Academic literature on the topic 'Lexical diversity, bilingualism, bilingual children, language acquisition'

This study investigated whether young children learning two languages simultaneously are inherently weaker language learners than their monolingual counterparts. Two questions were examined: (a) whether simultaneous language learning at an early age slows down the language learning process for both languages (bilingualism deficit hypothesis) and (b) whether young children use a unitary language system containing features of both languages, preventing them from separating the languages (unitary language system hypothesis). To test these hypotheses, vocabulary skills of 10 German-English bilingual toddlers were compared with those of monolingual German- and English-speaking peers around 24 months of age using Rescorla's (1989) Language Development Survey. This vocabulary checklist, based on parental report, was used in its original English and in a German translated version. Findings revealed that bilingual toddlers were not inferior in conceptual vocabulary size and verb diversity when words in both languages were pooled. Given that nearly half of the bilingual conceptual vocabulary (43%) was associated with lexical forms in both languages, it is inferred that language separation is possible at age 2. Findings from this study contribute to the growing body of evidence that early simultaneous acquisition of more that one language is not an inherent disadvantage for the child. These findings suggest further that some existing instruments may be useful for assessing the early vocabulary of German-English bilingual toddlers.

Abstract Bilingual settings are perceived as exemplary cases of linguistic diversity, and they are assumed to trigger cross-linguistic interaction. The rationale underlying this assumption is the belief that when more than one language is processed in a brain, this will inevitably affect the way in which linguistic knowledge is acquired, stored and used. However, this idea stands in conflict with results obtained by research on children acquiring two (or more) languages simultaneously. They have been demonstrated to be able to differentiate languages from early on and to develop competences qualitatively identical to those of monolinguals. These studies thus provide little evidence supporting the idea that bilingualism must lead to divergent grammatical development. The question then is what triggers alterations of bilinguals’ grammars, especially of the syntactic core, possibly resulting in non-native competences. This has been claimed to occur in the acquisition of second languages, weaker languages of simultaneous bilinguals, or heritage languages. These acquisition types differ from first language development in that onset of acquisition of one language is delayed or that the amount of exposure to one language is reduced. I will argue that age at onset and severely reduced amount of exposure are potential causal factors triggering divergent developments, whereas bilingualism on its own is not a sufficient cause of divergence.

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.

The paper presents results form a study on acquisition of Turkish grammatical categories by first grade Turkish speaking minority children in Bulgarian primary school. Two groups of children speakers of Turkish are tested: ethnic Turks and ethnic Roma. The Roma are Muslims and are also speakers of Turkish. Both groups speak the Northeast variety of Turkish, spoken in the surroundings of Varna, Bulgaria. The author examines the lexical reaches, syntax complexity and narrative knowledge of the children and predicts that the low results on mother tongue tests will be a reason for difficulties in the second language acquisition - Bulgarian. The author connects the results of mother tongue knowledge of the children with the language interdependence theory of Cummins (1991), where the level of the mother tongue is a predictor of second language acquisition. References Aarssen, J. (1994) Acquisition of discourse anaphora in Turkish children’s narratives. VII International Conference of Turkish Linguistics. Mainz. Akıncı, M. (2016) From emergent bilingualism to biliteracy competences of French-Turkish bilingual children and teenagers in France. The Future of Multilingualism in the German Educational System, Berlin, March 3-4. Aksu-Koç and Slobin (1985) Acquisition of Turkish. In: The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition: Vol. 1. The Data, (pp. 839-878). D. I. Slobin (Ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Aksu- Koç, A. (1994) Development of linguistic forms: Turkish. In: Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. R. Berman and D. Slobin, (Eds.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Boeschoten, H. (1990) Acquisition of Turkish by immigrant children: a multiple case study of Turkish children in the Netherlands aged 4 to 6. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. Boeschoten, H. & Verhoeven, L. (1987). Turkish language development of Turkish children in the Netherlands. Proceedings of the Conference on Turkish Linguistics, A. Aksu-Koç & E. Erguvanli-Taylan (Eds.), Istanbul, 1984. Boaziçi University Press, (269-280). Cummins, J. (1991). Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children. In: Language Processing in Bilingual Children. (pp. 70-89). E. Bialystock (Ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620652.006 Küntay, A. (1997) Extended Discourse Skills of Turkish Preschool Children Across Shifting Con­texts. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Berkeley. Kyuchukov, H. (2000) Introducing referents in Turkish children's narratives. Psychology of Language and Communication, 4(1), 65-74. Kyuchukov, H. (2007) Turkish and Roma Children Learning Bulgarian. Veliko Tarnovo: Faber. Kyuchukov, H. (2019) Za Mefkure Mollova i neyniyat prinos za izsledvane na turskite dialekti v Bulgaria. [About Mefkure Mollova and her commitment for researching the Turkish dialects in Bulgaria]. Veliko Tarnovo: Faber Luria, A. R. and Yudevich, F. Ia. (1959) Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child. London: Strapless Press. Pfaff, C. (1993) Turkish language development in Germany. In: Immigrant Languages in Europe, G. Extra and L. Verhoeven (Eds) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Verhallen, M. and Schoenen, R. (1993) Lexical knowledge of monolingual and bilingual children. Applied Linguistics, 14, 344-363. Verhoeven, L. (1993) Acquisition of narrative skills in a bilingual context. In: Current Issues in European Second Language Acquisition Research. V. Ketteman and W. Wieden, (Eds). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

AbstractThis study evaluates the ability of different measures of socioeconomic status (SES) to predict lexical outcomes for preschoolers raised in a context of nationwide bilingualism. The participants were 58 children aged 3;11–4;3 from Maltese-dominant homes who attended state preschools. Receptive picture name judgement and picture naming, in Maltese and English, were employed to measure receptive and expressive lexical abilities, respectively. Lexical outcomes for four individual SES variables and a single composite SES measure were similar but not directly interchangeable. The composite SES variable emerged as most strongly predictive of children's lexical performance. Receptive judgement of phonological accuracy improved similarly in both languages with higher composite SES. Naming skills increased significantly in English but not in Maltese, suggesting differences in English input related to parental SES. A focus on SES in relation to lexical skills in two majority languages is novel and adds to current understanding of normative bilingual acquisition.

