Bilingual Children's Acquisition Research Articles

Language Distance Moderates the Effect of a Mixed-Language Environment on New-Word Learning for 4-Year-Old Children.

As bilingual families increase, the phenomenon of language mixing among children in mixed-language environments has gradually attracted academic attention. This study aims to explore the impact of language mixing on vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children and whether language distance moderates this impact. We recruited two groups of bilingual children, Chinese-English bilinguals and Chinese-Japanese bilinguals, to learn two first-language new words in a monolingual environment and a mixed-language environment, respectively. The results showed that the participants could successfully recognize the novel words in the code-switching sentences. However, when we compared the performance of the two groups of bilingual children, we found that the gaze time proportion of the Chinese-English bilingual children under the code-switching condition was significantly higher than that of the Chinese-Japanese bilingual children, while there was no significant difference under the monolingual condition. This suggests that language mixing has an inhibitory effect on vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children and that this inhibitory effect is influenced by language distance, that is, the greater the language distance, the stronger the inhibitory effect. This study reveals the negative impact of language mixing on vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children and also implies that there may be some other influencing factors, so more research is needed on different types of bilingual children.

Phonosyntactic Acquisition of Children’s Bilingualism: A Case Study in Sasak Language – Indonesia

Language acquisition in bilingual children is a process of transferring two languages simultaneously to children by both parents or the environment. This is what happened to Nadira (pseudonym -a Sasak child aged three years and four months), who was often taught two languages (Sasak Indonesian) in the process of her growth and development. As a result, Nadira’s speech has a distinctive phonosyntactic effect due to the simultaneous incorporation of the Sasak and Indonesian languages. This effect includes the Sasak language’s Indonesianized structure, Sasakized Indonesian phonology, and the process of sound changes in morphs. The aim of this research is to describe various aspects of language acquisition in bilingualism in the Sasak tribe. Meanwhile, the assessment theory used was Chomsky’s view. Data collection was carried out using the listening and skill method as well as basic and derivative techniques, observation techniques, and documentation. The collected data was analyzed using a qualitative descriptive method, which aims for systematic description, categorization, and patterning. As a result, a unique and distinctive reality of language acquisition occurs in the speech of children in the Sasak tribe.

Uyghur–Chinese early successive bilingual children's acquisition of voluntary motion expressions

Abstract This study explores the implications of Talmy's (2000) motion event typology and its subsequent articulations in relation to Slobin's (1996, 2006) thinking-for-speaking hypothesis for the early successive bilingual acquisition of Uyghur (verb-framed) and Mandarin Chinese (equipollently-framed). Specifically, it examines how 4-, 6-, 8- and 10-year-old bilingual children acquire motion expressions in their L1 and L2 respectively, and how cross-linguistic influence shapes their L2 acquisition process. Results show that, in their L1 Uyghur, bilinguals follow general developmental trajectories observed for children acquiring verb-framed languages. While sensitive to the equipollent Chinese system from early on, due to L1 and other factors, bilinguals fully converge on the Chinese pattern only at age 10, a feat in place in monolinguals from age 3. Our findings highlight that bilingual children do eventually come to develop language-specific thinking-for-speaking patterns in their L2, but they traverse a distinct developmental path.

Are translation equivalents special? Evidence from simulations and empirical data from bilingual infants

The acquisition of translation equivalents is often considered a special component of bilingual children's vocabulary development, as bilinguals have to learn words that share the same meaning across their two languages. This study examined three contrasting accounts for bilingual children's acquisition of translation equivalents relative to singlets (i.e., words that are first labels for a referent): the Avoidance Account whereby translation equivalents are harder to learn, the Preference Account whereby translation equivalents are easier to learn, and the Neutral Account whereby translation equivalents and singlets are learned similarly. To adjudicate between these accounts, Study 1 explored patterns of translation equivalent learning under a novel computational model — the Bilingual Vocabulary Model — which quantifies translation equivalent knowledge as a function of the probability of learning words in each language, and includes a bias parameter that varies the difficulty of learning translation equivalents according to each account. Study 2 tested model-derived predictions against vocabulary data from 200 French–English bilingual children aged 18–33 months. Results showed a close match between the model predictions and bilingual children's patterns of translation equivalent learning. At smaller vocabulary sizes, data matched the Preference Account, while at larger vocabulary sizes they matched the Neutral Account. Our findings show that patterns of translation equivalent learning emerge predictably from the word learning process, and potentially reveal a qualitative shift in translation equivalent learning as bilingual children develop and learn more words.

