Bilingual Acquisition Research Articles

재외동포 다문화가정 부모와 자녀의 언어·문화 정체의식 발달 연구 -프랑스 거주 한-불 가정 이중언어 교육과 정체성 함양을 중심으로-

This study used qualitative research methods to analyze the practical aspects of bilingual education and the processes of linguistic and cultural identity formation among the second generation of Korean-French multicultural families settled in France through international marriage. The findings are as follows: First, children's acquisition of bilingualism is influenced by their parents' attitudes toward bilingual education, with the French father's role having a greater impact on a family's linguistic balance than the Korean mother's. These findings highlight how parents' linguistic roles affect the dynamics of culture and language within a family, necessitating a reconsideration of bilingual education. Second, the challenges of bilingual education include setting a standard for bilingualism, addressing issues related to language mixing, and managing differences in the status of languages. Third, the correlation between bilingualism and identity formation suggests that when an individual's linguistic identity and cultural belonging are harmoniously integrated, a stronger sense of identity emerges. Additionally, the linguistic and cultural challenges faced by bilingual children and the process of overcoming those challenges are integral to their identity formation process. This research offers valuable insights into bilingual education for children from multicultural families and their cultural identity development, addressing the relatively insufficient studies on the complex identity issues faced by children of multicultural families living abroad.

Neighbourhood Density in Spoken Word Recognition: An Eye-Tracking Study

Bilingual acquisition research has so far focused on comparisons with monolingual children in terms of linguistic features, performance on standardised tests, input, etc. In contrast, new methodologies, such as eye-tracking, can offer a more detailed understanding of the way bilinguals use both language systems. Eye fixations provide evidence of online processing. This study investigates spoken word recognition in children and adults. Word retrieval is affected by the number of words that minimally differ from the target (neighbourhood). Previous research found that only bilingual adults activated a similar-sounding competitor from the other language. As children have been found to be sensitive to neighbourhood density from quite early in previous research, similar results might be expected. This study includes 56 subjects (11 German–English bilingual and 12 English monolingual children, aged 8; 21 English monolingual and 12 German–English bilingual adults). The subjects’ online processing of competing items for high- and low-density targets was compared. The results confirm that neighbourhood density affects word recognition in adults and children. The bilingual children activated same-language competitors as well as similar-sounding competitors from the other language. Adults and children differed in terms of latencies, and the monolinguals were more accurate than the bilingual subjects.

Testing the Early Differentiation Hypothesis: A Case Study of a Spanish-English Bilingual Child

This paper contributes to the field of simultaneous bilingual first language acquisition (2L1). Specifically, it examines the developmental stages of a bilingual child in two languages, Spanish and English. The analysis is performed by analyzing bilingual acquisition data from CHILDES database with the CLAN program. The study aims to support several hypotheses proposed in the field of 2L1 (e. g., The Early Differentiation Hypothesis). The results show that the developmental stages of a bilingual child correspond to the stages of a monolingual child acquiring a language; the only difference is the number of languages that is being acquired. The data also show that the child’s caregivers use certain strategies in their socialization as the important prerequisite for 2L1 (e.g., frequency of input, discourse strategies and maximal engagement with a minority language available in the input). The results of the study confirm the Early Differentiation Hypothesis that argues for the language-specific morphosyntactic patterns in child’s grammar. The study has very important pedagogical implications for parents who raise their children in bi- and multilingual families.

Exploration on the Influence of Bilingualism on Language Production

The ability to speak two languages has a significant impact on language production, cognitive function, linguistic aptitude and neurological processes. This study explores the acquisition of bilingualism, its influence on cognition and language development as well as neurobiological implications in comparison with monolingual speech. Bilingual individuals demonstrate improved executive functioning abilities such as flexibility while exhibiting deferred decline through regularly switching between both languages spoken. Linguistic proficiency is affected by ecological factors like age at which learning began or attitudes towards multilingual states that affect usage frequency across differing environments. Although word retrieval can become an impediment for those who are bilingual; however advantages lie in increased vocabulary range alongside metalinguistic awareness gained from diverse communication scenarios. The structure of brain regions linked to processing multilinguality also correlate intrinsically during decision making. The future research direction benefits studying cross-cultural creative expression impacting effective simultaneous use .Enhancing appreciation amongst speakers via comprehension urges us further into grasping influences behind producing multicultural forms essential within our modern day society.

