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(1) Background: The complex phenomenon of German noun plural inflection is investigated in three groups of German-speaking kindergarten children: (a) monolinguals (1L1), (b) simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) also acquiring Croatian, and (c) successive bilinguals (L2) acquiring Turkish as L1. Predictions of the usage-based schema model and of Natural Morphology concerning different linguistic variables are used to explore their impact on plural acquisition in the three groups of children. (2) Methods: A longitudinal study (from mean age 3;1 to 4;8) is conducted using two procedures (a formal plural test and spontaneous recordings in kindergarten), and the data are analyzed using generalized linear (mixed-effects) regression models in R. (3) Results: All children produce more errors in the metalinguistically challenging test compared to spontaneous speech, with L2 children being particularly disadvantaged. Socioeconomic status (henceforth SES) and teachers' plural type frequency are most relevant for 1L1 children, and kindergarten exposure is more relevant for L2 children, while the linguistic variables are more important for 2L1 children. (4) Conclusions: The main predictions of the schema model and of Natural Morphology are largely confirmed. All of the linguistic variables investigated show significant effects in some analyses, but morphotactic transparency turns out to be the most relevant variable for all three groups of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the linguistic relativity principle (Whorf, 1956) by investigating the impact of grammatical gender on cognition in simultaneous bilinguals of three-gendered Ukrainian and Russian. It examines whether speakers of three-gendered languages show grammatical gender effects on categorisation, empirically addressing claims that such effects are insignificant due to the presence of the neuter gender (Sera et al., 2002). We conducted two experiments using a similarity judgement paradigm while manipulating the presence of neuter gender stimuli (Phillips & Boroditsky, 2003). Experiment 1, including neuter gender, revealed no significant effects, compatible with earlier studies on three-gendered languages. Conversely, Experiment 2, excluding neuter gender stimuli, showed significant language effects. Bilingual participants rated pairs as more similar when grammatical genders in both languages were congruent with the biological sex of a character. Significant effects were also found for pairs with mismatching grammatical genders in Ukrainian and Russian. Participants with higher proficiency in Ukrainian rated pairs as more similar when the grammatical gender of a noun in Ukrainian was congruent with the character’s biological sex, and incongruent in Russian. Our findings thus provide the first empirical demonstration that the exclusion of neuter gender online induces grammatical gender effects in speakers of three-gendered languages.

The knowledge we have about language and first language acquisition would not have been unveiled in the absence of previous efforts in collecting language data, e.g., recording the spontaneous interactions between children and adults. The CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 2000) gathers child speech in many of the world’s languages, including Croatian (documented in Kovačević’s 2002 corpus). In this paper, we describe the construction of MaLi, a corpus documenting the language productions of two bilingual children acquiring Croatian and Italian simultaneously. After a short survey of the methods used in collecting child language data with special regard to diary notes and audio recordings, we discuss the background and the details of the data collected in MaLi: we provide an overview of the sociolinguistic context of bilingual first language acquisition of the children observed and a description of the structure of the corpus. We first devote our attention to the data collection, management, and coding of the diary notes. Afterwards, we examine the collection and elaboration of the audio recordings and their ongoing transcription. In our concluding remarks, we offer a short assessment of the advantages and limits of the corpus along with a survey of the future possibilities for the use of this resource.

(1) Background: The complex phenomenon of German noun plural inflection is investigated in three groups of German-speaking kindergarten children: (a) monolinguals (1L1), (b) simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) also acquiring Croatian, and (c) successive bilinguals (L2) acquiring Turkish as L1. Predictions of the usage-based schema model and of Natural Morphology concerning different linguistic variables are used to explore their impact on plural acquisition in the three groups of children. (2) Methods: A longitudinal study (from mean age 3;1 to 4;8) is conducted using two procedures (a formal plural test and spontaneous recordings in kindergarten), and the data are analyzed using generalized linear (mixed-effects) regression models in R. (3) Results: All children produce more errors in the metalinguistically challenging test compared to spontaneous speech, with L2 children being particularly disadvantaged. Socioeconomic status (henceforth SES) and teachers’ plural type frequency are most relevant for 1L1 children, and kindergarten exposure is more relevant for L2 children, while the linguistic variables are more important for 2L1 children. (4) Conclusions: The main predictions of the schema model and of Natural Morphology are largely confirmed. All of the linguistic variables investigated show significant effects in some analyses, but morphotactic transparency turns out to be the most relevant variable for all three groups of children.

