Patterns of Vocabulary Acquisition in Spanish-English Bilingual Children with SLI

2018 ◽  
Vol 04 (05) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliane Ramos ◽  
Author(s):  
Aya Kutsuki

Previous research has paid much attention to the overall acquisition of vocabularies among bilingual children in comparison to their monolingual counterparts. Much less attention has been paid to the type of words acquired and the possible transfer or cross-linguistic effects of the other language on vocabulary development. Thus, this study aims to explore similarities and dissimilarities in the vocabularies of simultaneous bilinguals and Japanese monolinguals and considers the possible cross-linguistic similarity effect on word acquisition. Six simultaneous Japanese–English bilingual children (mean age = 34.75 months (2.56)) were language–age-matched with six Japanese monolinguals; their productive vocabularies were compared regarding size and categories. Additionally, characteristic acquired words were compared using correspondence analyses. Results showed that, although delayed due to the reduced inputs, young bilinguals have a similar set of vocabularies in terms of word category as monolinguals. However, bilingual children’s vocabularies reflect their unevenly distributed experience with the language. Fewer interactive experiences with language speakers may result in a lower acquisition of interactive words. Furthermore, there is a cross-linguistic effect on acquisition, likely caused by form similarity between Japanese katakana words and English words. Even between languages with great dissimilarities, resources and cues are sought and used to facilitate bilingual vocabulary acquisition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Cristina Rincon ◽  
Kia Noelle Johnson ◽  
Courtney Byrd

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.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Montanari ◽  
Kaveri Subrahmanyam ◽  
Marlene Zepeda ◽  
Araceli Castellanos ◽  
Yvonne Ribas

Phonetica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Yang

Abstract This study examined the development of vowel categories in young Mandarin -English bilingual children. The participants included 35 children aged between 3 and 4 years old (15 Mandarin-English bilinguals, six English monolinguals, and 14 Mandarin monolinguals). The bilingual children were divided into two groups: one group had a shorter duration (<1 year) of intensive immersion in English (Bi-low group) and one group had a longer duration (>1 year) of intensive immersion in English (Bi-high group). The participants were recorded producing one list of Mandarin words containing the vowels /a, i, u, y, ɤ/ and/or one list of English words containing the vowels /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, u, ʊ, o, ɑ, ʌ/. Formant frequency values were extracted at five equidistant time locations (the 20–35–50–65–80% point) over the course of vowel duration. Cross-language and within-language comparisons were conducted on the midpoint formant values and formant trajectories. The results showed that children in the Bi-low group produced their English vowels into clusters and showed positional deviations from the monolingual targets. However, they maintained the phonetic features of their native vowel sounds well and mainly used an assimilatory process to organize the vowel systems. Children in the Bi-high group separated their English vowels well. They used both assimilatory and dissimilatory processes to construct and refine the two vowel systems. These bilingual children approximated monolingual English children to a better extent than the children in the Bi-low group. However, when compared to the monolingual peers, they demonstrated observable deviations in both L1 and L2.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1357-1376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy Pik Ki MOK ◽  
Albert LEE

AbstractPrevious studies on bilingual children found intact tonal development at the initial stages of interaction between Cantonese and English in successive bilingual children, whereas children exposed to both languages from birth have not been studied in this regard. We examined the production of Cantonese tones by five simultaneous bilingual children longitudinally at 2;0 and 2;6, and compared them with age-matched monolingual children using auditory analysis. Our results showed that some bilingual children had a delay at 2;0, compared to their monolingual peers. Some bilingual children also exhibited a ‘high–low’ template in their production, resembling the pitch pattern of English trochaic words. These findings suggest a possible early interaction of the Cantonese and English prosodic systems in which bilingual children adopted the English stress pattern in Cantonese production. The time-point along the trajectory of phonological development is important in modulating whether cross-linguistic transfer can be observed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra Foursha-Stevenson ◽  
Elena Nicoladis

Bilingual children sometimes perform better than same-aged monolingual children on metalinguistic awareness tasks, such as a grammaticality judgment. Some of these differences can be attributed to bilinguals having to learn to control attention to language choice. This study tested the hypothesis that bilingual children, as young as preschool age, would score overall higher than monolingual children on a grammaticality judgment test. French–English bilingual preschoolers judged the acceptability of three constructions in French and English (i.e. adjective–noun ordering, obligatoriness of a determiner, and object pronoun placement). Their performance was compared with that of a group of age-matched English monolinguals. The results showed that the bilingual children scored higher than the monolingual children. These results demonstrate that syntactic awareness develops quite early for bilinguals. Additionally, the bilingual children demonstrated cross-linguistic influence of core syntactic structure in French, as their judgments were affected by English acceptability.


2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 713-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCO TAMBURELLI ◽  
EIRINI SANOUDAKI ◽  
GARY JONES ◽  
MICHELLE SOWINSKA

This study examines the production of consonant clusters in simultaneous Polish–English bilingual children and in language-matched English monolinguals (aged 7;01–8;11). Selection of the language pair was based on the fact that Polish allows a greater range of consonant clusters than English. A nonword repetition task was devised in order to examine clusters of different types (obstruent-liquid vs. s + obstruent) and in different word positions (initial vs. medial), two factors that play a significant role in repetition accuracy in monolingual acquisition (e.g., Kirk & Demuth, 2005). Our findings show that bilingual children outperformed monolingual controls in the word initial s + obstruent condition. These results indicate that exposure to complex word initial clusters (in Polish) can accelerate the development of less phonologically complex clusters (in English). This constitutes significant new evidence that the facilitatory effects of bilingual acquisition extend to structural phonological domains. The implications that these results have on competing views of phonological organisation and phonological complexity are also discussed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document