Jeanine Treffers-Daller

University of Reading · Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics

It is well established that verb-noun collocations are difficult for L2 learners, but little is known about the extent to which such collocations are vulnerable to attrition under conditions of reduced input. The study is novel in that we focus on L2 attrition rather than L1 attrition, and because we focus on Saudi Arabian returnees, who have so fa...

After two years in the job of Editor-in-Chief, it is my pleasure to welcome Professor Anthony Pak-Hin Kong from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Languages [...]

Since the launch of the term translanguaging in 1994, the multiple discursive practices that are grouped under this label have been explored in over 3000 papers, covering a variety of contexts, both within and outside education. While the term has clearly resonated with researchers and practitioners, here it is argued that it is unclear what it mea...

This paper is freely accessible from the publisher´s website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13670050.2024.2345698 Many overseas students in Higher Education in the UK struggle to understand the compulsory texts for their course, and obtain lower scores for their modules than their monolingual peers. While the existence of this achiev...

In a highly multilingual country like India, challenges and opportunities arise in education and language policy. Although multilingualism is often associated with developmental advantages, Indian primary school children generally show low learning outcomes, specifically on literacy. Here we examine the influence of mother tongue education and mult...

This volume collects research on language, cognition, and communication in multilingualism. Apart from theoretical concerns including grammatical description, language-specific analyses, and modeling of multilingualism, different fields of study and research interests center around three core themes: The Early Years (aspects of language acquisition...

One year into the job as Editor-in-Chief of Languages, I am delighted to report that the journal has received its first Journal Impact Factor (0 [...]

The proponents of translanguaging are often not aware of the history of code-switching research and the relevance of this research for a range of the claims they make, for example on the issue of the separability of systems. While it is understandable that new paradigms try to emphasize how different they are from others, we cannot see why and how...

The concept of translanguaging is one of the most successful ones in the recent history of multilingualism research. But what does it really mean? It covers such a wide semantic field that users seem to be free to decide its meaning in whatever way they wish. A key uniting idea of the different approaches is that teachers should ‘draw upon’ the fir...

It remains an open question how the brain adapts structurally to handle strenuous cognitive challenges. Interpreters and translators rely on high cognitive control to regulate two languages in their jobs, which makes them ideal models in investigating experience-based neuroplasticity induced by exceptional cognitive demands. Using structural MRI, w...

Aims and Objectives In this paper, a novel approach to the distinction between borrowing and code-switching is proposed, called the Simple View of borrowing and code-switching. Under this view, listedness is seen as the key condition for classifying words or multiword units (MWUs) as borrowings. For MWUs, listedness is operationalized with mutual i...

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together research evidence from studies into code-switching, that is, the alternation and mixing of languages as practiced on a daily basis by bilinguals throughout the world [...]

Bilingualism has been associated with changes in our language-related and domain-general cog-nition. However, it remains controversial whether bilingualism-related cognitive effects are robust and stable. Also, it is still unclear which aspects of bilingual experiences affect the plasticity of cognitive processes. This article offers a selective ov...

Bilingualism has been linked to structural adaptations of subcortical brain regions that are important for controlling multiple languages. However, research on the location and extent of these adaptations has yielded variable patterns, especially as far as the subcortical regions are concerned. Existing literature on bilingualism-induced brain rest...

In this introduction, we focus on three approaches to motion event construal, and explain how the papers in this special issue contribute to ongoing discussions in different fields of research. First of all, in second language (L2) acquisition, researchers ask to what extent L2 learners can separate the different conceptual systems that underpin mo...

Bilingual speakers often engage in code-switching, that is the use of lexical items and grammatical features from two languages in one sentence. Malaysia is a particularly interesting context for the study of code-switching because Malay-English code-switching is widely practiced across formal and informal situations, and the available literature r...

This chapter focuses on one of the most remarkable characteristics of bilinguals, namely their ability to effortlessly switch between two languages, and to combine grammar rules and words from each in one sentence. It offers a summary of what we know about the ways in which bilingual children code-switch and how this skill develops over time. Atten...

Bilingualism has been associated with changes in our language-related and domain-general cognition. However, it remains controversial whether bilingualism-related cognitive effects are robust and stable. Also, it is still unclear what about being bilingual causes the plasticity of cognitive processes. This article offers a selective overview of the...

In this paper we describe the process of collection, transcription, and annotation of recordings of spontaneous speech samples from Turkish-German bilinguals, and the compilation of a corpus called TuGeBiC. Participants in the study were adult Turkish-German bilinguals living in Germany or Turkey at the time of recording in the first half of the 19...