Asia is a ‘homeland’ for bilingualism research in regards to its diversity. It is considered as a vivid research site where there is significant growth of academic areas of exploration. Yet, there are very few scientific attempts to map bilingualism research in an Asian context so far. Thus, I bring the idea of mapping previous works through this literature study by specifically scrutinizing (a) bilingualism research in Southeast Asia, (b) bilingualism research in other parts of Asia, and (c) lessons to learn as a stepping stone to define the future of Indonesian bilingualism. The general data mapping I have explored includes Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam) and other parts of Asia (China, India, Israel, and Kazakhstan. The findings from the 33 previous works can be considered as empirical evidence that I will use to portray the research trends in Asia’s bilingualism. The trends show that 19 (55%) works have approached bilingual data from sociolinguistics perspective, whereas the other 14 (45%) have framed their analysis under psycholinguistic approach. Based on the methodological concerns from these works, I propose two major areas of exploration: Family Language Policy (FLP) and trilingual acquisition. FLP in Indonesian is a promising ground, as it brings together issues in language maintenance and shift that instigate a wider aspect of investigation; these aspects include bilingual language dominance, cross language influence, and so forth. Trilingual acquisition, the situation most Indonesian children are growing with, has a potentially significant impact on education, especially where a language curriculum is carefully planned and implemented. In conclusion, this mapping will hopefully shed a light on how bilingualism has academically been very appealing and will continue to fascinate more researchers.

The authors deal with English initiating moves in the dialogical interaction of two monoethnic bilingual children with their parents and grandparents. The objective of the paper is to describe structural and pragmatic features of initiating moves in the dialogues of the children for six years - at the age period between one and six years old. The authors argue that the quantity of English dialogical initiating moves as well as their structural and pragmatic characteristics can show the ways of childhood bilingual development and the attitude of the children to their weak language. The results of the research demonstrate that the children maintain a positive attitude to English in their interaction with adults; however, the lack of lexical and grammatical diversity of their initiating English moves is the evidence of slow development in the weak language competence and performance. Moreover, all these results clearly show that the children’s bilingualism has been gradually developing as highly unbalanced, accompanied by the traits of L2 attrition.

Since 1985 English has been an obligatory subject in the last two classes of Dutch primary schools. This fact provided an inducement to carry out an investigation to examine if balanced bilingual Turkish and Moroccan children would react differently from Dutch monolingual children to these English classes. Surprisingly research into third language learning appears to be very rare and seems to indicate on the one hand that bilingualism is not always an advantage. On the other hand research on cognitive and metalinguistic abilities of bilingual children suggests that bilinguals may benefit from having this specific learning experience. This research therefore aimed at testing the hypothesis that bilinguals would learn a third language in a different and more efficient way than monolinguals with the same IQ-level and socio-economic status. In this article a word production and a word comprehension test are discussed, which were administered to the subjects' groups after two years of learning English. The selection of subjects, a lexical analysis of textbooks and the test construction are described. The results of the two tests do not show any differences between mono- and bilinguals, which means that, with regard to vocabulary acquisition, bilingualism does not have a positive influence on learning a new language. The results of other tests (grammatical judgements, spontaneous production and word recognition) will show if this finding can be generalized to other skills.