The study investigated the role of linguistic and cognitive factors in Turkish word reading fluency (WREAD) among second-grade Turkish–Arabic simultaneous bilingual and Turkish monolingual children. It specifically focused on the impact of phonological awareness (PA), phonological memory (PM), rapid automatized naming (RAN), morphological awareness (MA), morphological fluency (MF), processing speed (PS), and vocabulary knowledge (VK) on reading fluency.The study used a cross-sectional design and collected data from 127 children in Hatay, Turkey. The participants completed a battery of tests measuring PA, PM, RAN, MA, PS, VK, and WREAD. The tests were administered individually, and the scores, along with the time spent on each test, were recorded.Data from the tests were analyzed using SPSS 22.0. Independent samples t-tests were conducted to determine the differences between bilingual and monolingual children in the linguistic and cognitive measures. Pearson r correlation analyses were conducted to illustrate the relationship among the variables and stepwise regression analyses to explore the extent to which these variables explained the variance in WREAD.The findings highlighted significant differences between Turkish–Arabic bilingual and Turkish monolingual children in PA and PS. While MF and RAN explained WREAD in the bilingual group, MF and PA were the strongest predictors of WREAD in the monolingual children.This study is the first to investigate word reading development in Turkish–Arabic simultaneous bilingual children, contributing novel insights into literacy acquisition in simultaneous bilingualism. In addition, the concept of MF has been proposed in the literature as a distinct measurement from MA.The study expands the existing knowledge on bilingual reading development, emphasizing the importance of timed cognitive and linguistic variables in predicting WREAD. It also sheds light on the educational needs of bilingual children in the Turkish context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to investigate how syntactic and pragmatic features of Turkish word order are acquired by Turkish-English, Turkish-German and Turkish-Russian bilingual children. The data were collected from Turkish monolingual and bilingual children who were born in England, Germany and Russia and acquired Turkish as their heritage language. The findings of the study reveal that the Turkish monolingual children adopt the use of SOV order as canonical, but they also show sensitivity to the pragmatics of Turkish and use other orders from an early age. Turkish-German, Turkish-English and Turkish-Russian simultaneous bilingual children, on the other hand, showed different patterns of word order acquisition than their Turkish monolingual counterparts.

In bilingual children, more so than in monolingual children, comprehension abilities exceed production abilities. While this receptive-expressive gap in bilinguals has been well documented, little is known about its development. The present study tracked growth in the Spanish and English receptive and expressive vocabularies of 52 bilingual children from 4.5–10 years. The children's English vocabularies grew faster than their Spanish vocabularies, more so in the expressive domain than the receptive domain. The proportion of children who were English-dominant also increased more in the expressive than the receptive domain. By age 10, the children's expressive skills were almost always English dominant while their receptive skills were most frequently balanced. Among children who hear a heritage language at home and a societal language at school, trajectories of dual language development differs in the expressive and receptive domains. These longitudinal data suggest continuity between the receptive-expressive gap observed in bilingual children and the receptive bilingualism often observed in adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an innovative bilingual education program developed and implemented in 208 primary classes in Senegal from 2009 to 2018 by a Senegalese NGO working with the national Ministry of Education to address issues of quality in primary education. L'approche simultanée or simultaneous approach, also known as bilinguisme en temps réel or real-time bilingualism, developed organically through a consultative process between NGO development actors, university linguists and educators. Unlike the early-exit transitional bilingual programs previously piloted in Senegal that are common throughout West Africa, this program taught literacy, mathematics and the sciences in both a national language (Wolof or Pulaar) and French from the first year of primary school. Using data collected for an external evaluation conducted in 2018, along with follow-up research conducted in 2019 with designers and implementers of the simultaneous approach, this paper analyzes the effectiveness of the program and its implications for Senegal, where the Ministry of Education appears close to adopting a national language-in-education policy. There are also implications for the field of L1-based multilingual education, as ARED's simultaneous approach provides a refreshing new perspective on teaching and learning non-dominant and dominant languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the acceptability judgment task (AJT) and translation task (TT) in 10 simultaneous Turkish–Italian bilinguals with age-matched Turkish and Italian monolinguals as a control group. The position of subjects occurring with unaccusative verbs was investigated as the linguistic property. The results of the AJT in Turkish revealed no significant difference between the groups. However, in the Italian AJT, high variability was found in the younger bilinguals. Only bilinguals could participate in the TT. The participants, while translating into Turkish, always produced pragmatically appropriate sentences. In the case of translation to Italian, a significant effect correlated with the position of the subject in the Turkish stimulus was found.