The aim of the study was to find out to what extent low socio-economic status (SES) children enrolled in government-run primary schools in Hyderabad are ready to receive instruction through the medium of English (English medium instruction [EMI]). To this end we investigated children’s oral vocabulary skills, the lexical complexity of their textboo...

Bilingualism impacts brain structure, especially in regions involved in language control and processing. However, the relation between structural brain changes and key aspects of bilingual language use is still poorly understood. Here we used structural MRI and non-linear modelling to investigate the effects of habitual code-switching (CS) practice...

Bilingualism has been linked to structural adaptations of subcortical brain regions that are important nodes in controlling of multiple languages. However, research on the location and extent of these adaptations has yielded variable patterns. Existing literature on bilingualism-induced brain adaptations has so far largely overseen evidence from ot...

India's linguistic diversity is reflected in classrooms across the country, where multiple languages are used by teachers and learners to negotiate meaning and instruction-a multilingual, multicultural student body is the norm, whether in urban or rural contexts. This study documents teaching practices in English language and maths lessons in Delhi...

This study explores the effects of instruction on the acquisition of motion event construal among learners of English as a second language. The challenge for learners with Verb-framed first languages is that they need to ‘unlearn’ the boundary-crossing constraint and conflate manner and motion in the main verb, as in she ran into the bank , however...

Bilingualism may modulate executive functions (EFs), but the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are poorly understood. In this study, we investigated two potential sources of variability in bilinguals’ EF performance: (1) interactional contexts and code-switching, and (2) dominance profiles. Previous research on code-switching often relied on se...

This study sheds new light on the relative impact of switching between languages and switching between cultures on Executive Functions (EFs) in bilinguals. Several studies have suggested that bilingualism has a measurable impact on executive functioning, presumably due to bilinguals’ constant practice in dealing with two languages, or two cultures....

Heritage speakers are a fascinating group of bilinguals with a unique profile. Living abroad as immigrants of the second generation, they speak the language of their own speech community (the heritage language) at home, and the societally dominant language in most other domains. What exactly they know about their heritage language continues to fasc...

Most existing studies on the relationship between code-switching and executive functions have focused on experimentally induced language-switching, which differs fundamentally from naturalistic code-switching. This study investigated whether and how bilinguals’ code-switching practices modulate different aspects of executive functioning. Our findin...

We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in seven languages from various language families and cultural settings: American English, Czech, Scottish Gaelic, Lebanese Arabic, Malaysian Malay, Persian, and Western Armenian. The ratings were collected from a total of 173 participants and w...

We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in seven languages from various language families and cultural settings: American English, Czech, Scottish Gaelic, Lebanese Arabic, Malaysian Malay, Persian, and Western Armenian. The ratings were collected from a total of 173 participants and w...

The study of bilingualism has charted a dramatically new, important, and exciting course in the 21st century, benefiting from the integration in cognitive science of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive psychology (especially work on the higher-level cognitive processes often called executive function or executive control). Cur...

The study of bilingualism has charted a dramatically new, important, and exciting course in the 21st century, benefiting from the integration in cognitive science of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive psychology (especially work on the higher-level cognitive processes often called executive function or executive control). Cur...

In the Indian context, concerns have been raised for many years about the learning outcomes of primary school children. The complexity of the issue makes it difficult to advise stakeholders on what needs to be done to improve learning in primary schools in India. As it has been shown that low socio-economic status is one of the key factors that neg...

This article focuses on the construct of language dominance in bilinguals and the ways in which this construct has been operationalized. Language dominance is often seen as relative proficiency in two languages, but it can also be analyzed in terms of language use—that is, how frequently bilinguals use their languages and how these are divided acro...

In this talk I look at recent work on code-switching and translanguaging in an attempt to bring together linguistic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to this field of research. While earlier research in code-switching was focused on identifying the constraints on this form of behaviour (where is switching between languages impossible...

An increasing number of high-stakes mathematics standardised tests around the world place an emphasis on using mathematical word problems to assess students’ mathematical understanding. Not only do these assessments require children to think mathematically, but making sense of these tests’ mathematical word problems also brings children’s language...

Listening comprehension constitutes a major problem for second language learners but little is known about the relative contribution of different factors to listening comprehension. Since there are still only very few studies in this area by comparison with studies focusing on the relationship between reading and vocabulary, there is a need for stu...