The present article involves an empirical psycholinguistic study aimed at examining syntactic complexity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) by early balanced Bosnian/Swedish bilingual EFL learners. 15 early balanced bilingual Bosnian/Swedish EFL learners were recruited for the study and matched with their respective control groups of intermediate EFL learners (15 speakers of Bosnian as their first language (L1) and 15 speakers of Swedish as their L1). The experimental task involved an unprepared writing assignment in English about the most significant invention of the 20th century. The corpus of the participants’ written assignments was analysed in L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer and SPSS software programs respectively. Data analysis involved measures of syntactical complexity. It has been found that the participants’ written assignments are characterised by statistically significant number of T-units scores in comparison with the Swedish L1 monolingual controls. These findings are further presented and discussed in the article. References Ahmadian, M. J., & Tavakoli, M. (2011). The effects of simultaneous use of careful onlineplanning and task repetition on accuracy, complexity, and fluency in EFL learners’ oralproduction. Language Teaching Research, 15(1), 35-59. Alotaibi, A. M. (2016). Examining the Learnability of English Relative Clauses: Evidencefrom Kuwaiti EFL Learners. English Language Teaching, 9(2), 57. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Bofman, T. (1989). Attainment of syntactic and morphologicalaccuracy by advanced language learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 11(01),17-34. Byrnes, H. (2009). Emergent L2 German writing ability in a curricular context: Alongitudinal study of grammatical metaphor. Linguistics and Education, 20(1), 50–66. Ben-Zeev, S. (1977). The influence of bilingualism on cognitive strategy and cognitivedevelopment. Child Development, 48(3), 1009–1018. Bialystok, E. (1988). Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness.Developmental Psychology, 24, 560–567. Bialystok, E., Majumder, S., & Martin, M.M. (2003). Developing phonological awareness:Is there a bilingual advantage? Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 27–44. Cenoz, J. (1998). Beyond bilingualism: multilingualism and multilingual education.Clevedon, England Multilingual Matters Cenoz, J. & Valencia, J. (1992). The role of bilingualism in foreign language acquisition:Learning English in the Basque country. Journal of Multilingual and MulticulturalDevelopment Cummins, J. (2000). Language, Power, and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in theCrossfire. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Daiute, C.A. (1981). Psycholinguistic Foundations of the Writing Process. Research in theTeaching of English, 15, 1, 5–22 Dekydtspotter, L., & Renaud, C. (2014). On second language processing and grammaticaldevelopment: The parser in second language acquisition. Linguistic Approaches toBilingualism, 4(2), 131–165. Gaies, S. J. (1979). Linguistic input in formal second language learning: The issues ofsyntactic gradation and readability in ESL materials. TESOL quarterly, 41–50. Gaies, S. J. (1980). T-unit analysis in second language research: Applications, problemsand limitations. TESOL quarterly, 53–60. Grodner, D., Gibson, E., & Tunstall, S. (2002). Syntactic complexity in ambiguityresolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(2), 267–295. Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying Bilinguals. Journal of linguistics, 45, 3, 715–719. Herdina, P, & Jessner U. (2000). The dynamics of third language acquisition. In J. Cenozand U. Jessner (eds) English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language, (pp. 84–98).Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ho-Peng, L. (1983). Using T-unit measures to assess writing proficiency of university ESLstudents. RELC Journal, 14(2), 35–43. Hunt, K. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. NCTE Researchreport, 3. Champaign, IL. Hunt, K. W. (1970). Syntactic maturity in schoolchildren and adults. Monographs of thesociety for research in child development, 35(1), iii–67. Inoue, C. (2016). A comparative study of the variables used to measure syntacticcomplexity and accuracy in task-based research. The Language Learning Journal, 1–19. Iwashita, N. (2006). Syntactic complexity measures and their relation to oral proficiency inJapanese as a foreign language. Language Assessment Quarterly: An InternationalJournal, 3(2), 151–169. Kapranov, O. (2015). Self-Evaluation of Speech Fluency in English as a Second Languageby Korean Exchange Students Studying in Sweden. In L. Szymanski & M. Kuczynski(eds.) Language, Thought and Education: Exploring Networks. (pp. 61–77). Zielona Gora:Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielenogorskiego. Kapranov, O. (2013). Beginner Students’ Speech Fluency in a Second LanguageCompared across Two Contexts of Acquisition. In E. Piechurska-Kuciel & E. SzymanskaCzaplak (eds.) Language in Cognition and Affect (pp.81-95). Berlin: Springer. Kobayashi, H., & Rinnert, C. (1992). Effects of First Language on Second LanguageWriting: Translation versus Direct Composition. Language Learning, 42(2), 183–209. Lambert, W.E. (1974). Culture and language as factors in learning and education. Culturalfactors in learning and education. Bellingham, WA: Fifth Western WashingtonSymposium on Learning. Lu, X. (2010). Automatic analysis of syntactic complexity in second language writing,International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15(4), 474–496. Macnamara, B. N., & Conway, A. R. (2014). Novel evidence in support of the bilingualadvantage: Influences of task demands and experience on cognitive control and workingmemory. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 21(2), 520–525. Molnár, T. (2011). Second language versus third language acquisition: A comparison ofthe English lexical competence of monolingual and bilingual students. Toronto WorkingPapers in Linguistics, 33(1). Navés, T., Torras, M. R., & Celaya, M. L. (2003). Long-term effects of an earlier start: Ananalysis of EFL written production. Eurosla yearbook, 3(1), 103–129. Norbert, F. (2012). Bilingual competence and bilingual proficiency in child development.Massachusetts: MIT Press. Ortega, L. (2003). Syntactic complexity measures and their relationship to L2 proficiency:A research synthesis of college‐level L2 writing. Applied linguistics, 24(4), 492–518. Shaw, P., & Liu, E. T. K. (1998). What develops in the development of second-languagewriting?. Applied linguistics, 19(2), 225–254. Slavoff, G.R. & Johnson, J. S. (1995). The effects of age and the rate of learning a secondanguage. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17 (1), 1–16. Sotillo, S. M. (2000). Discourse functions and syntactic complexity in synchronous andasynchronous communication. Language Learning & Technology, 4(1), 82–119. Weissberg, B. (2000). Developmental relationships in the acquisition of English syntax:writing vs. speech. Learning and Instruction 10, 37–53. Wolfe-Quintero, K., Inagaki, S, & Kim, H-Y. (1998). Second Language Development inWriting: Measures of Fluency, Accuracy and Complexity Honolulu: University of Hawai'i,Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Wolff, D. (2000). Second language writing: a few remarks on psycholinguistic andinstructional issues. Bergische Universita¨t Gesamthochschule Wuppertal: Wuppertal,Germany. Xiaofei, L. (2010). L2 Syntactical Complexity Analyzer. Software program. Yau, M. S., & Belanger, J. (1984). The Influence Mode on the Syntactic Complexity ofEFL Students at Three Grade Levels. TESL Canada Journal, 2(1), 65–77. Youn, S. J. (2014). Measuring syntactic complexity in L2 pragmatic production:Investigating relationships among pragmatics, grammar, and proficiency. System, 42, 270–287.