This case study explores how simultaneous Turkish–English bilingual identity emerges from a child-raising context where English is neither the first nor the primary language of the parents or the community. In the context of Turkey, where a special value is attributed to the English language knowledge, Turkish–English bilingualism is associated with a privileged social position, even for young children. By focusing on the bilingual experiences of an 11-year-old child, this study traces the dynamics shaping bilingual identity development. The research employs data triangulation, consisting of diary notes, a metaphor questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews, each contributing to psychosocial perspectives of bilingual identity development across time and space. The data implies an investment in a young bilingual's identity development, despite the relative scarcity of language learning resources, and affiliation for the imagined community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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It has recently been suggested that bilingualism, rather than age of acquisition, is what underlies less than nativelike attainment in childhood L2 acquisition. Currently, however, the empirical evidence in favor of or against this interpretation remains scarce. The present study sets out to fill this gap, implementing a novel factorial design in which the variables age of acquisition and bilingualism have been fully crossed. Eighty speakers of Swedish, who were either L1 monolinguals, L1 simultaneous bilinguals, L2 sequential monolinguals (international adoptees), or L2 sequential bilinguals (childhood immigrants), were tested on phonetic, grammatical, and lexical measures. The results indicate consistent effects of age of acquisition, but only limited effects of bilingualism, on ultimate attainment. These findings thus show that age of acquisition – not bilingualism – is the primary determinant of L2 ultimate attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a novel approach for testing the universality of perceptual biases by looking at speech processing in simultaneous bilingual adults learning two languages that support the maintenance of this bias to different degrees. Specifically, we investigated the Iambic/Trochaic Law, an assumed universal grouping bias, in simultaneous French–German bilinguals, presenting them with streams of syllables varying in intensity, duration or neither and asking them whether they perceived them as strong-weak or weak-strong groupings. Results showed robust, consistent grouping preferences. A comparison to monolinguals from previous studies revealed that they pattern with German-speaking monolinguals, and differ from French-speaking monolinguals. The distribution of simultaneous bilinguals' individual performance was best explained by a model fitting a unimodal (not bimodal) distribution, failing to support two subgroups of language dominance. Moreover, neither language experience nor language context predicted their performance. These findings suggest a special role for universal biases in simultaneous bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Research aims were (a) to test competing predictions regarding the levels of heritage and societal language proficiency among young adults who experienced early exposure to both languages, and (b) to identify sources of individual differences in degree of bilingualism. Design/methodology/approach: Participants comprised 65 Spanish–English bilinguals who reported using both languages on a weekly basis, 25 native English monolinguals, and 25 native Spanish monolinguals. Language and literacy skills were assessed with a battery of standardized and research-based assessments. Degree of bilingualism was calculated for the bilingual participants. Data and analysis: Paired sample t -tests compared the bilinguals' skills in English to their skills in Spanish. Hierarchical regression evaluated factors related to their degree of bilingualism. Independent sample t -tests compared bilinguals' single-language skills to monolinguals. Findings/conclusions: The bilinguals' English skills were stronger than their Spanish skills on every measure. Thus, degree of bilingualism was largely a function of level of Spanish skill and was associated with concurrent Spanish exposure. Bilinguals' English skills were not different from the monolinguals except in speed of lexical access. The bilinguals' Spanish skills were significantly lower than the Spanish monolinguals on every measure except in accuracy judgments for grammatically correct sentences. Originality: Previous studies of bilingual adults have focused on sequential bilinguals and previous studies of heritage language speakers have focused on their grammatical skills. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to assess a wide range of functionally relevant skills in adults with early exposure to a heritage and societal language. Significance/implications: These findings demonstrate that early exposure to and continued use of a home language does not interfere with the achievement of societal language and literacy skills, while also demonstrating that even a widely and frequently used home language may not be acquired to the same skill level as a societal language used in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that vocabulary size is a strong predictor of the lexical variety in monolingual children's stories. Bilingual children often score lower than monolinguals on vocabulary tests so they might produce fewer word types than monolinguals. However, studies have shown that bilingual children can tell stories with equivalent lexical variety to monolinguals. In this study, we tested whether bilingual children's cognitive flexibility is a better predictor of lexical variety than vocabulary. French-English bilinguals between 4 and 6 years told the story of a cartoon they watched. The bilinguals used just as many word types as age-matched English monolinguals and equivalent numbers in English and French. The lexical variety in bilinguals' stories was highly related