Bilingual Children's Acquisition of English Verb Morphology: Effects of Language Exposure, Structure Complexity, and Task Type

Abstract

This study investigated whether bilingual‐monolingual differences would be apparent in school‐age children's use and knowledge of English verb morphology and whether differences would be influenced by amount of exposure to English, complexity of the morphological structure, or the type of task given. French‐English bilinguals (mean age = 6;10) were given a standardized test with two production probes and a grammaticality judgment probe for English verb morphology. Results indicated that all three factors—exposure, complexity, and task type—influenced how closely bilinguals approached monolingual norms. These results are consistent with Gathercole's (2007) constructivist model of bilingual acquisition for the exposure and complexity effects. The task effects can be explained in view of cognitive differences in processing between bilinguals and monolinguals and, thus, are also argued to be compatible with a constructivist model. The implications of bilingual‐monolingual differences for language assessment are discussed.