Special Needs Assessment in Bilingual School-Age Children in Germany

Educational and (psycho-)linguistic research on L1 and L2 acquisition in bilingual children sketches them as a group of language learners varying in many aspects. However, most studies to date have based evaluations of language proficiency or new assessment tools on data from heritage children, while studies on the appropriateness of assessment tools for school-age refugee children remain a notable exception. This study focuses on the standardized assessment tool BUEGA for primary school children, which is, among others, a widespread tool for the assessment of pedagogical support or special needs (SN) in Germany. We compare the performance of 12 typically developing monolinguals (MoTD: 7;3–12;1), 14 heritage-bilinguals (BiTD: 7;1–13;4, L1 Turkish and Arabic), 12 refugee- students (BiTD: 8;7–13;1, L1 Arabic), and 7 children with developmental language disorders (DLD: 7;7–13;9) on the subtests of grammar, word-reading, and spelling. Overall results show that refugee-BiTDs perform in the (monolingual) pathology range. No significant differences emerged between students with DLD and typically developing (TD) refugee students. Considering the assessment of school-related language performance, bilingual refugees are at risk of misdiagnosis, along with the well-known effects of educational disadvantage. This particularly applies to children with low socioeconomic status (SES). Looking beyond oral language competencies and using test combinations can help exclude language disorders in school-age children with limited L2 proficiency.

Vocabulary production in toddlers from low-income immigrant families: evidence from children exposed to Romanian-Italian and Nigerian English-Italian.

The relationship between first and second language in early vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children is still debated in the literature. This study compared the expressive vocabulary of 39 equivalently low-SES two-year-old bilingual children from immigrant families with different heritage languages (Romanian vs. Nigerian English) and the same majority language (Italian). Vocabulary size, vocabulary composition and translation equivalents (TEs) were assessed using the Italian/L1 versions of the CDI. Higher vocabulary in Italian than in the heritage language emerged in both groups. Moreover, Romanian-Italian-speaking children produced higher proportions of TEs than Nigerian English-Italian-speaking children, suggesting that L1-L2 phonological similarity facilitates the acquisition of cross-linguistic synonyms.

Acquisition of meaning in bilingual children: Interference, translation and errors

Abstract Even though the process of the acquisition of phonology and syntax in bilingual children resembles that of monolinguals, vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children heavily depends on the input in each language. Bialystok (2004, p. 66) holds that “it may be that the acquisition of syntax and phonology is adequately triggered by exposure to the language, but vocabulary needs to be learned”. Children appear to have the capacity for acquiring more than the basic volume of vocabulary necessary for one language system. The aim of the present paper is to examine the following aspects: the processes of the acquisition of meaning; the manifestation of interference, transfer and borrowing; the task of finding translation equivalents; errors in vocabulary usage in bilingual children.

The contribution of phonological and morphological awareness in Chinese–English bilingual reading acquisition

The current study examined the contribution of cross-language phonological and morphological awareness to reading acquisition in bilingual children. Participants were 140 children (M age = 8.26 years) between Grades 1–4 who learned Chinese as their first language and English as their second language. Awareness of phoneme, onset-rime, compound structures and polysemy (i.e. words with multiple meanings) were measured using conceptually comparable tasks in both languages. Oral vocabulary, single word reading, and reading comprehension were also assessed. Path analysis revealed significant direct effects from Chinese rime awareness to both English word reading and reading comprehension. English phoneme awareness also had a significant direct effect on Chinese word reading. There was a significant direct effect from Chinese polyseme identification to English reading comprehension. Awareness of compound structure in one language also had indirect effects on reading outcomes in the other language via within-language compound structure awareness. These finding provided evidence for bi-directional cross-language phonological and morphological transfer in Chinese–English bilingual reading acquisition.

Vocabulary does not equal language, but neither does morphosyntax

The study of bilingual development has been, and must be, an interdisciplinary endeavor; Carroll (Carroll) presents us with a perspective from within one particular discipline, that of generative linguistics. From this vantage point, she provides us perhaps most importantly with the reminder that language is not a unitary construct, and cautions against extrapolating from findings on the learning of one particular aspect of language, such as vocabulary, to language acquisition more broadly. I wholeheartedly agree (for a similar point, see Paradis & Grüter, 2014). I do not agree, however, with Carroll's implication that such unwarranted extrapolation is characteristic of current research on input and bilingual development. A number of recent studies have looked specifically at the differential relation between input (in a wide sense) and bilingual children's acquisition of different linguistic phenomena. Unsworth (2014), for example, reported different effects of input variation on Dutch–English bilingual children's acquisition of grammatical gender versus indefinite object scrambling.

