Austrian German monolingual and Austrian German-English bilingual listeners) were asked to rate spontaneous speech samples produced by Austrian English bilingual and Austrian German monolingual speakers. Results showed that the bilingual L1 speech was perceived to sound overall less native compared to monolingual control speech. It was further observed that the two listener groups significantly differed in their perception of nativeness: Bilingual listeners were overall less likely to judge bilingual L1 pronunciation to sound non-native compared to monolingual listeners. To date, this is the first study to show that listener experience influences their perception of nativeness of L1 pronunciation and, thus, adds a new dimension to the notion of the native speaker.

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