Bilingualism is reported to re-structure executive control networks, but it remains unknown which aspects of the bilingual experience cause this modulation. This study explores the impact of three code-switching types on executive functions: (1) alternation , (2) insertion , and (3) dense code-switching or congruent lexicalisation . Current models...

This study contributes to ongoing discussions on how measures of lexical diversity (LD) can help discriminate between essays from second language learners of English, whose work has been assessed as belonging to levels B1 to C2 of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). The focus is, in particular, on how different operationalizations of...

One of the most challenging tasks for learners of a Second Language (L2 learners) consists in developing a vocabulary large enough to be able to read and write fluently and take part in conversations on a range of topics. According to Adolphs and Schmitt (2003) learners need 2000–3000 of the most frequent English word families to be able to take pa...

Most researchers in the wide field of bilingualism agree that a bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person, that completely balanced bilinguals are very rare, and that it is much more common for bilinguals to be dominant in one or the other language. However, whether balanced or dominant bilingualism is the default can only be established if t...

With contributions from leading scholars of bilingualism, Language Dominance in Bilinguals is the first publication to survey different approaches to language dominance, along with suggested avenues for further research. It illustrates how a critical approach to the notion of language dominance, as well as its operationalisation and measurement, ca...

With contributions from leading scholars of bilingualism, Language Dominance in Bilinguals is the first publication to survey different approaches to language dominance, along with suggested avenues for further research. It illustrates how a critical approach to the notion of language dominance, as well as its operationalisation and measurement, ca...

With contributions from leading scholars of bilingualism, Language Dominance in Bilinguals is the first publication to survey different approaches to language dominance, along with suggested avenues for further research. It illustrates how a critical approach to the notion of language dominance, as well as its operationalisation and measurement, ca...

With contributions from leading scholars of bilingualism, Language Dominance in Bilinguals is the first publication to survey different approaches to language dominance, along with suggested avenues for further research. It illustrates how a critical approach to the notion of language dominance, as well as its operationalisation and measurement, ca...

Plenary talk at the BAAL Vocab SIG, 2-3 July 2015

In this paper we show that heritage speakers and returnees are fundamentally different from the majority of adult second language learners with respect to their use of collocations (Laufer & Waldman, 2011). We compare the use of lexical collocations involving yap- “do” and et- “do” among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany (n = 45) with those f...

Learning to talk about motion in a second language is very difficult because it involves restructuring deeply entrenched patterns from the first language. In this paper we argue that statistical learning can explain why L2 learners are only partially successful in restructuring their second language grammars. We explore to what extent L2 learners m...

It is common in the literature on bilingualism to distinguish between “balanced bilinguals”, who are equally fluent in both languages and “dominant bilinguals”, who have one stronger and one weaker language. In this paper, I argue that overall language dominance does not exist, and that the notion of “balance” is unhelpful in studying bilinguals (T...

This paper sets out to investigate to what extent second language learners are able to use statistical learning to restructure the ways in which they talk about motion in their second language (L2). While many researchers (Slobin, 1996; Treffers-Daller & Tidball, in press; Von Stutterheim & Nuse, 2003) have pointed out that it is very difficult for...

The aim of the present chapter is to offer a comprehensive overview of linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of the migration movements between Turkey and Germany. From a sociolinguistic perspective the migration from Turkey to Germany and vice versa since 1961 is unique because it is one of the few situations worldwide which involves huge numbers...

The aim of the present chapter is to offer a comprehensive overview of linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of the migration movements between Turkey and Germany. From a sociolinguistic perspective the migration from Turkey to Germany and vice versa since 1961 is unique because it is one of the few situations worldwide which involves huge numbers...

Many researchers have tried to assess the number of words adults know. A general conclusion which emerges from such studies is that vocabularies of English monolingual adults are very large with considerable variation. This variation is important given that the vocabulary size of schoolchildren in the early years of school is thought to materially...

This article evaluates how the different papers in this special issue fill a gap in our understanding of cognitive processes that are being activated when second language learners or bilinguals prepare to speak. All papers are framed in Slobin’s (1987) Thinking for Speaking theory, and aim to test whether the conceptualisation patterns that were le...

Review article in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Volume 15, Issue 3, May 2012, pages 383-387.

This article shows how a corpus-linguistic approach to transfer based on Jarvis (2000), Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) and Mougeon, Nadasdi, and Rehner (2005) can help to disentangle internal and external explanations in language variation and change. The focus of the study is on grammatical collocations (Granger & Paquot, 2008) such as chercher après...