Is There any Difference Between ‘She Gave a Book to Her Daughter’ and ‘She Gave Her Daughter a Book’? English-Spanish Bilingual Children's Acquisition of Ditransitive Constructions

The present study seeks to provide an answer for the syntactic dichotomy in the derivation of the so-called ditransitive constructions in line with their acquisition. The focus is placed on the ditransitive verb “give” as it appears in the spontaneous production of three Spanish/English bilingual children. The analysis of the data tries to establish whether the acquisition of ditransitive structures complies with the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis, Case Theory and the input to which children are exposed. Our findings have confirmed that the latter is the most reliable index which determines the order of acquisition.

Early preschool processing abilities predict subsequent reading outcomes in bilingual Spanish–Catalan children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have severe language difficulties without showing hearing impairments, cognitive deficits, neurological damage or socio-emotional deprivation. However, previous studies have shown that children with SLI show some cognitive and literacy problems. Our study analyses the relationship between preschool cognitive and linguistic abilities and the later development of reading abilities in Spanish–Catalan bilingual children with SLI. The sample consisted of 17 bilingual Spanish–Catalan children with SLI and 17 age-matched controls. We tested eight distinct processes related to phonological, attention, and language processing at the age of 6 years and reading at 8 years of age.Results show that bilingual Spanish–Catalan children with SLI show significantly lower scores, as compared to typically developing peers, in phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid automatized naming (RAN), together with a lower outcome in tasks measuring sentence repetition and verbal fluency. Regarding attentional processes, bilingual Spanish–Catalan children with SLI obtained lower scores in auditory attention, but not in visual attention. At the age of 8 years Spanish–Catalan children with SLI had lower scores than their age-matched controls in total reading score, letter identification (decoding), and in semantic task (comprehension). Regression analyses identified both phonological awareness and verbal fluency at the age of 6 years to be the best predictors of subsequent reading performance at the age of 8 years. Our data suggest that language acquisition problems and difficulties in reading acquisition in bilingual children with SLI might be related to the close interdependence between a limitation in cognitive processing and a deficit at the linguistic level.Learning Outcomes: After reading this article, readers will be able to: identify their understanding of the relation between language difficulties and reading outcomes; explain how processing abilities influence reading performance in bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with SLI; and recognize the relation between language and reading via a developmental model in which the phonological system is considered central for the development of decoding abilities and comprehension.

Dialect Density in Bilingual Puerto Rican Spanish-English Speaking Children.

It is still largely unknown how the two phonological systems of bilingual children interact. In this exploratory study, we examine children's use of dialect features to determine how their speech sound systems interact. Six monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking children and 6 bilingual Puerto Rican Spanish-English speaking children, ages 5-7 years, were included in the current study. Children's single word productions were analyzed for (1) dialect density and (2) frequency of occurrence of dialect features (after Oetting & McDonald, 2002). Nonparametric statistical analyses were used to examine differences within and across language groups. Results indicated that monolinguals and bilinguals exhibited similar dialect density, but differed on the types of dialect features used. Findings are discussed within the theoretical framework of the Dual Systems Model (Paradis, 2001) of language acquisition in bilingual children.

Asymmetries in phonological development: the case of word-final cluster acquisition in Welsh–English bilingual children

This study provides the first systematic account of word-final cluster acquisition in bilingual children. To this end, forty Welsh-English bilingual children differing in language dominance and age (2;6 to 5;0) participated in a picture-naming task in English and Welsh. The results revealed significant age and dominance effects on cluster acquisition, with greater overall accuracy on the English clusters. Interestingly, although the Welsh-dominant children outperformed the English-dominant ones on the Welsh clusters, they did not exhibit a concomitant lag on the English clusters. It is argued that this asymmetry is a direct reflection of the sociolinguistic situation in Wales with English as the majority language and Welsh the minority language. The study also revealed accelerated rates of acquisition for English clusters compared with age-matched monolinguals reported elsewhere (Templin, 1957), thereby supporting claims that bilingual contexts may have a facilitative effect on phonological acquisition (Goldstein & Bunta, 2012; Grech & Dodd, 2008).