07–305Allen, Shanley E. M. (Boston U, USA), Martha Cregg & Diane Pesco, The effect of majority language exposure on minority language skills: The case of Inuktitut. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 578–596.07–306Barkhuizen, Gary (U Auckland, New Zealand), Ute Knoch & Donna Starks, Language practices, preferences and policies: Contrasting views of Pakeha, Maori, Pasifika and Asian students. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.5 (2006), 375–391.07–307Bedore, Lisa M. (U Texas at Austin, USA; lbedore@mail.utexas.edu), Christine E. Fiestas, Elizabeth D. Pena & Vanessa J. Nagy, Cross-language comparisons of maze use in Spanish and English in functionally monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 249–261.07–308Boumans, Louis (Radboud U, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; l.boumans@let.ru.nl), The attributive possessive in Moroccan Arabic spoken by young bilinguals in the Netherlands and their peers in Morocco. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 233–247.07–309de Klerk, Vivian (Rhodes U, Grahamstown, South Africa), Codeswitching, borrowing and mixing in a corpus of Xhosa English. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 597–614.07–310Dorian, Nancy C., Negative borrowing in an indigenous-language shift to the dominant national language. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 557–577.07–311Fflur Huws, Catrın, Adran y Gyfraıth & Adeılad Hugh Owen (Ceredigion, Wales, UK; trh@aber.ac.uk), The Welsh language act 1993: A measure of success. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 141–160.07–312Finkbeiner, Matthew (Harvard U, USA), Jorge Almeida, Niels Janssen & Alfonso Caramazza, Lexical selection in bilingual speech production does not involve language suppression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (American Psychological Association) 32.5 (2006), 1075–1089.07–313Hamel, Rainer Enrique (U Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico) & Norbert Francis, The teaching of Spanish as a second language in an indigenous bilingual intercultural curriculum. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 19.2 (2006), 171–188.07–314Ho, Debbie G. E. (U Brunei, Brunei), ‘I'm not west. I'm not east. So how leh?’English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 17–24.07–315Hohenstein, Jill (King's College London, UK; jill.hohenstein@kcl.ac.uk), Ann Eisenberg & Letitia Naigles, Is he floating across or crossing afloat? Cross-influence of L1 and L2 in Spanish–English bilingual adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 263–280.07–316Huguet, Ángel (U Lleida, Spain), Attitudes and motivation versus language achievement in cross-linguistic settings. What is cause and what effect?Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.5 (2006), 413–429.07–317Lee, Borim (Wonkwang U, Korea; brlee@wonkwang.ac.kr), Susan G. Guion & Tetsuo Harada, Acoustic analysis of the production of unstressed English vowels by early and late Korean and Japanese bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisition (Cambridge University Press) 28.3 (2006), 487–513.07–318McCarty, Teresa L. (Arizona State U, Phoenix, USA), Mary Eunice Romero-Little & Ofelia Zepeda, Native American youth discourses on language shift and retention: Ideological cross-currents and their implications for language planning. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 659–677.07–319Mills, Kathy A. (Christian Heritage College, Australia), ‘Mr travelling-at-will Ted Doyle’: Discourses in a multiliteracies classroom. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (Australian Literacy Educators' Association) 29.2 (2006), 132–149.07–320Ngai, Phyllis Bo-Yuen (U Montana, USA), Grassroots suggestions for linking native-language learning, Native American studies, and mainstream education in reservation schools with mixed Indian and white student populations. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 19.2 (2006), 220–236.07–321Pika, Simone (U St Andrews, Scotland; sp60@st-andrews.ac.uk), Elena Nicoladis & Paula F. Marentette, A cross-cultural study on the use of gestures: Evidence for cross-linguistic transfer?Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 319–327.07–322Portelli, John (U Malta), Language: An important signifier of masculinity in a bilingual context. Gender and Education (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) 18.4 (2006), 413–430.07–323Prevost, Philippe (Laval U, Canada; philippe.prevost@lli.ulaval.ca), The phenomenon of object omission in child L2 French. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 281–297.07–324Reagan, Tımothy (U Witwatersrand, South Africa; reagant@hse.wits.ac.za), Claıre Penn & Dale Ogılvy, From policy to practice: Sign language developments in post-apartheid South Africa. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 187–208.07–325Reichelt, Melinda (U Toledo, USA), English in a multilingual Spain. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 3–9.07–326Salamoura, Angeliki (U Cambridge, UK; as350@cam.ac.uk) & John N. Williams, Lexical activation of cross-language syntactic priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 309–318.07–327Sánchez, Liliana (Rutgers U, New Brunswick, USA), Kechwa and Spanish bilingual grammars: Testing hypotheses on functional interference and convergence. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 535–556.07–328Schwartz, Ana I. (U Texas at El Paso, USA; aischwartz@utep.edu) & Judith F. Kroll, Bilingual lexical activation in sentence context. Journal of Memory and Language (Elsevier) 55.2 (2006), 197–212.07–329Sııner, Maarja (Copenhagen, Denmark; maarja_siiner@hotmail.com), Planning language practice: A sociolinguistic analysis of language policy in post-communist Estonia. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 161–186.07–330Smits, Erica (Antwerp U, Belgium; erica.smits@ua.ac.be), Heike Martensen, Ton Dijkstra & Dominiek Sandra, Naming interlingual homographs: Variable competition and the role of the decision system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 299–307.07–331Soukup, Barbara (Georgetown U, USA; bks5@georgetown.edu), Language news in review: UNESCO and the quest for cultural diversity. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 209–218.07–332Tillman, Amy E. (Georgia State U, USA), A love affair with pidgin. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 53–60.07–333Torres, Lourdes (DePaul U, Chicago, USA), Bilingual discourse markers in indigenous languages. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 615–624.07–334Trudell, Barbara (SIL International, Nairobi, Kenya), Language development and social uses of literacy: A study of literacy practices in Cameroonian minority language communities. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 625–642.07–335Wang, Hongyuan & Ying Yang (Yulin College, Shaanxi, China), Using letter words in China. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 51–52.07–336Yiakoumetti, Androula (U Cambridge, UK), A bidialectal programme for the learning of Standard Modern Greek in Cyprus. Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press) 27.2 (2006), 295–317.