Bilingual acquisition as the locus of syntactic change

Abstract Some grammatical phenomena are more resistant to diachronic change than others. The syntactic core is particularly resilient, raising the question why this is the case and what causes the least vulnerable properties to change. Since fundamental alterations of grammars do not occur across the lifespan of adults, first language acquisition is commonly considered to be the main locus of syntactic change. Under the assumption that language contact leads to cross-linguistic interaction, early bilinguals have been claimed to be the main agents of change. I revisit this debate, focusing on head directionality and V2. Summaries of studies of various acquisition types lead to the conclusion that reanalysis in core syntax does not happen in the course of neither monolingual nor bilingual L1 acquisition. Contrary to hypotheses entertained in diachronic linguistics, neither language contact nor structural ambiguity/complexity has this effect. For core properties to change in L1, the triggering information must be contained in the input. Insufficient exposure, as in heritage language acquisition, can cause morphosyntactic change, though not in the syntactic core. Only second language acquisition exhibits such effects. L2 learners are thus the most likely agents of fundamental syntactic change. I conclude that explanations of the resilience of syntactic phenomena cannot rely exclusively on structural aspects. It results from an interaction of syntactic and developmental factors, defined by grammatical constraint, acquisition principles, and processing demands.

Spanish-Speaking Mothers' Experiences of School-Based Speech Therapy.

Spanish-speaking families are a growing population that speech-language pathologists must be prepared to work with. To provide culturally responsive intervention, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) must understand the perspectives of Spanish-speaking caregivers when providing intervention. These values and experiences may differ from those of monolingual, mainstream culture. Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these experiences is also important. In this qualitative study, we explore the experiences of Spanish-speaking mothers whose children have received school-based speech-language intervention and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We interviewed five Spanish-speaking mothers who were identified as having bilingual children who had or were currently receiving speech therapy, all through the public school system. The mothers participated in a semistructured interview to share their experiences with their children receiving intervention. We analyzed the transcripts through interpretative phenomenological analysis to identify salient themes among participants. All research team members reviewed and agreed upon themes to ensure credibility. The findings revealed six group experiential themes: (a) lack of services and frustration with and barriers to accessing services, (b) greater improvements in English compared with Spanish, (c) bilingual speech therapy has positive effects on children and Spanish-speaking mothers, (d) family involvement in speech therapy is highly important, (e) family stress related to speech difficulties, and (f) pandemic negatively impacted children's socialization and learning. The results are discussed in the context of equity. Through understanding the experiences of Spanish-speaking mothers, SLPs can work to ensure service levels comparable with those of monolingual children and support bilingual acquisition.

Brain gray matter morphometry relates to onset age of bilingualism and theory of mind in young and older adults

Lifelong bilingualism may result in neural reserve against decline not only in the general cognitive domain, but also in social cognitive functioning. In this study, we show the brain structural correlates that are associated with second language age of acquisition (L2AoA) and theory of mind (the ability to reason about mental states) in normal aging. Participants were bilingual adults (46 young, 50 older) who completed a theory-of-mind task battery, a language background questionnaire, and an anatomical MRI scan to obtain cortical morphometric features (i.e., gray matter volume, thickness, and surface area). Findings indicated a theory-of-mind decline in older adults compared to young adults, controlling for education and general cognition. Importantly, earlier L2AoA and better theory-of-mind performance were associated with larger volume, higher thickness, and larger surface area in the bilateral temporal, medial temporal, superior parietal, and prefrontal brain regions. These regions are likely to be involved in mental representations, language, and cognitive control. The morphometric association with L2AoA in young and older adults were comparable, but its association with theory of mind was stronger in older adults than young adults. The results demonstrate that early bilingual acquisition may provide protective benefits to intact theory-of-mind abilities against normal age-related declines.

Comprehension of who- and which-questions in monolingual and bilingual acquisition: Explicating the difficulty of set restriction

Objectives: Object wh-questions are more difficult for monolingual children to comprehend than subject questions. Especially difficult are object- which questions that appear to be significantly more difficult than both (object/subject) who and subject- which questions. Our research examines the manifestation of this difficulty among bilingual preschool children (L1-English, L2-Hebrew) as compared with their Hebrew monolingual peers, exploring the two languages of the bilinguals. Approach: Using a character selection task, the empirical goal of the study is to analyze the differences between monolinguals and bilinguals and between the languages of the bilinguals. The theoretical goal is to explain the difficulty which cuts across the two populations, namely, the comprehension of object- which questions. Data and Analysis: A total of A total of 55 preschool children, aged 4.4–6.4, participated in the study: 20 monolinguals and 35 bilinguals. A mixed linear model analysis, a general linear model, multiple linear regression analyses, and chi-square tests were used to analyze the data. Findings: (1) Monolingual and bilingual children (in their L2) have similar trajectories: object- which questions present difficulties to all participants, and their comprehension systematically follows the comprehension of object- who questions; (2) similar trajectories are also found in the two languages of the bilingual children, with L1-English object- which questions lagging behind L2-Hebrew object- which questions. Originality: The comparison between the two populations, and especially between the two languages of the bilinguals, led us to take a closer look at the syntactic processing of which-questions. We explored the possibility that the set restriction computation is the source of children’s difficulty, overloading their working memory resources. Significance: Our research demonstrates that monolingual and bilingual (syntactic) development is essentially the same. However, when syntactic processes interact with additional factors, such as working memory resources and language-specific properties, as is the case in object- which questions in Hebrew versus English, the gap between the two populations might widen.