Acquiring complex structures under minority language conditions: Bilingual acquisition of plural morphology in Welsh

This study explored the effects of quantity and quality of input on bilingual children's acquisition of complex plural morphology in Welsh. Study 1 explored the quality of adult input and revealed target-like marking of plural forms in naturalistic adult speech. Study 2 presented eighty-eight 7–11-year-old children, across three bilingual language groups (L1 Welsh, 2L1, and L2 Welsh), with a plural production task. Results revealed performances approaching L1 adult norms among L1 Welsh-speaking bilinguals, but delayed progression among 2L1 and L2 Welsh bilinguals, although analyses of errors revealed various levels of structural knowledge. Forms requiring the addition of a plural suffix were less difficult to acquire than those involving alterations to the root, with each type acquired with greater levels of accuracy with increasing levels of exposure to the language. The implications of these findings for our understanding of bilingual acquisition of complex structures under minority language conditions are discussed.

Comments on the paper Gender acquisition in bilingual children: French–German, Italian–German, Spanish–German and Italian–French

The article by Eichler, Jansen, and Muller presents a genuine and impressive contribution to the study of bilingual first acquisition in general and to the analysis of gender acquisition in particular. Analyzing the transparency of the gender systems in different pairs (French- German, Italian-German, Spanish-German, and Italian-French) and looking at different acquisition paths (i.e. balanced and unbalanced acquisition), the authors claim that not only gender rules but also individual strategies in the number of noun types acquired affect the accuracy of gender assign- ment in child speech. Moreover, the study does not corroborate (Eichler, 2012), as happened in former studies, that unbalanced acquisition tends to result in not acquiring specific linguistic aspects (here: gender; see however the discussion on neuter in German in section 3.3). It is rather claimed that the low amount of production (here: number of noun types in the weaker language)- and maybe of input-might lead to different, incomplete analyses (here: to a low accuracy in gender assignment).The authors provide a good overview of previous studies on the acquisition of gender in mono- lingual and bilingual contexts, arguing that Romance languages are more transparent and thus easier to acquire when it comes to gender assignment. In fact, the reliability of gender cues is shown to differ between the languages under discussion, Spanish and Italian having the most transparent rules, followed by French and, finally, German (see also Eichler, 2012). It seems that gender mark- ing (and whether case and number are also marked and thus co-occur with gender in determiner phrases) affects the acquisition of gender as well.In sum, the present article suggests that it is worth having a closer look at the individual develop- ment of the two languages in bilinguals (in this study, the production of noun types in each child has been explored), for it might explain delays in acquisition despite the transparency of the gender system. A reduced input, and therefore a reduced lexicon, seems to affect the gender accuracy rates.Future studies on both monolingual and bilingual development in different acquisition contexts, including languages with no gender (e.g. Turkish) and those without articles, which mark gender on nouns (Arabic languages, Russian), might promote the idea that not only the languages involved can predict inaccurate gender assignment but also the acquisition context-primarily the amount of noun types acquired and uttered.Eicher et al.'s results are helpful to shed light on further research issues, such as the incomplete acquisition of languages in the context of migration. As Montrul (2008) has shown in her book, in which former and new studies are discussed, different results will be reached at the end state of acquisition depending on the acquisition settings. Early bilingualism in children might lead to the successful mastery of both linguistic systems but could also result in the mastery of only and to the incomplete acquisition of the other system. This is more likely to occur in the well-studied strategy one person-one language than in other situations because only parent is able to sup- port the minority language. Acquiring two languages in the context of migration on the other hand-according to Montrul-might result in the successful acquisition of both languages given that both parents provide input in the minority language. These findings are very interesting and have a huge sociopolitical impact: not only do they revalue the acquisition setting one at home-one outside (for an overview of multilingual acquisition settings, see Romaine, 1995) and thus the importance of supporting heritage languages. These results also encourage educational programs such as the dual-language and thus enforce bilingual programs.As, for example, Mueller Gathercole (2002) has shown studying Spanish-English children in the United States, less gender agreement errors are stated in Spanish in those children who have the greatest amount of input in Spanish. …