Das Schulregister des Kultusministeriums MIUR verzeichnet, dass mehr als jede/r zehnte aller Schüler/innen in Italien keine italienische Staatsbürgerschaft hat, obwohl sie mehrheitlich dort geboren wurden. Zahlreiche Erhebungen weisen für sie im Vergleich zu den italienischen Mitschülern/innen geringere Italienischkenntnisse und weniger schulischen Erfolg auf. Innerhalb dieser explorativen Feldforschung haben Einzelinterviews mit 121 Schülern/innen (5.-8. Klasse) in Turiner Schulen und mit 26 Eltern, sowie die Auswertung von 141 an 27 Italienisch- und Herkunftsprachlehrer/innen verteilten Fragebögen ergeben, dass viele Schüler/innen "zweisprachige Natives" sind, da sie mit Italienisch und einer anderen Sprache aufwachsen. Dieser Polyglottismus, den die Interviewten sehr positiv bewerteten, findet jedoch in der Schulpraxis keine Entsprechung: Gezielte Förderung im Italienischen und der Unterricht der Familiensprache sind meist Wunschdenken. In der Kohorte haben die Schüler/innen mit den besten Italienischkenntnissen einen italophonen Elternteil bzw. kamen im Vorschulalter nach Italien und besuchten dort den Kindergarten. Dagegen sind, wie auch bei den INVALSI-Tests, die in Italien geborenen und die dann die Krippe besuchten, leicht benachteiligt. Was die Familiensprache angeht, verbessert ihr Erlernen die Kompetenzen darin, ohne dem Italienischen zu schaden: Im Gegenteil. Diese Ergebnisse bestätigen die wichtige Rolle der "anderen" Sprache für einen gelungen Spracherwerb. Das MIUR sollte also sein Schulregister mit Sprachdaten ergänzen, um die Curricula im Sinn der EU-Vorgaben umzuschreiben und den sprachlich heterogenen Klassen gezielte Ressourcen und definierte Vorgehensweisen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Mit geringeren Mitteln, im Vergleich zu den jetzigen Kosten für Herunterstufung, Klassenwiederholung und Schulabbruch würde man Schulerfolg, Chancengerechtigkeit und Mehrsprachigkeit fördern, mit positiven Folgen für den Einzelnen sowie für die Volkswirtschaft.
The Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) student register records that today in Italy more than one out of ten students is not an Italian citizen, although the majority of them were born there. Several statistical surveys indicate that "foreign" students, when compared to native students, show a poorer performance in Italian and in academic achievement. This exploratory fieldwork carried out in schools in Turin (5th to 8th grade) analyzed data obtained through semi-structured interviews with 121 students and 26 parents as well as 141 questionnaires filled in by 27 teachers of Italian and family language. It showed that many students are "bilingual natives", as they grow up acquiring both Italian and another language; however, despite the fact that the interviewees rate polyglottism positively, schools don't usually offer targeted support in either language. Within the cohort the broadest range of competences in Italian are found first among those with an Italian-speaking parent, then among those who arrived in Italy at pre-school age attending kindergarten there; this latter group shows higher competences than those born in Italy attending nursery there, as also in the INVALSI tests. As far as family language is concerned, data illustrate that its teaching increases its competences without affecting those in Italian: quite the opposite in fact. These results confirm the remarkable role played by the "other" language in successful language education. MIUR is therefore called upon to include also linguistic data in its student register, so as to redefine its curricula according to EU Guidelines, and to identify specific procedures and resources for multilingual classes. This new policy would reduce the current cost of placing students in a lower grade, grade retention and drop-outs, and would promote school success, equal opportunities and multilingualism, with positive consequences both for the individuals and for the national economy.
