A comparison of bilingual and monolingual children’s conversational repairs

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 354-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liane Comeau ◽  
Fred Genesee ◽  
Morton Mendelson
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Old French ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Overall Response ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Conversational Repair ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
French Speaking

This study examined the conversational repair skills of 2- and 3-year-old French— English bilingual children and monolingual French-speaking children. While the ability to respond to requests for clarification has been well researched in monolingual children, it has not been investigated among bilingual children except to examine their ability to repair breakdowns due to the use of a language not spoken by their interlocutor. The present study provides a direct comparison of bilingual and monolingual children’s repairs of the types of breakdowns in conversations that are experienced by both populations, e.g., breakdowns due to ambiguity, choice of words, mispronunciations, inaudible utterances, and so on. A methodology of stacked requests for clarification was used to examine the range of response strategies and the overall response patterns of the children.The results reveal no differences between the bilingual and the monolingual children’s conversational repair skills. The present findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism does not interfere with the language development of simultaneous bilinguals. As well, they extend our understanding of their ability to repair conversational breakdowns of the type that are experienced by all children.

Defining Bilingualism: Factors Contributing to Variability in Language and Literacy Development of Spanish-English Bilingual Children

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Dunn Davison
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Literacy Development ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Literacy Outcomes ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Language And Literacy Development

Abstract Given the increasing number of children from homes in which a language other than English is the primary language, it is important for speech-language pathologists to understand how bilingualism is defined and the implications of different defining factors for language development and later literacy outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors contributing to the differences observed across bilingual language and literacy development. Previous research suggests there are differences in the language and literacy development of bilingual children due to differing ages of exposure to each language and the context in which each language is then used. Implications for assessment and interventions are discussed.

Bilingualism as a window into the language faculty: The acquisition of objects in French-speaking children in bilingual and monolingual contexts

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANA T. PÉREZ-LEROUX ◽  
MIHAELA PIRVULESCU ◽  
YVES ROBERGE
Keyword(s):  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Lexical Development ◽  
Bilingual Child ◽  
Bilingual Lexicon ◽  
Null Objects ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Direct Objects

Where do the two languages of the bilingual child interact? The literature has debated whether bilingual children have delays in the acquisition of direct objects. The variety of methods and languages involved have prevented clear conclusions. In a transitivity-based approach, null objects are a default structural possibility, present in all languages. Since the computation of lexical and syntactic transitivity depends on lexical acquisition, we propose a default retention hypothesis, predicting that bilingual children retain default structures for aspects of syntactic development specifically linked to lexical development (such as objects). Children acquiring French (aged 3;0–4;2, N = 34) in a monolingual context and a French/English bilingual context participated in a study eliciting optional and obligatory direct objects. The results show significant differences between the rates of omissions in the two groups for both types of objects. We consider two models of how the bilingual lexicon may determine the timetable of development of transitivity.

Comparison of Spanish morphology in monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children with and without language impairment

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 578-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
GARETH P. MORGAN ◽  
M. ADELAIDA RESTREPO ◽  
ALEJANDRA AUZA
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Peer Group ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Cut Score ◽  
Sum Score ◽  
Derivational Morphemes ◽  
Support Evidence ◽  
Error Types

This study compares Spanish morphosyntax error types and magnitude in monolingual Spanish and Spanish–English bilingual children with typical language development (TD) and language impairment (LI). Performance across groups was compared using cloze tasks that targeted articles, clitics, subjunctives, and derivational morphemes in 57 children. Significant differences were observed between bilingual TD and LI groups on all tasks; however, no differences were observed between bilinguals with TD and monolinguals with LI except on a sum-score across all tasks. There were no observed differences between bilinguals and monolinguals with TD; however, 60% of bilinguals with TD were misclassified as LI when using a cut score derived from monolingual-only data. Results support evidence that Spanish morphosyntax is vulnerable to error in monolingual and bilingual Spanish–English children with LI. However, the grammatical deficit seems clinically relevant only when children are compared to the same language peer group (i.e., bilinguals compared to bilinguals).

The impact of typological factors in monolingual and bilingual first language acquisition

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Katharina Ochsenbauer ◽  
Helen Engemann
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
The Impact

The present study compares (1) monolingual English vs. French adults and children and (2) simultaneous French-English bilingual children who describe caused motion events. The results concerning L1 speakers showed developmental progressions in both languages, e.g., utterance complexity increases with age. However, response patterns differed considerably across languages in that responses were denser and more compact in English than in French. The results concerning bilingual children showed unidirectional crosslinguistic interactions. Responses elicited in English paralleled monolingual developmental patterns, whereas bilinguals’ French productions differed from those of monolingual French peers. The findings suggest that bilingual children transfer lexicalisation patterns from one of their languages to the other when the former provides more transparent means of achieving high semantic density.

Constructively combining languages

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Endesfelder Quick ◽  
Elena Lieven ◽  
Ad Backus ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Language Preference ◽  
Type Analysis ◽  
Objective Measurements ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Construction Type ◽  
Language Context ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Abstract Language development in bilingual children is often related to differing levels of proficiency. Objective measurements of bilingual development include for example mean length of utterance (MLU). MLU is almost always calculated for each language context (including both monolingual and code-mixed utterances). In the current study, we analyzed the MLUs of three German-English bilingual children, aged 2;3–3;11 separately for the monolingual and code-mixed utterances. Our results showed that language preference was reflected in MLU values: the more children spoke in one language the higher the MLU was in that language. However, it was the mixed utterances that had the highest MLU for all three children. We support the results with a construction type analysis and suggest a potential usage-based explanation for these results based on individual differences in each child’s developmental inventory of words and constructions.

