scholarly journals Questionário sociolinguístico parental para famílias emigrantes bilingues (QuesFEB) uma ferramenta de recolha de dados sociolinguísticos de crianças falantes de herança

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Liliana Correia ◽  
Cristina Flores
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Cumulative Exposure ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Input Quantity ◽  
Input And Output ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Bilingual Development

Empirical research in the field of bi-/multilingualism has shown that the acquisition of two (or more) languages during childhood is significantly influenced by the sociolinguistic experience of each individual, namely by the quantity and the quality of language exposure to the target languages (Unsworth 2016a). In fact, the heterogeneity of sociolinguistic contexts in which bilingual acquisition takes place leads to variation in the quantity and quality of the input to which bilingual children are exposed on a daily basis, which, in turn, originates individual variation in the levels of language development in the languages under acquisition, mainly, in the minority language (also known as heritage language/HL; cf. Montrul 2016). In order to assess the effect of language experience on bilingual development, studies usually resort to sociolinguistic questionnaires, which allow the researcher to outline the sociolinguistic profile of the subjects under analysis, as well as to obtain crucial information about predictive variables of bilingual development (see Unsworth 2019). In this paper, we present a sociolinguistic questionnaire, in Portuguese, developed for the collection of data on the sociolinguistic experience of bilingual children, between the ages of six and ten, with a migration background – the Questionário Sociolinguístico Parental para Famílias Emigrantes Bilingues (QuesFEB). This parental questionnaire, intended for researchers who conduct studies in the field of heritage bilingualism, has as its main objective the collection of biographical and sociolinguistic information not only for the detailed characterisation of the context in which bilingual children acquire the heritage language, but also, and mainly, for the quantification of their language experience in the target language, enabling the assessment of the effect that variables related to input quantity and quality have on that language. Besides providing a detailed description of the content of the sections that compose the QuesFEB, we will present, in detail, the method of codification and calculation of four key variables that have been found to be predictive of HL development, namely: (i) current quantity of HL use (i.e., input and output) in the household; (ii) quantity of cumulative exposure to the HL in the household; (iii) quantity of HL use (i.e., input and output) with migrant grandparents who are native speakers of the language of origin; and (iv) richness of the language exposure to the HL.

Quantifying Language Experience in Heritage Language Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 433-445
Author(s):  
Sharon Unsworth
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Outcomes ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Input Quantity ◽  
Input Quality ◽  
Parental Questionnaire ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Heritage Language Development

Variation in language experience is a key characteristic of heritage language development. To understand the impact of these varying experiences on children’s heritage language outcomes, researchers typically collate and quantify specific aspects of children’s language input, transforming or reducing them into other more general variables, such as language richness as a measure of input quality and amount of language exposure as a measure of input quantity. This chapter presents an overview of the most frequently used method of operationalizing language experience in bilingual language acquisition research, namely the parental questionnaire. It outlines some conceptual and practical issues surrounding parental questionnaires as a means of quantifying bilingual language experience as well as reviewing a number of questionnaires used in recent studies in more detail.

scholarly journals PREDICTING LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY IN BILINGUAL CHILDREN

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile De Cat
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Cumulative Exposure ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Environmental Predictors ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Flexibility Measures

AbstractUsing advanced quantitative methods, this article demonstrates that cumulative exposure to the school language is the best language experience predictor of proficiency in that language (as indexed by sentence repetition, lexical semantic, and discourse semantic tasks) in a highly diverse group of 5- to 7-year-old bilingual children in monolingual education. An objective method is proposed to identify the amount of school language experience beyond which bilingual children are likely to perform within the monolingual range, and show that relative passivity in the home language does not translate into better school language proficiency. Socioeconomic status is shown to interact in complex ways with language exposure, such that it is only above a certain level of exposure to the school language that the benefits of a more privileged background have a tangible impact on school language proficiency. To tease apart the effect of environmental predictors from the effect of cognitive factors, memory and cognitive flexibility measures are included as covariates in all analyses.

scholarly journals Predicting language proficiency in bilingual children

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecile De Cat
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Cumulative Exposure ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Environmental Predictors ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Flexibility Measures