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.

Research on Bilingual Acquisition Based on Ambiguity Sentences

Language ambiguity is one of the difficulties in learning a language. Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn because of its various ambiguities. This paper mainly explores the phenomenon of ambiguity in Chinese, and summarizes the research status of ambiguity among domestic and foreign scholars. The phenomenon of ambiguity is analyzed by reading literature and searching example sentences in the corpus. First of all, through reading the literature to understand the definition and classification of ambiguity. Then the impact of ambiguity on bilingual learners from the phonetic, lexical and grammatical aspects is analyzed. Among them, the grammatical aspect is further divided into the ambiguity of the syntactic plane, the ambiguity of the semantic plane and the ambiguity of the pragmatic aspect; finally, corresponding suggestions for teaching Chinese as a foreign language are put forward from the aspects of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. For teachers, it is not only necessary to help students establish a correct attitude to deal with ambiguity, but also to avoid strange phenomena through some teaching methods such as pinyin or Chinese characters. And to help students develop good study habits, second language learners should really understand the meaning of the sentences, not just memorize each sentence mechanically. At the same time, teachers can create various contexts to help bilingual learners understand sentences and eliminate ambiguity.

A comparative study on the development of Chinese and English abilities of Chinese primary school students through two bilingual reading modes: human-AI robot interaction and paper books.

To address the challenges encountered by Chinese primary school students, particularly left-behind and migrant children, who exhibit a preference for animations, video games, and short videos over reading books and struggle with Chinese-English bilingual skills, this study introduces an educational robot AI-assisted method for simultaneous bilingual reading. To assess the effectiveness of this method, a 6-month Chinese-English bilingual extracurricular reading comparative experiment was conducted involving 85 grade 5 students from two classes in a primary school in Hangzhou, China. The AI-assisted class freely read 100 bilingual/English electronic picture books and 200 Chinese electronic classic serial picture books by employing the AI-assisted human-computer interactive electronic reading mode of the "Educational Robot+Audio Electronic Picture Book+Character-play Based Reading." In contrast, the paper book group read the same content presented in the traditional paper book format, following the "regular independent reading" mode. Post-experimental analyses were conducted employing t-tests and MANCOVA and the results revealed that: the primary factors influencing reading effectiveness are the choice of reading materials, reading tools, and reading mode, while reading time does not emerge as the principal influencing factor. Furthermore, students in the AI class demonstrated significant enhancements in bilingual reading motivation, reading amount, reading comprehension, independent learning ability, pronunciation proficiency, and test scores compared to their peers in the paper book class. The AI-assisted reading mode utilizing educational robots garnered positive feedback from teachers, parents, and students. It offers the potential to effectively substitute parental involvement in parent-child reading and English tutoring, while also enabling the simultaneous acquisition of bilingual proficiency in both Chinese and English. This approach proves to be highly effective, cost-efficient, and convenient, particularly for enhancing children's foreign language abilities. Moreover, it fosters positive reading habits and independent learning skills among primary school students, contributes to the establishment of lofty aspirations, and enhances bilingual performance. Overall, this innovative mode offers an effective means of facilitating children's acquisition of bilingualism and foreign language skills, as well as promoting reading education.

Home language environment and bilingual acquisition in preschoolers from low-income homes: differential impact of language and literacy related factors

ABSTRACT This paper explores home language environment and bilingual language acquisition of 3- to 4-year-old children who come from low-income homes, based on the results of a questionnaire and a battery of bilingual language tests taken by 32 Chinese and Malay preschoolers in Singapore. Assessments included receptive vocabulary, depth of vocabulary, phonological awareness and print concept in both English and Mother Tongue (Chinese or Malay). The results were different for language and literacy factors. Home language use had no impact on test scores. However, literacy-related factors showed significant impact on nearly all the test results in both languages of the bilingual child. Reasons for lack of impact of home language use could be the quality of language used at home, inaccuracies in parent reports and the long hours that parents spend working outside the home. The authors conclude with emphasising the need for early reading intervention in order to improve bilingual language acquisition.