L'anagrafe studenti del MIUR registra come oggi in Italia più di uno studente su dieci non è cittadino italiano, pur essendo la maggioranza di loro nata in questo paese. Numerose indagini statistiche mostrano come gli allievi "stranieri" presentino, rispetto a quelli italiani, ridotte competenze in italiano e minore successo scolastico. Questa ricerca esplorativa svolta in alcune scuole di Torino (V elementare-III media) ha analizzato dati ottenuti tramite interviste semi-strutturate a 121 studenti e 26 genitori e 141 questionari compilati da 27 insegnanti di italiano e di lingua di famiglia. Da essa è emerso che molti studenti sono "nativi bilingui", poiché crescono usando l'italiano e un'altra lingua. Questo poliglottismo, valutato dagli intervistati assai positivamente, non si rispecchia però nella prassi scolastica: un supporto mirato in italiano e l'insegnamento della lingua di famiglia sono di regola una chimera. All'interno del campione le più ampie competenze in italiano si trovano fra chi ha un genitore italofono e chi è arrivato in Italia in età prescolare frequentandovi la scuola materna; come constatato anche nei test INVALSI, chi è nato in Italia e vi ha frequentato l'asilo nido è leggermente svantaggiato. Rispetto alla lingua di famiglia risulta che il suo studio porta a migliori competenze in essa, senza nuocere all'italiano: anzi. Emerge quindi il ruolo significativo della lingua "altra" per un'educazione linguistica efficace. L'invito al MIUR è quindi di integrare la propria anagrafe con dati linguistici, così da ridefinire i propri curricula secondo le Linee Guida Comunitarie, individuando procedure e risorse specifiche per le classi multilingui. Con un investimento ridotto, paragonato con il costo attuale dato da retrocessioni, ripetenze e abbandono scolastico, si riuscirebbe a sostenere il successo scolastico, le pari opportunità e il plurilinguismo, con conseguenze positive per i singoli e per l'economia nazionale.

本文研究兩位粤英雙語兒童的詞彙發展，當中以研究他們的名詞及動詞發展模式為主。在過往關於兒童詞彙發展的文獻中，很多學者均對於名詞傾向(noun bias)是否屬於普遍存在(universal)的現象，存着不少的討論。大部份學者於英語等語言中發現此名詞傾向，並認為是由於名詞概念對兒童而言較為明顯及容易掌握的緣故。然而，在普通話及粤語等語言中，學者並未能找出此名詞傾向，並認為原因是這些語言的結構特徵都比較強調動詞，例如代名詞省略(pro-drop)等。本文透過語料庫，追蹤性研究兩位粤英雙語兒童的詞彙發展，並把結果與相應的單語兒童作比較，從而討論詞類傾向的跨語言共性(universality)及語言特定(language-specific)的因素，以及在詞彙發展中的跨語言互動(cross-linguistic influence)。
本文的研究結果，顯示了在兒童的詞彙發展中，名詞傾向屬於語言特定(language-specific)的現象，而非所有語言的共性。在整段由1;06至3;00追蹤期之中，單語及雙語兒童的英語詞彙發展均持續地出現了名詞傾向的現象，而這現象並沒有在粤語中出現。英語的名詞比例平均維持在60%以上，英語名詞也發展得比動詞快。相反，在整段追蹤期之中，粤語的名詞比例均比英語的小。語言特定的因素(language-specific factors)，包括零論元是否被認可(licensing of null arguments)，以及名詞及動詞的詞彙化模式(lexicalization patterns of nouns and verbs)，能以解釋為何名詞傾向能在英語中找到，而不能在粤語中找到。
另外，本研究也發現粤英雙語兒童的詞彙發展中的跨語言互動(cross-linguistic influence)，他們粤英之間的名詞及動詞對應詞(translation equivalents)收窄了這兩種語言之間在名詞及動詞比例上的差異。英語方面，比例上，雙語兒童比單語兒童獲得更多動詞。由於粤語的語言結構特徵較強調動詞，因此雙語兒童首先獲得很多粤語動詞，這促使他們獲得這些動詞的英語對應詞(English equivalents)，從而降低了其英語名詞比例。而粤語方面，比例上，雙語兒童比單語兒童獲得更多名詞。由於英語的語言結構特徵較重視名詞，因此雙語兒童首先獲得很多英語名詞，這促使他們獲得這些名詞的粤語對應詞(Cantonese equivalents)，從而提升了其粤語名詞比例。
This thesis investigates the lexical development in two Cantonese-English bilingual children, focusing on the developmental patterns of their nouns and verbs. In the literature, a controversial issue centres on whether the noun bias is universal in children’s lexical development. Many researchers have found a noun bias in English and other languages, and attributed it to the advantage that the concepts encoded by nouns are easier and more salient for children. However, the noun bias was not observed in children acquiring languages like Mandarin and Cantonese, and some researchers have attributed this to properties of these languages including pro-drop which favour verbs. We conduct a longitudinal corpus-based study of two bilingual children in comparison with their monolingual counterparts, to address the issues of universality and language-specific effects of word category bias and cross-linguistic influence at the lexical level.
The findings show evidence that the noun bias is language-specific but not universal in the lexical development of children. A noun bias was consistently shown in English but not in Cantonese for both monolingual and bilingual children throughout the period of investigation from 1;06 to 3;00. In English, the proportion of nouns to nouns + verbs remained greater than 60% on average and nouns always developed faster than verbs. In contrast, whereas the proportion of nouns to nouns + verbs in Cantonese remained lower than that in English for the entire period of investigation. We argue that language-specific factors such as the licensing of null arguments and the lexicalization patterns of nouns and verbs can account for the differences in the occurrence of noun bias in children’s lexical development in English and Cantonese.