The influence of bilingualism on speech production: A systematic review

Children who are bilingual and have speech sound disorder are likely to be under-referred, possibly due to confusion about typical speech acquisition in bilingual children. To investigate what is known about the impact of bilingualism on children's acquisition of speech in English to facilitate the identification and treatment of bilingual children with speech sound disorder. A systematic review of studies from the last 50 years was conducted. Studies investigating speech acquisition in bilingual infants and children (where one language was English) were identified through searching seven electronic databases, bibliographies of relevant articles and e-mailing authors. Sixty-six studies investigating bilingual speech production met inclusion criteria, with 53 describing typically developing children and 13 describing children with speech sound disorder. The 66 studies were analysed thematically and summarized in terms of methods, key findings and underlying theories. There was limited evidence to suggest that bilingual children develop speech at a slower rate than their monolingual peers; however, there was evidence for qualitative differences and increased variation in speech production. Nearly all studies provide evidence for transfer between the two phonological and language structures, although the amount of transfer varied between studies. There was evidence of positive and negative transfer of features from the dominant language (L1) to the second language (L2) as well as from L2 to L1. Positive transfer became more evident with increased age and length of exposure to a second language. More recently researchers have moved away from investigating whether there are one or two phonological systems and accept that there are two systems that interact. Interest has shifted to examining how phonological systems interact and to identifying factors that influence interactions. The review revealed a number of inconsistencies in the findings of studies due to differences in methodology, languages investigated and degree of language exposure. Overall, measurement issues were addressed well but most studies provided limited sample information about language experience, schooling and socio-economic status. There are differences in speech sound acquisition between monolingual and bilingual children in terms of rate and patterns of error, with both positive and negative transfer occurring in bilingual children.

Gender acquisition in bilingual children: French–German, Italian–German, Spanish–German and Italian–French

This study compares gender acquisition within determiner phrases between monolingual German children and bilingual children acquiring a Romance language (French, Spanish, Italian) and German or two Romance languages simultaneously. Furthermore, the two languages within the bilingual children are compared to one another with respect to the acquisition of gender. The influence of different factors on gender acquisition is discussed: language dominance, transparency of gender marking and/or reliability of gender cues in the respective languages. It shows that bilingual children can acquire the gender systems in both languages just as monolinguals and that bilingualism per se does not have a delaying effect. In bilingual children, as in monolingual children, German is most problematic in terms of gender acquisition. French represents only slightly more problems than Spanish and Italian, the latter two-gender systems being acquired with ease. Since adult phonological gender rules are characterized by their rather low validity in German and in French, lower accuracy with German gender indicates that the way how gender is marked in the languages influences acquisition more than the validity of gender rules; in German and not in French, gender marking is intertwined with case and number markings. Although our results suggest that gender accuracy depends on the language acquired, some children do not fit into the expected pattern of gender acquisition with respect to the analysed languages. Interestingly, all these children show a language imbalance. Therefore, we claim that the children’s gender accuracy can be predicted on the basis of the language acquired, but language dominance can blur this ranking. Interestingly, it is not the case that gender is delayed in the weak language of the bilingual children; language imbalance has the effect that the child may not tend towards the predicted side of an accuracy ranking (for the weaker language). A further result of this study is that accuracy on neuter gender is lower in bilingual German than in monolingual German, suggesting that the fact that the bilingual children acquire a two-gender system simultaneously with a three-gender system has a delaying effect for target-like neuter marking.

Le Carte Blanc or la Carte Blanche? Bilingual Children's Acquisition of French Adjective Agreement

Because of less exposure to either language, bilingual children's language acquisition can be delayed relative to monolingual children in domains related to input frequency. This study predicted that the acquisition of gender agreement with adjectives in French would be delayed in bilingual children on a picture description task. The results showed that French‐English bilingual preschoolers were less accurate with feminine noun‐adjective agreement than monolinguals, a difference attributable to the differences in vocabulary scores, but not significantly less accurate with feminine determiner‐adjective agreement. The bilinguals were significantly less accurate with determiner‐noun agreement, a difference not attributable to vocabulary score differences. We argue that fewer input tokens lead to delayed gender agreement and fewer input types lead to delayed gender assignment.

Bilingual children's acquisition of the past tense: a usage-based approach

Bilingual and monolingual children's (mean age=4;10) elicited production of the past tense in both English and French was examined in order to test predictions from Usage-Based theory regarding the sensitivity of children's acquisition rates to input factors such as variation in exposure time and the type/token frequency of morphosyntactic structures. Both bilingual and monolingual children were less accurate with irregular than regular past tense forms in both languages. Bilingual children, as a group, were less accurate than monolinguals with the English regular and irregular past tense, and with the French irregular past tense, but not with the French regular past tense. However, bilingual children were as accurate as monolinguals with the past tense in their language of greater exposure, except for English irregular verbs. It is argued that these results support the view that children's acquisition rates are sensitive to input factors, but with some qualifications.

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

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.