Using advanced quantitative methods, this paper demonstrates that cumulative exposure to the school language is the best language experience predictor of proficiency in that language (as indexed by sentence repetition, lexical semantic and discourse semantic tasks) in a highly diverse group of 5- to 7-year-old bilingual children in monolingual education. An objective method is proposed to identify the amount of school language experience beyond which bilingual children are likely to perform within the monolingual range, and show that relative passivity in the home language does not translate into better school language proficiency. Socio-economic status is shown to interact in complex ways with language exposure, such that it is only above a certain level of exposure to the school language that the benefits of a more privileged background have a tangible impact on school language proficiency. To tease apart the effect of environmental predictors from the effect of cognitive factors, memory andcognitive flexibility measures are included as covariates in all analyses.

scholarly journals How bilingual development is the same as and different from monolingual development

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Hoff
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
English Learning ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Bilingual Development ◽  
Language Growth ◽  
Growth Differences

Based on data from two longitudinal studies of 2- to 5-year-old Spanish- and English-learning bilingual children and English-learning monolingual children, we compare the processes and outcomes of simultaneous bilingual development to those of monolingual development. We find, in essence, that the processes are the same. The outcomes differ, however, because the immediate environments and larger sociocultural contexts of bilingual and monolingual development differ. Common processes include a dependence of language growth on the quantity and quality of language exposure and a relation between children’s own language use and their language growth. Differences in outcomes include the rate of language development and the profiles of expressive and receptive skills. 

scholarly journals Nonword Repetition and Sentence Imitation as Clinical Markers for Primary Language Impairment in bilingual French-English- and English-French-speaking children in Northern Ontario

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Sara Dubreuil-Piché ◽  
Jenna Lachance ◽  
Chantal Mayer-Crittenden
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Clinical Markers ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Sentence Imitation ◽  
Primary Language Impairment

Studies indicate that nonword repetition and sentence imitation are useful tools when assessing bilingual children. Bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI) typically score lower on these two tasks than their typically developing counterparts. Studies show that bilingual children are not disadvantaged during nonword repetition if they have limited language exposure. However, since sentence imitation tasks are constructed with words from the target language, it is expected that it would be more influenced by previous language exposure. The goal of this article will be to review the influence of bilingual exposure on both tasks. This review provides the theoretical background for future studies that will compare the accuracy of both tasks when identifying PLI in bilingual children.

scholarly journals Heritage language exposure impacts voice onset time of Dutch–German simultaneous bilingual preschoolers

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 598-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTJE STOEHR ◽  
TITIA BENDERS ◽  
JANET G. VAN HELL ◽  
PAULA FIKKERT
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Voicing Contrast ◽  
Language Exposure

This study assesses the effects of age and language exposure on VOT production in 29 simultaneous bilingual children aged 3;7 to 5;11 who speak German as a heritage language in the Netherlands. Dutch and German have a binary voicing contrast, but the contrast is implemented with different VOT values in the two languages. The results suggest that bilingual children produce ‘voiced’ plosives similarly in their two languages, and these productions are not monolingual-like in either language. Bidirectional cross-linguistic influence between Dutch and German can explain these results. Yet, the bilinguals seemingly have two autonomous categories for Dutch and German ‘voiceless’ plosives. In German, the bilinguals’ aspiration is not monolingual-like, but bilinguals with more heritage language exposure produce more target-like aspiration. Importantly, the amount of exposure to German has no effect on the majority language's ‘voiceless’ category. This implies that more heritage language exposure is associated with more language-specific voicing systems.

Early, late or very late?

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
Keyword(s):  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Input Quantity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Bilingual Development ◽  
Low Performance ◽  
Bilingual Literature ◽  
Early Late