to the costs of mixing trials on a dimensional change card sort task, but not vocabulary. These results suggest that cognitive flexibility can help bilingual children lexicalise concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many human infants grow up learning more than one language simultaneously but only recently has research started to study early language acquisition in this population more systematically. The paper gives an overview on findings on early language acquisition in bilingual infants during the first two years of life and compares these findings to current knowledge on early language acquisition in monolingual infants. Given the state of the research, the overview focuses on research on phonological and early lexical development in the first two years of life. We will show that the developmental trajectory of early language acquisition in these areas is very similar in mono- and bilingual infants suggesting that these early steps into language are guided by mechanisms that are rather robust against the differences in the conditions of language exposure that mono- and bilingual infants typically experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: The study examines how bilingualism and adolescent identity interact to influence acoustic vowel patterns. This is examined in students at a secondary school in the socially and economically disadvantaged working-class Parisian suburbs. Design: The front, round vowels /y/, /ø/, and /œ/ were analyzed in the speech of (N = 22) adolescents. Three student groups were juxtaposed: monolingual Franco-French (N = 9) and two simultaneous bilingual groups, Arabic-French (N = 6), and Bantu-French (N = 7). Crucially, unlike French, these contact languages do not have phonemically round front vowels. Data and analysis: To elicit naturalistic speech, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted with students speaking in dyads or small groups. Vowel roundedness, derived from acoustic measurements of the third formant and the difference between the third and second formants, was compared across speaker groups. Findings: Results show an effect of bilingual status for male speakers – monolingual speakers pattern differently from both bilingual groups. Still, bilingual Bantu-French and Arabic-French speakers show some distinct patterning. This suggests influences beyond first-language phonology on bilingual speakers' production of French. Originality: This is one of the first studies to look beyond Arabic substrate influence in emerging Hexagonal urban youth vernaculars. It contributes naturalistic data from those most prone to language change, adolescents, for the study of French in contact. Finally, the study proposes a type of 'laboratory in the field': because none of the contact languages contrast vowels by roundedness, first-language influence is controlled for and the effect of social stigmatization upon speech can be isolated. Implications: The findings suggest that the social and ethnic divisions between dominant ethnic groups and minorities of immigrant descent may even be reflected in their phonetic patterning. Because these patterns are present in adolescents, who are the source of much language change, a connection between segregation and language change is drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This study examines the acoustic realization of phrase-initial voiced stops (/b, d, g/) and intervocalic voiced approximants ([β, ð, ɣ]) in Spanish by three groups of Spanish–English bilinguals: simultaneous bilinguals, early sequential bilinguals, and late second language (L2) Spanish learners to investigate if the type of early bilingualism has an effect on the acoustic realization of language-specific phonological processes. Design/Methodology/Approach: Early bilinguals were divided into two groups (simultaneous and sequential bilinguals), and together with late learners (L2 Spanish learners) they were recorded producing words eliciting phrase-initial and intervocalic voiced stops. Data and Analysis: The acoustic analyses examined the difference between the intensity minimum during the consonant and the intensity maximum of the following tautosyllabic vowel (intensity difference). The dataset comprised a total of 3,569 acoustic measurements. Findings/Conclusions: The group of early sequential bilinguals shows a significantly stronger tendency to produce a more lenited intervocalic segment than simultaneous bilinguals and L2 learners, who produce a more constricted realization. These data indicate that simultaneous bilinguals and L2 learners, who were exposed to English since birth, differ from early bilinguals who were exclusively exposed to Spanish for the first years of their life when applying the Spanish allophonic rule governing the distribution of voiced stops and spirants. Originality: This is one of the first studies that investigates the effects of the type of early bilingualism on bilingual phonetic performance in adulthood, especially in terms of bilingual phonetic production. These novel data examine the acoustic realization of Spanish heritage speakers, a largely understudied bilingual population. Significance/Implications: The findings suggest that the type of early bilingualism in language development, even at a very early age, still has consequences on the acoustic realization of allophonic variants in adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of bilingualism on vowel perception and cue weighting behaviour have not been established definitively. What influence does heritage bilingualism have on cue weighting of spectral and durational cues? What role does the duration cue play in cue weighting behaviour of heritage bilinguals: is it universally accessible or related to the first language? Purpose: This study examines the perception and cue weighting of child heritage bilinguals to assess whether exposure to multiple acoustic systems has an effect on cue weighting. Design: Bilinguals with a language containing a durational vowel contrast (Moroccan-Arabic) or a non-durational contrast (Turkish) were tested in order to explore cue preference and cue