Metaphor production in the bilingual acquisition of English and Polish.

Metaphor acquisition research has focused mostly on metaphor comprehension in monolingual children. Ours is the first study to examine metaphor production in young bilinguals. A quantitative method was employed whereby sixty-two children aged three to six, with English and Polish, were tested on their ability to produce primary (e.g., a long day) and perceptual resemblance metaphors (e.g., You're my sunshine) in response to elicitation tasks. A univariate ANOVA revealed that the main factors to affect the production of conventional metaphors in bilingual children are their chronological age and their verbal skills in both English and Polish. No significant effect was found for nonverbal IQ, metaphor type, or testing language. These results are discussed in the context of both Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which has been concerned with the study of primary (and other conceptual) metaphors, and Structure Mapping Theory, which has focused on the use of perceptual resemblance metaphors. Usage-Based Theory is brought in to explain lexical effects in metaphor production.

Reflect, Reframe, and Re-Imagine Theory and Practice in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences: Introduction to the Forum.

Reflect, Reframe, and Re-Imagine Theory and Practice in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences: Introduction to the Forum.

Rhetorical question comprehension by Italian–German bilingual children

This study investigates for the first time the comprehension of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in bilingual children. RhQs are non-canonical questions, as they are not used to request information, but to express the speaker’s belief that the answer is already obvious. This special pragmatic meaning often arises by means of specific prosodic and lexical-syntactic cues. Being childhood learners, children have to acquire the concept of rhetoricity, but being bilinguals, they further need to acquire the different cues marking RhQs in their two languages. We tested 85 bilingual children (aged 6–9 years) with Italian as heritage language (HL) and German as majority language (ML) in both of their languages, using a forced-choice comprehension task. Our results show that RhQ comprehension improves with age in both languages. Bilingual children are able to exploit prosodic and syntactic cues to comprehend RhQs in their ML and HL with a slight advantage in the ML. This advantage could be either an effect of the cues used in the experiments in the two languages or of a higher proficiency in the ML. In addition, our results point to a later acquisition of prosodic rhetorical cues, which has implications for bilingual acquisition of non-canonicity in general.

Bilingualism and Development of Literacy in Children: A Systematic Review.

The importance of biliteracy in bilingual children's development has been widely investigated and discussed for the last several decades, suggesting beneficial effects of writing and reading in two languages for bilingual children as well as for adult second language learners. To analyze research on the link between bilingualism and literacy development in two or more languages and the factors that may influence a successful or problematic biliteracy acquisition. RQ (1): What is the relationship between bilingualism and literacy of bilingual children? RQ (2): What strategies are used to develop biliteracy? The review analyzes 50 studies of literacy development in bilingual children. The selected articles have been separated based on their methodology: 25 articles gave a critical analysis of more than 1,100 studies on the topic, strengthening the theoretical basis of existing research, and 25 other articles were empirical research articles demonstrating practical evidence for the former. Our analysis revealed that literacy in bilinguals, or biliteracy, can be seen as a necessary condition for fluent development of bilingualism, though it is not a necessary condition (which is explained by the difference between structures of specific languages and writing systems, instruction in literacy, and cognitive baggage invoked by the task used to measure the skill) (Bialystok, 2002). Research suggests that bilingualism impacts children's ultimate acquisition of literacy via the beneficial effects of bilingualism overall: advanced biliteracy boosts the development of phonological and phonemic awareness and metacognitive abilities. Thus, biliteracy can be considered as an advantage in terms of maintaining bilingual acquisition in general and developing writing skills in particular. There is a lack of studies on the development of writing skills in different educational contexts, across countries and cultures, which must be addressed and complemented by new empirical research. Research will enable policymakers to improve educational programs in accordance with the needs of bilingual children, who are the majority in the current global population.