Evidence for cross-linguistic influence is also observed in the lexical development in Cantonese-English bilingual children. Their translation equivalents for nouns and verbs between English and Cantonese narrow the differences in the proportion of nouns and verbs between these two languages. In English, the bilingual children acquired proportionately more verbs than their monolingual counterparts. Having acquired many verbs first in Cantonese, a pro-drop language which favours verbs, facilitated the bilingual children’s acquisition of the English equivalents of these verbs, leading to a decrease in the proportion of nouns to nouns + verbs in English. In Cantonese, the bilingual children had a greater proportion of nouns than their monolingual peers. Having acquired many nouns first in English, a non-pro-drop language which favours nouns, facilitated the bilingual children’s acquisition of the Cantonese equivalents of these nouns, resulting in the increase in the proportion of nouns to nouns + verbs in Cantonese.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Shum, Ka Yee.
"December 2012."
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-168).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts also in Chinese; includes Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
Acknowledgements --- p.v
List of Tables --- p.viii
List of Figures --- p.x
List of Abbreviations --- p.xii
Table of Contents --- p.xiii
Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 1.1 --- The “noun bias“ in early lexical development --- p.1
Chapter 1.2 --- Definition of word categories --- p.2
Chapter 1.2.1 --- Differences in the distinction of word categories across languages --- p.2
Chapter 1.2.2 --- Definitions of nouns and verbs --- p.3
Chapter 1.3 --- Defining the “noun bias“ --- p.5
Chapter 1.3.1 --- Criteria for “noun bias“ in the acquisition --- p.5
Chapter 1.3.2 --- Criteria for “noun bias“ in this thesis --- p.7
Chapter 1.4 --- Issues in bilingual lexical development --- p.9
Chapter 1.5 --- Organization of the thesis --- p.11
Chapter Chapter 2: --- Issues in Early Lexical Development --- p.14
Chapter 2.1 --- Gentner’s (1982) claim: The noun bias is universal --- p.14
Chapter 2.1.1 --- Natural Partitions Hypothesis --- p.14
Chapter 2.1.2 --- Relational Relativity Hypothesis --- p.15
Chapter 2.1.3 --- Gentner’s study of monolingual children acquiring six languages (1982) --- p.16
Chapter 2.1.4 --- Gentner and Boroditsky’s study of Navajo-speaking children (2009) --- p.17
Chapter 2.1.5 --- Other studies of monolingual children in favour of the noun bias --- p.19
Chapter 2.2 --- Tardif’s (1996) claim: The noun bias is language-specific --- p.21
Chapter 2.2.1 --- Tardif’s studies of monolingual children acquiring Chinese languages (1996, 2006b, 2008) --- p.21
Chapter 2.2.2 --- Other monolingual studies arguing against the noun bias --- p.27
Chapter 2.2.3 --- Factors leading to the non-existence of a noun bias --- p.29
Chapter 2.3 --- Reasons for conflicting results --- p.34
Chapter 2.3.1 --- Different methods of sampling children’s vocabulary data --- p.34
Chapter 2.3.2 --- Different ages of the children --- p.35
Chapter 2.4 --- Previous cross-linguistic longitudinal studies in lexical development --- p.36
Chapter 2.4.1 --- Liu’s comparative study of lexical development in English, Mandarin and Cantonese (2007) --- p.37
Chapter 2.4.2 --- Dhillon’s comparative study of lexical development in English, Spanish and Mandarin (2010) --- p.38
Chapter 2.5 --- Previous studies of lexical development in bilingual children --- p.39
Chapter 2.5.1 --- Bilingual studies involving two European languages --- p.40
Chapter 2.5.2 --- Bilingual studies involving an European language and an Asian language --- p.41
Chapter 2.6 --- Research Questions --- p.44
Chapter Chapter 3: --- Hypotheses and Methodology --- p.46
Chapter 3.1 --- Universality of early noun advantage --- p.46
Chapter 3.2 --- Language-specific properties in relation to lexical category bias --- p.47
Chapter 3.3 --- Cross-linguistic influence --- p.49
Chapter 3.3.1 --- Cross-linguistic influence in the domain of syntax --- p.49
Chapter 3.3.2 --- Cross-linguistic influence in the domain of lexicon --- p.50
Chapter 3.3.3 --- Language dominance --- p.51
Chapter 3.4 --- Methodology --- p.52
Chapter 3.4.1 --- Subjects --- p.53
Chapter 3.4.2 --- The monolingual and bilingual data --- p.56
Chapter 3.4.3 --- Classification of nouns and verbs in Cantonese and English --- p.57
Chapter 3.4.4 --- Data analysis --- p.68
Chapter 3.5 --- Summary --- p.73
Chapter Chapter 4: --- Results and Discussion --- p.74
Chapter 4.1 --- Lexical composition in early English --- p.75
Chapter 4.1.1 --- Number of noun types and verb types and N/(N+V) ratios in English --- p.75
Chapter 4.1.2 --- Number of noun tokens and verb tokens in English --- p.76
Chapter 4.1.3 --- Cumulative nouns and verbs in English --- p.77
Chapter 4.1.4 --- Differences between Cantonese-English bilingual children and the monolingual English-speaking child --- p.79
Chapter 4.1.5 --- Comparison between Cantonese-dominant and English-dominant bilingual children --- p.84