weighting behaviour for the multiple cued Dutch [ɑ]-[a:] contrast: their alternate first language. Data and analysis: An identification task was performed for the Dutch [ɑ] and [a:]. The F1 and F2 were logarithmically manipulated, in equal steps for the spectral and durational cue, creating a seven-step continuum. The analysis revealed cue preference by examining cue usage and relative cue weight. Conclusions: Dutch monolinguals use both cues but assign more weight to the spectral cue. Moroccan-Arabic/Dutch heritage speaker (HS) bilinguals use both cues, but weigh the spectral cue more heavily. Turkish/Dutch HS bilinguals rely almost exclusively on the spectral cue. This suggests a transfer from the alternate first language onto the perception of Dutch, regardless of language dominance. Originality: Not much research on the cue weighting behaviour of school-aged heritage bilinguals has been conducted, as this age group is yet to develop their perceptual behaviour completely. The results of this case study show an influence on perceptual behaviour as a result of bilingualism. Significance: This study provides insight into the cue weighting behaviour and cue preference of school-aged heritage bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The developmental process of reading acquisition is frequently conceptualized as a self-organizing mental network consisting of lexico-semantic, phonological and orthographical components. The developmental nature of this network varies across languages and is known to impact second-language learners of typologically different languages. Yet, it remains largely unknown whether such cross-linguistic differences interact within young bilingual learners of two typologically different languages. In the present study, we compared Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals (ages 6-12, N = 134) born and raised in the US on their English language and reading skills including vocabulary, phonological and morphological awareness, and word reading. We conducted whole group and subgroup analyses on younger participants to examine the extent of the effect. In monolinguals, phonological abilities directly predicted English word reading. In contrast, in bilinguals, both phonological and morphological abilities made an indirect contribution to English literacy via vocabulary knowledge, even though bilinguals had monolingual-like language and reading abilities in English. These findings offer new insights into the flexibility of the phonological and lexical pathways for learning to read. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed private speech in a group of sixty Spanish-English bilinguals. A Private Speech Questionnaire including questions about seven different conditions, that is, spiritual thinking (e.g., praying, meditating), dreaming, thinking, problem-solving, recalling past events, recalling information, and dealing with stress, was designed. Furthermore, the sample was divided into two subgroups: born in the United States (simultaneous bilinguals) and born outside the United States but arriving to the country before the age of 10 (early successive bilinguals). In both groups and for all the seven conditions, English was more frequently used in private speech, and English was also the dominant language in our participants. Early bilinguals, however, more frequently used Spanish in different private speech situations. These findings suggest that the linguistic environment during early life has a significant impact on the language selected in different internal language situations, but the dominant language is more frequently used in private speech conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to describe the pace of speech of children with unbalanced simultaneous bilingualism who speak Flemish and Polish. Polish language (as L2) was the main focus of the research and, accordingly, the results of the study were compared to the control group which consisted of monolingual Polish children. During the research we used software which allowed for the measurement of both the articulation rate and the speaking rate. The obtained numerical data was statistically analysed. The following parameters influencing the pace of speech were studied in each stage of the research: average speaking and articulation rate, the average ratio of the pauses in the speech samples, the average duration of all the pauses, the average duration of the proper pauses, the average duration of the filled pauses, the average duration of the semifilled pauses. The research group consisted of 16 Flemish-Polish speaking students at the age of nine and the control group included 16 monolingual Polish speaking students at the age of nine. The data obtained during the analysis of 32 speech samples confirmed that the processing of L2 is significantly slower in terms of articulatory and sentence-building fluency. The slower pace of sentence building, caused by the slower rates of articulation and speaking, is the direct result of the bilingualism of the students form the research group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has indicated that during sentence processing, French native speakers predominantly rely upon lexico-semantic cues (i.e., animacy) while native speakers of English rely upon syntactic cues (i.e., word order). The present study examined sentence production in L1 French/L2 English and L1 English/L2 French sequential bilinguals. Participants used animate and inanimate entities as sentence subjects while describing motion events represented by static pictures. To test a gradual change in animacy cue weighting in second-language sequential bilinguals with different proficiency levels were included. Sentence production of sequential bilinguals was compared against that of simultaneous bilinguals. The results indicated an overall preference for the use of animate subjects for both languages at all proficiency levels. The effect of animacy was stronger for English L2 than French L2 while it did not differ between languages in simultaneous bilinguals. Evidence for potential change in the animacy-cue weighting was only