Research on child bilingualism accounts for differences in the course and the outcomes of monolingual and different types of bilingual language acquisition primarily from two perspectives: age of onset of exposure to the language(s) and the role of the input (Genesee, Paradis, & Crago, 2004; Meisel, 2009; Unsworth et al., 2014). Some findings suggest that early successive bilingual children may pattern similarly to simultaneous bilingual children, passing through different trajectories from child L2 learners due to a later age of onset in the latter group. Studies on bilingual development have also shown that input quantity in bilingual acquisition is considerably reduced, i.e., in each of their two languages, bilingual children are likely exposed to much less input than their monolingual peers (Paradis & Genesee, 1996; Unsworth, 2013b). At the same time, simultaneous bilingual children develop and attain competence in the two languages, sometimes without even an attested age delay compared to monolingual children (Paradis, Genesee & Crago, 2011). The implication is that even half of the input suffices for early language development, at least with respect to ‘core’ aspects of language, in whatever way ‘core’ is defined. My aim in this article is to consider how an additional, linguistic variable interacts with age of onset and input in bilingual development, namely, the timing in L1 development of the phenomena examined in bilingual children’s performance. Specifically, I will consider timing differences attested in the monolingual development of features and structures, distinguishing between early, late or ‘very late’ acquired phenomena. I will then argue that this three-way distinction reflects differences in the role of narrow syntax: early phenomena are core, parametric and narrowly syntactic, in contrast to late and very late phenomena, which involve syntax-external or even language-external resources too. I explore the consequences of these timing differences in monolingual development for bilingual development. I will review some findings from early (V2 in Germanic, grammatical gender in Greek), late (passives) and very late (grammatical gender in Dutch) phenomena in the bilingual literature and argue that early phenomena can differentiate between simultaneous and (early) successive bilingualism with an advantage for the former group, while the other two reveal similarly (high or low) performance across bilingual groups, differentiating them from monolinguals. The paper proposes that questions about the role of age of onset and language input in early bilingual development can only be meaningfully addressed when the properties and timing of the phenomena under investigation are taken into account.

scholarly journals Dislocations in French–English bilingual children: An elicitation study

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 987-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORALIE HERVÉ ◽  
LUDOVICA SERRATRICE ◽  
MARTIN CORLEY
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Production ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Input Quantity ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Elicitation Study ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
French And English ◽  
Language Exposure

This paper presents the results of two sentence production studies addressing the role of language exposure, prior linguistic modelling and discourse-pragmatic appropriateness on the phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in bilingual 5-year-olds. We investigated whether French–English bilingual children would be as likely as monolingual children to use a left-dislocation structure in the description of a target scene. We also examined whether input quantity played a role in the degree of accessibility of these syntactic constructions across languages. While the results indicate a significant effect of elicitation condition only in French, the relative amount of language exposure in each language predicted the likelihood of producing a left-dislocation in both French and English. These findings make a new contribution to the role of language exposure as a predictor of CLI. The data also support the recent proposal that CLI arises out of processing mechanisms.

scholarly journals Bilingual language development in infancy: What can we do to support bilingual families?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laia Fibla ◽  
Jessica Elizabeth Kosie ◽  
Ruth Kircher ◽  
Casey Lew-Williams ◽  
Krista Byers-Heinlein
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Community Context ◽  
Infants And Children ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Bilingual Language Development ◽  
Bilingual Development ◽  
Frequent Exposure

Many infants and children around the world grow up exposed to two or more languages. Their success in learning each of their languages is a direct consequence of the quantity and quality of their everyday language experience, including at home, in daycare and preschools, and in the broader community context. Here, we discuss how research on early language learning can inform policies that promote successful bilingual development across the varied contexts in which infants and children live and learn. Throughout our discussions, we highlight that each individual child’s experience is unique. In fact, it seems that there are as many ways to grow up bilingual as there are bilingual children. To promote successful bilingual development, we need policies that acknowledge this variability and support frequent exposure to high-quality experience in each of a child’s languages.

scholarly journals Exposure and input in bilingual development

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSANNE E. CARROLL
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Grammar Learning ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Bilingual Development ◽  
The Right

A growing literature on bilingual development explores relationships between language exposure and learning outcomes. Vocabulary size and pace of grammar learning have been claimed to be causally related to amounts or types of exposure to each language. Strong claims are made about the role of exposure on bilingual outcomes. Some researchers posit a unique learning result: a ‘weak language’. In a critical review, I voice reasons for scepticism that quantity or quality of exposure alone will explain findings. Central constructs are not well defined; inappropriate research methods have been used; the right kind of data is not discussed. Crucially, authors prevaricate on the notion of language itself, switching between cognitive and environmental perspectives. Both are needed to interpret bilingual behaviours but play different roles in the construction of learner grammars.

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