Chapter 4.1.6 --- Summary --- p.84
Chapter 4.2 --- Lexical composition in early Cantonese --- p.85
Chapter 4.2.1 --- Number of noun types and verb types and N/(N+V) ratios in Cantonese --- p.85
Chapter 4.2.2 --- Number of noun tokens and verb tokens in Cantonese --- p.87
Chapter 4.2.3 --- Cumulative nouns and verbs in Cantonese --- p.88
Chapter 4.2.4 --- Differences between Cantonese-English bilingual children and the monolingual Cantonese-speaking child --- p.91
Chapter 4.2.5 --- Comparison between Cantonese-dominant and English-dominant bilingual children --- p.95
Chapter 4.2.6 --- Summary --- p.99
Chapter 4.3 --- Translation equivalents of nouns and verbs in Cantonese-English bilingual children --- p.100
Chapter 4.3.1 --- English nouns and verbs with Cantonese equivalents --- p.100
Chapter 4.3.2 --- Cantonese nouns and verbs with English equivalents --- p.104
Chapter 4.3.3 --- Summary --- p.109
Chapter 4.4 --- Comparison of lexical composition between Cantonese and English of the bilingual children --- p.109
Chapter 4.4.1 --- Proportion of nouns to verbs on the basis of word types and cumulative development --- p.110
Chapter 4.4.2 --- Language-specific considerations in early lexical development --- p.113
Chapter 4.4.3 --- Summary --- p.124
Chapter 4.5 --- Analysis of morphological and syntactic markings on nouns and verbs in Cantonese-English bilingual children --- p.124
Chapter 4.5.1 --- Morphological and syntactic markings on English nouns and verbs --- p.125
Chapter 4.5.2 --- Morphological and syntactic markings on Cantonese nouns and verbs --- p.130
Chapter 4.5.3 --- Summary --- p.141
Chapter 4.6 --- Summary of major findings --- p.141
Chapter Chapter 5: --- Conclusions --- p.145
Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusions --- p.145
Chapter 5.2 --- Limitations and suggestions for further research --- p.147
Appendices --- p.149
Chapter Appendix 1: --- Translation equivalents for nouns and verbs in Cantonese-English bilingual children --- p.149
Chapter Appendix 2: --- Total tokens of five most frequent nouns and five most frequent verbs produced by each child in each language --- p.160
References --- p.161

This study investigates the acquisition of English lexical stress by Cantonese-English bilingual children and compares the bilinguals with English monolingual children of the same age. The aim of this study is to find out how Cantonese-English bilingual children develop English lexical stress under the possible interaction of the two phonological systems. Two age groups were included: 2;06 and 3;0. Two acoustic correlates for lexical stress were measured: syllable duration and peak F0. Words in two language contexts were examined: disyllabic words in English speech and code-switched English words in Cantonese speech.
Data of eight bilingual children and seven monolingual children were used. All the bilingual data came from CHILDES database and monolingual data came from multiple sources. Disyllabic words were extracted from English utterances, and the stressed/unstressed syllable duration and peak F0 ratios were calculated to see how contrastive the stress patterns were. Results indicated that the monolingual children displayed a more contrastive stress pattern in both acoustic correlates, although syllable duration is found to be more reliable than peak F0 in stress distinction. Stress pattern in code-switched words were also analyzed. It was found that bilingual children displayed a stronger pitch difference in code-switched words, more contrastive than the patterns in their English speech. The results suggest that between 2;06 and 3;0, Cantonese-English bilingual children used less duration and pitch contrast for lexical stress than English monolingual children did, and they were slower in developing native-like lexical stress pattern during this period. On the other hand, Cantonese-English bilingual children used acoustic properties for lexical stress differently in the two language contexts, indicating that they possessed some kind of metalinguistic awareness at such an early age.
本研究探索粵語和英語雙語兒童對英語詞重音的早期習得情況，並將雙語兒童與英語單語兒童進行對比討論。研究目的旨在探討雙語語音系統之間是否存在相互影響，以及此影響如何改變雙語兒童的語言韻律發展。研究對象包括處於2 歲6個月及3 歲這兩個年齡階段的粵英雙語及英語單語兒童。文章選取兒童自然對話中,位於句中位置的雙音節詞，對其音節時長和音高峰值進行測量。此外，本研究發現雙語兒童存在代碼轉換的現象，即在粵語表達中插入英語辭彙，因此本文同時也對被插入的英語辭彙的詞重音進行探究，以期對詞重音的雙語習得獲得更詳盡的瞭解。
本研究所用數據來自八名粵英雙語兒童和七名英語單語兒童。雙語兒童數據取自“兒童語言資料交換系統”（CHILDES）中的“香港雙語兒童語料庫”，單語兒童數據則來自多方資料。研究將所提取的雙音節詞的重音音節與非重音音節的時長及音高峰值分別測量之後，計算出重音音節與非重音音節的比值。比值越大表明兒童在產出中越能明顯區別重音音節與非重音音節，即對英語詞重音的掌握越好。
研究結果發現單語兒童的表現領先于雙語兒童，體現在單語兒童可以將重音與非重音音節的時長與音高明顯區分，而雙語兒童產出的雙音節詞中，重音音節和非重音音節在時長和音高方面的區別都不明顯。然而對於被插入粵語句子中的英語雙音節詞，雙語兒童卻能很好地區分開重音音節和非重音音節的音高 。
研究結果表明，在2 歲6 個月至3 歲之間的這段時間，粵語和英語雙語兒童對英語詞重音的習得逊於英語單語兒童。但另一方面，粵語和英語雙語兒童表現出對語言環境的敏感，可以根據語言環境和交流對象的不同改變對語音特徵的運用，展現出一定程度的元（後設）語言覺識。
Li, Jingwen.
Thesis M.Phil. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2014.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-65).
Abstracts also in Chinese.
Title from PDF title page (viewed on 11, October, 2016).
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.