observed for English L2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper is based on the researcher’s assumption that a bilingual child acquires languages simultaneously as influenced by some factors such as the child’s social environment. This includes the family, the media (particularly the television), and significant others (like relatives and friends). With the factors mentioned, this would result to the development of language and cognition. This paper attempts to (1) present the profile of the simultaneous bilingual child; (2) Identify the factors affecting the bilingual child’s acquisition of languages; and (3) Determine the implication of simultaneous bilingualism to the development of language and cognition. References Baker, C. Bilingual Education in Wales: Multilingual Matters. UK: Longdunn Press, 1993. Chipongian, L. The Cognitive Advantages of Balanced Bilingualism. Retrieved from: http://www.branconnection.com/topics, 2000. De Houwer, A. Two or More Languages in Early Childhood: Some General Points and Practical Recommendations. Avaialble: [On-line] http:// www.CALdigest.com, 1999. Genesee, F. Early Bilingual Development. Journals of Child Language. Vol.18, Issue 1, pp.161-179. Cambridge University Press, 1989. Hakuta, K. Language and Cognition in Bilingual Children. Available: [On-line] http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/khakuta/research/publications.pdf, 1990. Harms, W. Research shows teacher and parent conversation important in child language development. Available: [On-line] http://www-news.uchicago.edu, 2002. Mc Cartney. K. Effect of Quality Day Care Environment on Children’s Language Development. Developmental Psychology. Retrieved from: psychnet.apa.org,1984. Oller, D.K. & Eilers, R.E. Speech Identification in Spanish- and English Learning 2-years-old. Journal of Speech, Langauge, & Hearing Research, 1983. Owens, R.E. Language Development An Introduction 4th Edition. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1996. Saunders, G. Bilingual Children: From Birth to Teens. Philadelphia:ERIC, 1988. Romaine, S. Bilingualism (2nd ed.) London: Blackwell, 1995. Rosenberg, M. Raising Bilingual Children. Available: [Online] http://iteslj.org/Articles/ Rosenberg-Bilingual.html, 1996. Rozycki, E. G & Goldfarb, M.F. The Educational Theory of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) Retrieved from: http://www.newfoundations.com, 2000. Volterra, V. & Taeschner, T. The Acquisition and Development of Language by Bilingual Children. Journal of Child Language, 1978.

Bilingual children with reduced exposure to one or both languages may have language profiles that are apparently similar to those of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Children with DLD receive enough input, but have difficulty using this input for acquisition due to processing deficits. The present investigation aims to determine aspects of adjective production that are differentially affected by reduced input (in bilingualism) and reduced intake (in DLD). Adjectives were elicited from Dutch–Russian simultaneous bilinguals with limited exposure to Russian and Russian-speaking monolinguals with and without DLD. An antonym elicitation task was used to assess the size of adjective vocabularies, and a degree task was employed to compare the preferences of the three groups in the use of morphological, lexical, and syntactic degree markers. The results revealed that adjective–noun agreement is affected to the same extent by both reduced input and reduced intake. The size of adjective lexicons is also negatively affected by both, but more so by reduced exposure. However, production of morphological degree markers and learning of semantic paradigms are areas of relative strength in which bilinguals outperform monolingual children with DLD. We suggest that reduced input might be counterbalanced by linguistic and cognitive advantages of bilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilinguality literature abounds with evidence that both languages are activated in parallel in lexical processing and the words belonging to two languages are stored in a shared lexicon. This accounts for interferences across languages, and slower processing speed and lower accuracy rates when compared to monolingual lexical processing. This study investigates how bilinguals process words in both languages. In a lexical decision task, simultaneous bilinguals (N= 48) who acquired English and Turkish from birth were asked to decide if the visually presented letter strings were either real or non-words in Turkish and in English. Response times and accuracy were recorded via a software program and were statistically analyzed. The results showed that bilinguals processed real words faster and more accurately than non-words in both languages, and that there was no difference between languages in terms of speed and accuracy rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study compares simultaneous vs. successive bilingualism through a mixed-method research design with four four-year-old Korean–English bilingual children who were born and raised in the USA. Two simultaneous bilinguals were exposed to Korean and English from birth, whereas two successive bilinguals were exposed to Korean from birth, but to English between 18 and 24 months. Three direct assessment tasks (i.e. narrative, vocabulary, and syntax tasks) were used to assess children's multiple language domains in both Korean and English. A caregiver report supplemented direct testing. Findings indicate the simultaneous bilinguals often performed better in English than in Korean, whereas the successive bilinguals often scored higher in Korean than in English, but with some exceptions. For instance, one simultaneous bilingual demonstrated high Korean grammar performance even superior to successive bilinguals. Results suggest that simultaneous bilinguals do not necessarily differ from successive bilinguals solely due to the timing of language exposure; this could be due to varied language experiences. Furthermore, children's varying performances on each task indicate that bilinguals' language subskills