Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism

Comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in sequential bilingual children: Do they pattern similarly to L1 children, L2 adults, or children with specific language impairment?

Real-time processing of gender-marked articles by native and non-native Spanish speakers

This paper compares the spelling of adult L2 users of English with native L1 users,both children and adults, using data from the 1993 NFER survey of L1 children, from the 1980 Wing and Baddeley corpus, from a UK university EFL test for overseas students and from work by overseas students in England.An overallcomparison showed similar error rates in L1 children and L2 adults and a similar distribution of errors both for L1 adults and children and for L2 users across the familiar categories of letter insertion, omission, substitution and transposition, apart from a lower proportion of omission errors for L2 users. More detailed comparisons found that, while some errors were particular to certain groups, such as <l>, <r> and epenthetic <e> for Japanese, others were common with all users, such as consonant doubling, vowels representing schwa and digraph reversals <hg>. Much of the errors reflect problems with sound/letter correspondences, some with individual words such as because. Yet overall L2 users can perform at a levelequivalentto a 15-year-old child,unlike mostother areas of language.

Chapter Seven - Juggling Two Languages in One Mind: What Bilinguals Tell Us About Language Processing and its Consequences for Cognition

It has been argued that the study of child L2 development can inform different maturational accounts of language acquisition. One such specific proposal was put forward by Meisel (2008), arguing for a cut-off point for monolingual or bilingual first language acquisition — (2)L1 — type of development at 3–4 years. The paper analyses the longitudinal development of object clitics in child L2 French (L1 Swedish) and compares the developmental sequence in child L2 learners (n = 7) with different Ages of Onset of Acquisition (AoA) (from 3;0 to 6;5) to the adult L2 sequence that was found in previous studies (Granfeldt &amp; Schlyter 2004). The study also includes age-matched simultaneous bilingual children (n = 3) and monolingual controls (n = 5). The results show that some of the child L2 learners with an AoA over 4 years display structures that are typical of adult L2 acquisition, whereas these structures were not found in the simultaneous bilingual children or in the child second language acquisition (cL2) children with an AoA under 4 years. It is suggested that differences in developmental sequences are due to a combination of AoA and the level of L1 linguistic development at the onset of L2 acquisition.

It has been argued that the study of child L2 development can inform different maturational accounts of language acquisition. One such specific proposal was put forward by Meisel (2008), arguing for a cut-off point for monolingual or bilingual first language acquisition — (2)L1 — type of development at 3–4 years. The paper analyses the longitudinal development of object clitics in child L2 French (L1 Swedish) and compares the developmental sequence in child L2 learners (n = 7) with different Ages of onset of Acquisition (AoA) (from 3;0 to 6;5) to the adult L2 sequence that was found in previous studies (Granfeldt &amp; Schlyter 2004). The study also includes age-matched simultaneous bilingual children (n = 3) and monolingual controls (n = 5). The results show that some of the child L2 learners with an AoA over 4 years display structures that are typical of adult L2 acquisition, whereas these structures were not found in the simultaneous bilingual children or in the child second language acquisition (cL2) children with an AoA under 4 years. It is suggested that differences in developmental sequences are due to a combination of AoA and the level of L1 linguistic development at the onset of L2 acquisition.

This paper studies the development of the German determiner phrase (DP) in 60 child second-language (L2) learners of German between the ages of 3;5 and 7;0. We consider case and gender marking as well as gender concord and test for effects of internal (age, age of onset) and external (length of exposure) factors. Further, developmental patterns are compared between child L1 and L2 acquisition. The results show no contingency of child L2 performance and age factors, yet strong correlations with length of exposure. Like child L1 acquirers, child L2 learners are found to proceed through similar developmental stages, and they establish lexical gender distinctions before syntactic case distinctions in inflection. These findings are discussed in the context of current generative approaches and the role of age in child and adult L2 acquisition.

Exploring the source of differences and similarities in L1 attrition and heritage speaker competence: Evidence from pronominal resolution

and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Swathi Kiran serves as a consultant for The Learning Corporation with no scientific overlap with the present study. Risto Miikkulainen serves as an associate vice president at Cognizant AI Labsc. with no scientific overlap with the present study.

Phonetic and phonological variability in the L1 and L2 of late bilinguals: The case of /r/ and /l/

Henriëtte Hendriks, Marzena Watorek, Patrizia Giuliano : L'expression de la localisation et du mouvement dans les descriptions et les récits en L1 et en L2. Recent research in language acquisition suggests that an important factor causing the difference between child L1 and adult L2 acquisition is the capacity to engage in complex verbal tasks. Thus, the construction of discourse (with its conceptual and linguistic complexities) seems constrained in the adult L2 case mainly by a lack of linguistic means; in the child L1 case by the gradual development of conceptual and communicative capacities. We tested this hypothesis by analysing reference to space in two tasks, a narrative and a description, as produced by child L1 and adult L2 learners of various source and target languages. Results confirm the hypothesis, and show that whereas both types of learners adapt to language-specific means available in the target, children have more problems conceptually with the task, whereas adults can compensate for their linguistic problems, given their understanding of the communicative situation.

In the English tough construction (TC), knowledge of tough movement is necessary for target performance (the object-interpretation only; e.g. Johni is easy to see ei). The acquisition of the English TC raises a learnability problem for first-language (L1) Korean learners of English as a second language (L2): (1) Korean has no tough movement; (2) no input dictates that the ‘subject interpretation’ is disallowed in the English TC; and (3) no classroom instruction covers the English TC. According to the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, L2 children – but not L2 adults – can overcome this learnability problem. L1-Korean adult ( n = 49) and child ( n = 30) L2 learners’ (L2ers’) knowledge of the English TC was assessed via a truth-value judgment task manipulating (1) verb transitivity to make the infinitival object gap more vs. less salient and (2) context to avoid vs. strengthen bias toward the (erroneous) subject interpretation. Notably, some high-proficiency adult L2ers showed significantly above-chance performance, despite the error-inducing manipulations, suggesting that adult L2ers can overcome the learnability problem.

Successive childhood bilingualism or child second language (L2) acquisition is the acquisition of an L2 during childhood after some properties of the first language (L1) are already in place. The study of child L2 development can inform us about the mechanisms and processes involved in second language learning and highlight the ways in which these mechanisms are similar or different from those reported for L1 children and L2 adults. Therefore, it is important to investigate how child L2 development compares with child L1 development and adult L2 acquisition, what the role of the L1 in the acquisition process is, whether and when age of L2 exposure effects are observed in the acquisition of an L2 during childhood, and how input quality and quantity can shape the child L2 acquisition process.

Lexical processing in child and adult classroom second language learners: Uniqueness and similarities, and implications for cognitive models

Previous studies found mixed results regarding a bias in credibility ratings for trivia statements made by L2 speakers in comparison to L1 speakers. Perceptual fluency, social attitudes, and pragmatic lenience have been proposed as underlying causes for the bias. The present study examined credibility ratings for L2 speakers and extended the scope of the investigation by adding the factor age of the speaker. In the present study, German native adult listeners were asked to judge the credibility of trivia statements recorded by L2 adults and L1 children in Experiment 1 and statements by L1 adults and L1 children in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, the ratings showed no difference in credibility between the L2 adult statements and the L1 child statements. In Experiment 2, listeners rated statements from L1 child speakers as more credible than statements from L1 adult speakers, suggesting a positive bias for the credibility of children. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance for previously suggested causes contributing to a credibility bias.