French-English Bilingual Children With SLI

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanne Paradis ◽  
Martha Crago ◽  
Fred Genesee ◽  
Mabel Rice
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Grammatical Morphology ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
French Speaking

The goal of this study was to determine whether bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) are similar to monolingual age mates with SLI, in each language. Eight French-English bilingual children with SLI were compared to agematched monolingual children with SLI, both English and French speaking, with respect to their use of morphosyntax in language production. Specifically, using the extended optional infinitive (EOI) framework, the authors examined the children’s use of tense-bearing and non-tense-bearing morphemes in obligatory context in spontaneous speech. Analyses revealed that the patterns predicted by the EOI framework were borne out for both the monolingual and bilingual children with SLI: The bilingual and monolingual children with SLI showed greater accuracy with non-tense than with tense morphemes. Furthermore, the bilingual and monolingual children with SLI had similar mean accuracy scores for tense morphemes, indicating that the bilingual children did not exhibit more profound deficits in the use of these grammatical morphemes than their monolingual peers. In sum, the bilingual children with SLI in this study appeared similar to their monolingual peers for the aspects of grammatical morphology examined in each language. These bilingual-monolingual similarities point to the possibility that SLI may not be an impediment to learning two languages, at least in the domain of grammatical morphology.

scholarly journals Non-word repetition test: research into Lithuanian monolingual and Lithuanian-English bilingual children

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Eglė Krivickaitė
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Word Repetition ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
The Future

The majority of studies comparing the language development of monolingual and bilingual children have found that bilinguals’ lexicon in each language is smaller than that of a comparable monolingual age-peers (Pearson et al. 1997; Werker et. al. 2009). Some studies have found that same-ages bilingual and monolingual children have relatively equal sized vocabularies when the vocabularies of both languages is taken into account (Bialystok 2001; Werker et al. 2009).The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to introduce the Lithuanian non-word repetition test; 2) to present the results of a test, when monolingual (Lithuanian) and bilingual (L1 – Lithuanian, L2 – English) children had to produce Lithuanian non-words. The main focus of the study was to investigate the performance of monolinguals and bilinguals during the test in reference to word length and word complexity, namely consonant clusters.The test results with monolingual and bilingual children have shown that the length of the word is a very important indicator: repetition accuracy was found to decline with the increasing number of syllables in both monolingual and bilingual groups. The results of the complexity demonstrated that both groups were better when performing initial clusters rather than medial clusters, especially in longer words (mostly 4-syllable). The study has shown that the test results improve with age: older monolingual and bilingual children repeat non-words more accurately than younger children.The overall Lithuanian non-word repetition test results show that bilinguals repeat non-words less accurately than monolinguals. In the future, more children should participate in the non-word repetition test.

An Introductory Examination of Speech Disfluencies in Spanish–English Bilingual Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter During Narratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Cristina Rincon ◽  
Kia Noelle Johnson ◽  
Courtney Byrd
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Criteria ◽  
Preliminary Data ◽  
Diagnostic Information ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Developmental Stuttering ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the frequency and type of speech disfluencies (stuttering-like and nonstuttering-like) in bilingual Spanish–English (SE) children who stutter (CWS) to SE children who do not stutter (CWNS) during narrative samples elicited in Spanish and English to provide further diagnostic information for this population and preliminary data toward an expansion of this study. Method Participants included six bilingual SE children (three CWS, three CWNS) ranging in age from 5 years to 7;5 (years;months) and recruited from the surrounding Houston, Texas area. Participants provided a narrative sample in English and Spanish. The frequency of speech disfluencies was tabulated, and mean length of utterance was measured for each sample. Results Results indicate that both talker groups exceed the diagnostic criteria typically used for developmental stuttering. Regardless of the language being spoken, CWS participants had a frequency of stuttering-like speech disfluencies that met or exceeded the diagnostic criteria for developmental stuttering that is based on monolingual English speakers. The CWNS participants varied in meeting the criteria depending on the language being spoken, with one of the three CWNS exceeding the criteria in both languages and one exceeding the criteria for percentage of stuttering-like speech disfluencies in one language. Conclusion Findings from this study contribute to the development of more appropriate diagnostic criteria for bilingual SE-speaking children to aid in the reduction of misdiagnoses of stuttering in this population.

Stimulus Ratio Effects on Speech Discrimination by Children and Adults

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan E. Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Response Pattern ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Speech Discrimination ◽  
Adult Group ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
Formant Frequency ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Adults And Children

This investigation examined the response strategies and discrimination accuracy of adults and children aged 5–10 as the ratio of same to different trials was varied across three conditions of a “change/no-change” discrimination task. The conditions varied as follows: (a) a ratio of one-third same to two-thirds different trials (33% same), (b) an equal ratio of same to different trials (50% same), and (c) a ratio of two-thirds same to one-third different trials (67% same). Stimuli were synthetic consonant-vowel syllables that changed along a place of articulation dimension by formant frequency transition. Results showed that all subjects changed their response strategies depending on the ratio of same-to-different trials. The most lax response pattern was observed for the 50% same condition, and the most conservative pattern was observed for the 67% same condition. Adult response patterns were most conservative across condition. Differences in discrimination accuracy as measured by P(C) were found, with the largest difference in the 5- to 6-year-old group and the smallest change in the adult group. These findings suggest that children’s response strategies, like those of adults, can be manipulated by changing the ratio of same-to-different trials. Furthermore, interpretation of sensitivity measures must be referenced to task variables such as the ratio of same-to-different trials.

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