Abstract
This study investigated grammatical gender processing in school-age Spanish-English bilingual children using a visual world paradigm with a 4-picture display where the target noun was heard with a gendered article that was either in a context where all distractor images were the same gender as the target noun (same gender; uninformative) or in a context where all distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender; informative). We investigated 32 bilingual children (ages 5;6–8;6) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy and began learning English by school entry. Along with the eye-tracking experiment, all children participated in a standardized language assessment and told narratives in English and Spanish, and parents reported on their child's current Spanish language use. The differential proportion fixations to target (target − averaged distractor fixations) were analyzed in two time regions with linear mixed-effects models (LME). Results show that prior to the target word being spoken, these bilingual children did not use the gendered articles to actively anticipate upcoming nouns. In the subsequent time region (during the noun), it was shown that there are differences in the way they use feminine and masculine articles, with a lack of use of the masculine article and a potential facilitatory use of the feminine article for children who currently use more Spanish than English. This asymmetry in the use of gendered articles in processing is modulated by current Spanish language use and trends with results found for bilingual and second-language learning adults.
Highlights
Both children and adults process speech incrementally, making use of what they have heard to anticipate the endings of words and sentences (e.g., Marslen-Wilson, 1987; Bates et al, 1996; Friederici and Jacobsen, 1999; Fernald et al, 2001)
Children were categorized as typically-developing if they scored within normal limits on the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA; Peña et al, 2018; ages 3–6;11) or the Middle Extension (BESA-ME; Peña et al, 2008; ages 7–9;11) and no parent or clinician concern was noted (Gutiérrez-Clellen and Simón-Cereijido, 2007)
mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) was slightly higher in English while number of different words (NDW) was similar across both languages and grammaticality was higher in Spanish
Summary
Both children and adults process speech incrementally, making use of what they have heard to anticipate the endings of words and sentences (e.g., Marslen-Wilson, 1987; Bates et al, 1996; Friederici and Jacobsen, 1999; Fernald et al, 2001). The present study examines incremental comprehension of spoken language in SpanishEnglish bilingual school-age children. In many languages such as Spanish, nouns are assigned grammatical gender. Semantic, and morphological cues to assign nouns to gender classes (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Pérez-Pereira, 1991). Articles are almost always compulsory in a noun phrase, but as unstressed monosyllables, they have low saliency (Mariscal, 2009)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