develop differently, sometimes referred to asbilingual profile effects. Findings have implications for defining simultaneous vs. successive bilingual acquisition, challenging views that age of exposure alone differentiates bilingual children significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates the expression of Catalan clitics en and hi, which have no grammatical equivalent in Spanish, in the adult grammar of Catalan-Spanish early bilinguals. Participants (N = 57), born and raised in Catalonia, are divided into 3 groups according to their onset of acquisition and language use: Spanish-dominant (n = 20), Balanced Bilinguals (n = 15) and Catalan-dominant (n = 22). The results of an Acceptability Judgment Task and an Elicited Production Task indicated that Spanish-dominant bilinguals have a divergent grammar compared to that of the Catalan-dominant speakers, overaccepting ungrammatical omission and doubling of the clitics. The bilingual group patterned with the Catalan-dominant group in some of their judgments, but with the Spanish-dominant group in their production. It is argued that onset of acquisition cannot be the only explanation for the differences between the bilingual groups, and that quantity and quality of input play an important role in the acquisition process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores the vocabulary development of bilingual children when neither of their languages has a minority language status. With both languages having high relative prestige, it is possible to address the impact of exposure variables: age of onset, length of exposure, and frequency of exposure (FoE) to both languages. Parents of 40 English-Hebrew bilingual children, from mid–high socio-economic status, completed the vocabulary checklist of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) [Fenson et al. 1991.MacArthur-Bates CDI Words and Sentences. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing], its Hebrew adaptation [Maital et al. 2000. “The Hebrew CDI: Language Specific Properties and Cross-Linguistic Generalizations.”Journal of Child Language27: 43–67], and a background questionnaire. Two-thirds of the children showed balanced bilingualism, reflecting the relatively higher prestige of the two languages. FoE emerged as the major exposure variable, other than chronological age that contributes to the maintenance of L1 and acquisition of L2 by bilinguals who are dominant in one of their languages. Analysis of individual data shows how using a bilingual CDI can help identify children who are at risk for Specific Language Impairment, testing both languages and generating provisional bilingual norms, or using conceptual vocabulary with monolingual norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences between monolinguals and bilinguals are often attributed to crosslinguistic influence. This paper compares production of discourse connectives by Dutch–Russian bilinguals (Dutch-dominant), typically-developing Dutch/Russian monolinguals and Russian-speaking children with SLI. If non-target-like production in bilinguals is due to crosslinguistic influence, bilinguals should perform differently from both impaired and unimpaired monolinguals. However, if differences between bilinguals and monolinguals are due to other factors (e.g., input quantity, processing capacities), bilinguals’ language production might be similar to that of children with SLI. The results demonstrate that language dominance determines the direction of crosslinguistic influence. In terms of frequency distributions of Russian connectives across pragmatic contexts, the bilingual group performed differently from both monolingual groups and the differences were compatible with the structural properties of Dutch. However, based on error rates and types bilinguals could not be distinguished from the SLI group, suggesting that factors other than crosslinguistic influence may also be at play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a case study of a child raised in the context of bilingual first-language acquisition in English and Bulgarian, where the latter represents a minority (heritage) language. Using diary data and spontaneous speech recordings, the study identifies a period of loss of production in Bulgarian (1;7–2;3) and a subsequent reactivation of the passive language facilitated by a brief change in input and social environment during a 10-day trip to Bulgaria. The data are analyzed in terms of proportion of utterances in each language, code-mixing, utterance length, lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, choice of language in narrating stories, and parental discourse strategies. The results are discussed with regards to family socialization factors, including the one-parent, one-language model, and with regards to language attrition and language recovery phenomena. Overall, the study offers a renewed perspective on some long-standing challenges and opportunities associated with the acquisition and maintenance of a minority language, highlights the dynamic nature of childhood bilingualism, and demonstrates that continued input in a language that has become passive can be beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) has been claimed to occur under the conditions of structural overlap, interfacing, syntactic complexity and language dominance. This study tested adjective placement in the Italian of 19 adult German–Italian simultaneous bilinguals, comparing naturalistic and experimental data. The results show no CLI from German, although the conditions for CLI are given. Instead, bilingual adults tend to overuse a structure that is unique to Italian, unlike bilingual children in previous studies. However, they do so only in the experimental data. In order to account for this, I introduce the concept of cross-linguistic overcorrection in contrast to cross-linguistic influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with gender marking in adult French. Four groups of subjects are compared: German-French simultaneous bilinguals (2Llers) who grew up in France, German-French 2Llers who grew up in Germany, advanced