In this article the authors argue that L1 transfer from English is not only important in the early stages of L2 acquisition of Spanish, but remains influential in later stages if there is not enough positive evidence for the learners to progress in their development (Lefebvre, White, & Jourdan, 2006). The findings are based on analyses of path and...

This report is a summary of interviews and focus groups with around 100 students and 50 members of academic staff in departments of languages, linguistics or area studies at nine universities in the UK. In recent years, concerns have been expressed about the ambiguity of some of the statements which students are asked to respond to in the National...

The aim of this article is to show how measures of lexical richness (Guiraud, 1954; Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Durán, 2004) can be used to operationalize and measure language dominance among bilinguals. A typology of bilinguals is proposed based on these measures of lexical richness, and the validity of the typology is then investigated in an em...

In the present article we provide evidence for the occurrence of transfer of conceptualization patterns in narratives of two German–Turkish bilingual groups. All bilingual participants grew up in Germany, but only one group is still resident in Germany (n = 49). The other, the returnees, moved back to Turkey after having lived in Germany for thirte...

Brussels occupies a very special position on the Linguistic Frontier, because the 19 communities that form Brussels-Capital are an autonomous region within the Federal State of Belgium. The article first gives a short overview of the historical development of various aspects of the situation of the Region, as these are essential for an understandin...

The main purpose of this article is to show that structural factors are responsible for a number of subtle differences in the outcome of language contact in Brussels and Strasbourg, and that sociolinguistic factors have little explanatory power in this matter. Differences between the rules for past participle formation in Dutch as spoken in Brussel...

Review article of Javier, R.A. (2007) The bilingual mind: thinking, feeling and speaking in two languages. Springer.

From the psycholinguistic literature we know that monolinguals and bilinguals differ from each other in how they process language and that bilinguals can therefore not be seen as two monolinguals in one person (Grosjean, 1997, p. 167). We also know that perfect bilinguals are extremely rare and that most bilinguals are dominant in one or the other...

c1 Address for correspondence: Jeanine Treffers-Daller, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK e-mail: Jeanine.Treffers-Daller@uwe.ac.uk

In this paper we study different aspects of lexical richness in narratives of British learners of French. In particular we focus on different ways of measuring lexical sophistication. We compare the power of three different operationalisations of the Advanced Guiraud (AG) (Daller, van Hout and Treffers-Daller, 2003): one based on teacher judgement,...

Over the last 20 years vocabulary research has grown from a Cinderella subject to a position of some importance. Vocabulary is now considered integral to just about every aspect of language knowledge and is a lively and vital area of research and innovation. With this development have come standard and widely-used tests, such as vocabulary size and...

Over the last 20 years vocabulary research has grown from a Cinderella subject to a position of some importance. Vocabulary is now considered integral to just about every aspect of language knowledge and is a lively and vital area of research and innovation. With this development have come standard and widely-used tests, such as vocabulary size and...

Although most researchers recognise that the language repertoire of bilinguals can vary, few studies have tried to address variation in bilingual competence in any detail. This study aims to take a first step towards further understanding the way in which bilingual competencies can vary at the level of syntax by comparing the use of syntactic embed...

Although most researchers recognise that the language repertoire of bilinguals can vary, few studies have tried to address variation in bilingual competence in any detail. This study aims to take a first step towards further understanding of the way in which bilingual competencies can vary at the level of syntax by comparing the use of syntactic em...

In this paper we analyze mixed compounds, such as legume+winkel `vegetable shop, greengrocery' and winter+paletot `winter coat' which contain a French and a Dutch element, and French nominal groups, such as carte d'identité `identity card', and journal parlé `radio news', which bilingual speakers from Brussels frequently insert into Brussels Dutch...

In this Special Issue, the focus is on contact-induced language variation and change in situations of societal bilingualism that involve long-term contact between French and another language. As is well known, when two or more languages are spoken by groups of speakers in the same geographical area, over time, features from one language can be tran...

In language contact studies, specific features of the contact languages are often seen to be the result of transfer (interference), but it remains difficult to disentangle the role of intra-systemic and inter-systemic factors. We propose to unravel these factors in the analysis of a feature of Brussels French which many researchers attribute to tra...

Michael Clyne, Dynamics of language contact: English and immigrant languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xv+282. - - Volume 41 Issue 1 - JEANINE TREFFERS-DALLER

The focus of the present paper is on the measurement of lexical richness. Lexical richness is often measured either by the traditional type-token ratio (TTR) or by its square root variant, the index of Guiraud. The disadvantages of these measures, especially those of the TTR, are well-known. In this paper we propose two measures (Advanced TTR and G...