NEUROCORRELATES BETWEEN THEORY-OF-MIND AND BILINGUALISM IN GRAY MATTER VOLUME OF YOUNG AND OLDER ADULTS

Abstract The experience of being bilingual may accrue cognitive reserve against age-related declines in older adults. Early bilingualism, e.g., second language age-of-acquisition (L2AoA), has been shown to be associated with better theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in older adults (Yow et al., 2021). Here, we aim to understand the brain structural correlates associated with bilingualism and ToM performance in normal aging. Forty-six young (YA, aged 19-30, M=21.87) and 51 older adult bilinguals (OA, aged 54-77, M=63.61) completed 1) ToM assessments, where they viewed vignettes and answered questions about the protagonists’ mental states, 2) an anatomical MRI scan, 3) a demographic questionnaire including L2AoA and years of education, and 4) a general cognitive ability assessment by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test. As expected, ANCOVA on ToM composite scores revealed a significant main effect of age – YA showed better ToM performance than OA, F(1,93)=9.48, p=.003, controlling for education and MoCA scores. Importantly, MRI data were preprocessed to obtain gray matter volume (GMV), proxy of neuronal density, of 430 brain regions. Partial least square correlation analysis identified one significant multivariate pattern linking individual differences in GMV with ToM score and L2AoA (48.7% covariance explained, p=.014). Regardless of age, larger GMV in several regions including prefrontal, frontal, medial temporal, and superior temporal cortices were associated with earlier L2AoA (p=.003) and higher ToM score (p=.004), indicating shared variance between ToM and L2AoA in brain morphology. Findings suggest that earlier bilingual acquisition might promote brain maturation that would preserve ToM ability well into later stages of life.

Interaction in bilingual early speech acquisition: Acceleration in the bilingual acquisition of English liquids for English-Spanish bilinguals

This study contributes to the understanding of bilingual speech sound acquisition, as it explores substitution patterns by preschoolers undergoing a language shift. Specifically, it investigates the distribution of glides [j w] as substituted sounds for rhotics and laterals sounds in English and Spanish. Spanish glides [j] and [w] share acoustic and phonological features with the high vowels [i] and [u], whereas English includes both glides in the consonant inventory. In English, the substitution pattern of gliding ([w]abbit) is frequently found in preschoolers, but it does not occur in monolingual Spanish-speaking children. Gliding was studied in Spanish-English bilingual and monolingual English-speaking children born and raised in a southwest border region of the U.S. Single word outputs of 61 typically-developing children were analyzed. Twenty-two (36%) exhibited gliding (11 bilingual children and 11 monolingual children). Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study shows evidence of distributed phonological systems and between-language interactions (Paradis, 2001). Gliding was found to occur significantly more often in English monolingual than Spanish-English bilingual children. Additionally, cross-linguistic effects were found in the Spanish data. These results indicate that maintenance of the minority language at home bootstraps the acquisition of English rhotics for these bilingual Spanish-English preschoolers in the borderlands.

Entropy convergence in early bilinguals' syntactic packaging.

A core question in developmental and cognitive research concerns the way linguistic variation affects the acquisition process. Previous research on monolinguals suggests that children, but not adults, tend to regularize inconsistent input, resulting in reduced variation. Some recent claims explain regularization as a general bias linked to cognitive load. However, little is known about bilingual acquisition contexts where children naturally experience both increased variability and cognitive load. This study investigated the impact of between- and within-language variability in syntactic packaging (i.e., how semantic elements are mapped onto syntactic units) on simultaneous bilinguals’ acquisition of motion event encoding. In this domain, French is considered highly variable, in contrast to low variability demonstrated by English. Based on this crosslinguistic contrast, 96 English–French bilingual children (aged 4–11 years) and 96 age-matched monolinguals of each language described 32 animated cartoons showing complex motion events. Children’s variability of selected syntactic patterns was measured using the information-theoretical concept of entropy. Results indicated that bilingual children significantly reduced syntactic variation relative to monolingual peers, but only in French, the more variable language. Moreover, bilingual children converged in entropy levels across the two languages and patterned mid-way between respective monolinguals. These findings suggest that the cognitive load inherent in bilingualism is not sufficient to explain reduced linguistic variation. Instead, the asymmetric drop in entropy highlights the strong impact of crosslinguistic differences and thus underlines the importance of taking language-specific factors into account in theories of cognitive load.

Usage-based approaches to child code-switching: State of the art and ways forward

Input-output effects have been the subject of keen research for several decades in the study of monolingual acquisition from a usage-based perspective (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011). However, for bilingual acquisition, similar studies are only beginning to emerge. One major challenge for such studies is to explain why young children switch between their two languages (e.g., Ich bin ready ‘I am’ ready ) even when they hear no such switching in their input. This article reviews a strand of recent studies in children aged two to three to explain this apparent paradox. It demonstrates how the focus on one aspect of input, the child’s own prior speech, can explain how and why code-switching occurs. The article examines a range of psycholinguistic processes, showing how they drive variation in children’s use of mixed utterances. Its main contribution lies in its summative value and the recommendations made for future research in early code-switching. • Studies of language input have explained many phenomena in monolingual acquisition. • Children’s input, and output, can also explain code-switching between two languages. • Bottom-up processes capture commonalities between child and adult code-switching. • Recommendations are made for future usage-based research in child code-switching.