second language learners (L2ers) who are resident either in France or in Germany at the time of testing. The major goal of the study is to investigate whether differences in input conditions (acquisition in a minority vs. a majority language context) and differences in age of onset affect gender assignment and gender agreement in the same way or differently. Furthermore, we investigate whether successful acquisition of gender is dependent on influence from German. Two experiments, an acceptability judgment task and an elicited production task, are carried out. Results show successful acquisition of agreement in all groups. By contrast, gender assignment may be mildly affected if French is acquired in a minority language context or as an L2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates definite articles in specific and generic subject nominals in Italian spoken by adult simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers) and second language learners (L2ers). The study focuses on plural and mass DPs, in which German and Italian differ. The aims are to (i) compare acquisition outcomes between the weaker and the stronger language in 2L1 acquisition, (ii) see in a comparison with L2ers whether the phenomenon under investigation, which is typically acquired late (after age 6;0), lacks age of onset effects, and (iii) discuss predictions for the directionality of cross-linguistic influence. Twenty German–Italian 2L1ers and 15 advanced L2ers of Italian with German as their native language were tested in an acceptability judgment task and a truth value judgment task. The results show clear differences between Italian as the weaker and as the stronger language in 2L1 acquisition, and similarities between Italian as L2 and as the weaker language in 2L1 acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the present study, the natural and simultaneous first language acquisition of a German-Italian bilingual boy and an Italian monolingual girl from 1;8 to 2;1 are analyzed and compared. The investigation focuses on the rate of acquisition and the size and composition of the productive lexicons. At the end of the observation period, the bilingual boy has acquired twice as many words as the monolingual child. The rate of acquisition of both children markedly increases (vocabulary spurt) after their lexicons have reached the size of 50 words. The data reveal a noun preference (noun bias) in the lexicons of the bilingual and the monolingual child. The comparison of the Italian lexicons of the bilingual child and of the monolingual child do not show striking differences regarding word categories. In both lexicons, common nouns, proper nouns, and onomatopoeic words are the most important word categories, whereas verbs play a marginal role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the issue of crosslinguistic influence in the domain of subject realization in Turkish in simultaneous acquisition of Turkish and English. The use of subjects in a null subject language like Turkish is a phenomenon linked to the pragmatics-syntax interface of the grammar and, thus, is a domain where crosslinguistic interference is predicted to occur in bilingual acquisition (Hulk and Müller, 2000; Müller and Hulk, 2001). Spontaneous Turkish data collected from one Turkish-English bilingual child, Ali-John, and one Turkish monolingual child, Murat, are compared. Our results reveal that Ali-John's production of overt subjects in Turkish is more than that of the control child. These findings could be interpreted as due to crosslinguistic influence from English regarding the suppliance of overt subjects in the context of Turkish-English bilingual acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We probed simultaneous French–Spanish bilinguals for the perception of Spanish lexical stress using three tasks, two short-term memory encoding tasks and a speeded lexical decision. In all three tasks, the performance of the group of simultaneous bilinguals was intermediate between that of native speakers of Spanish on the one hand and French late learners of Spanish on the other hand. Using a composite stress ‘deafness’ index measure computed over the results of the three tasks, we found that the performance of the simultaneous bilinguals is best fitted by a bimodal distribution that corresponds to a mixture of the performance distributions of the two control groups. Correlation analyses showed that the variables explaining language dominance are linked to early language exposure. These findings are discussed in light of theories of language processing in bilinguals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose. To examine how interaction contributes to phonological acquisition in bilingual children in order to determine what constitutes typical development of bilingual speech sound inventories. Method. Twenty-four children, ages 3-4, were included: eight bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children, eight monolingual Spanish speakers, and eight monolingual English speakers. Single word samples were obtained to derive phonetic inventories. After Dinnsen, Chin, Elbert and Powell for English and Catano, Barlow, and Moyna for Spanish, the children's inventories were assigned to one of five levels of complexity. Levels were compared for similarities and differences within bilinguals and between monolinguals and bilinguals. Inventories were examined for evidence of interaction in the form of phonological transfer. Results. Bilinguals had phonetic inventories that were commensurate in complexity with monolinguals. Bilingual children acquire two inventories in the same amount of time that monolinguals acquire one, and with the same level of complexity. Evidence of transfer occurred from English to Spanish and vice versa. Implications. These findings are useful for the differentiation of language difference from disorder and aid in avoiding underdiagnosis of speech sound disorders. Although bilingual children maintain separation of phonological structures, a low level of interaction between their two languages exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]