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Bilingual bootstrapping
... A contrary view on this issue is developed by Tracy (1995) and by Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) who propose the Bilingual Bootstrapping Hypothesis. The idea is that […] something that has been acquired in language A fulfills a booster function for language B. In a weaker version, we would expect at least a temporary pooling of resources. ...
... Whether this observation represents a serious problem for the idea of bilingual bootstrapping as conceptualized by Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy is not obvious since, at least in its weaker version, bilingual bootstrapping need not exclude the possibility of autonomous development. On the one hand, it is not entirely clear whether the temporary pooling of resources postulated by Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) qualifies as systemic influence as defined by Paradis and Genesee (1996). In other words, clarification is needed as to whether this type of interdependence is supposed to lead to grammatical fusion after all, or whether the child is said to make use of knowledge from two sources which are, nevertheless, stored separately. ...
... In other words, clarification is needed as to whether this type of interdependence is supposed to lead to grammatical fusion after all, or whether the child is said to make use of knowledge from two sources which are, nevertheless, stored separately. Since Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) refer to bilingual bootstrapping as a relief strategy, the latter interpretation seems to be justifiable. In this case, bilingual bootstrapping is not in conflict with the claim of autonomy of development. ...
... The evidence gathered in the context of recent studies suggests that language acquisition is characterised by integration and differentiation processes within a linguistic systems and across linguistic systems (cf. Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996, Hohenberger 2002, Plaza Pust 2000, Tracy 1996, Tracy & Gawlitzek-Maiwald 2000. Such processes lie at the heart of language contact phenomena commonly referred to as codeswitching, transfer or cross-linguistic influence. ...
... The question which imposes itself at this stage is whether bilingually educated deaf children may profit from their more advanced competence in sign language in the acquisition of the written language in terms of a temporary "pooling of resources" (cf. Gawlitzek-Maiwald 1996). Studies on child bilingual acquisition of two spoken languages indicate that children are able two separate both systems at the early age of 2 years (cf. ...
... The more advanced language may thus fulfill a "booster function" in the sense of "bilingual bootstrapping" (cf. Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy 1996). Evidence for the use of this strategy in the learner data of bilingually educated deaf children may therefore provide unique insights into the potential promoting function of sign language in the acquisition of the written language (cf. ...
... Our hypothesis has certain similarities with the DOMINANT LANGUAGE HYPOTHESIS (Petersen, 1988) and the BILINGUAL BOOTSTRAPPING HYPOTHESIS in its earliest version (Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy, 1996), but differs from these in that our type of code-mixing is proposed to be related to development and a result of an overall difference in structural development between the two languages. ...
... Based on a comparison with monolingual children, Paradis and Genesee (1996) showed that IP was acquired later in English than in French, due to the fact that the languages differ in this domain. The asynchrony between IP/CP in English and German, in Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) and Gawlitzek (2003), also seems to be of this type. There are, however, no studies showing asynchronic developments of this type in Swedish vs. French or Italian. ...
... With respect to their BILINGUAL BOOTSTRAPPING HYPOTHESIS, Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) argued that in bilingual children 'their language mixing helps them bridge not only lexical but also structural gaps' (p. 901). ...
We present a hypothesis for a specific kind of code-mixing in young bilingual children, during the development of their two first languages, one of which is considerably weaker than the other. Our hypothesis, which we label the Ivy Hypothesis, is that, in the interaction meant to be in the weaker language, the child uses portions of higher syntactic structure lexically instantiated in the stronger language combined with lower portions in the weaker language. Code-mixing patterns were studied in five Swedish-French/Italian children aged 2–4. The parts of the code-mixed utterances reflected as much syntactic structure of each language as was used in monolingual utterances in the same recording of each child. This uneven development, which is due to different amounts of input of the two languages, can be accounted for by assuming that syntactic structure is acquired by building each language from the bottom up through lexical learning.
... Kieltenvälisen vaikutuksen havaitseminen ja tulkinta on kaksikielisten lasten tutkimuksessa pulmallista (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996). Vaikka voitaisiin sulkea pois lipsahduksen mahdollisuus, epätyypillisen ilmauksen taustalla saattaa olla kieltenvälinen vaikutus, kielellisten taitojen tasosta johtuva syy tai molemmat (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996;Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2006). ...
... Kieltenvälisen vaikutuksen havaitseminen ja tulkinta on kaksikielisten lasten tutkimuksessa pulmallista (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996). Vaikka voitaisiin sulkea pois lipsahduksen mahdollisuus, epätyypillisen ilmauksen taustalla saattaa olla kieltenvälinen vaikutus, kielellisten taitojen tasosta johtuva syy tai molemmat (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996;Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2006). Asiaa monimutkaistaa edelleen se, että englannin globaalin luonteen vuoksi siitä siirtyy ilmaisuja suomeen ja siten lapsen kieliympä-ristöön yleisemminkin (Lauranto, suullinen tiedonanto 21.8.2015). ...
Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin 11:n varhaisesti kaksikielisen 6-vuotiaan lapsen kielenkäyttöä suomeksi tuotetussa kuvakirjakerronnassa. Kaikkien lasten kotikieli oli suomi, minkä lisäksi he olivat omaksuneet englantia 0–4 vuoden iästä lähtien. Kertomuksista poimittujen epätyypillisten ilmaisujen avulla selvitettiin, miten englannin kielen omaksuminen mahdollisesti heijastui lasten kielellisiin valintoihin ja millaisia lasten ilmaisut olivat verrattuina yksikielisten ikäverrokeiden (n = 10) ja vuotta nuorempien lasten (n = 12) ilmaisuihin. Lähes kaikki kaksikieliset lapset tuottivat jonkunlaisia epätyypillisiä ilmaisuja. Laatunsa perusteella ne pystyttiin jakamaan pääasiassa 1) englannin kielen vaikutuksesta johtuviin ja 2) suomen kielen omaksumiseen liittyviin. Kielten väliseen vaikutukseen liittyvien havaintojen perusteella kaksikieliset lapset tuottivat osittain hyvin erilaisia ilmaisuja kuin yksikieliset lapset, ja suomen kielen normista poikkeavia ilmaisuja esiintyi kaikkiaan hieman useammalla kaksikielisellä kuin yksikielisellä lapsella. Jotkin kaksikielisten lasten suomen kielen omaksumiseen liittyvät epätyypilliset ilmaisut sen sijaan muistuttivat heitä vuotta nuorempien verrokkilasten valintoja. Tulosten pohdinta nosti esille, että tutkimusympäristö ja tutkimuskäytänteet saattavat vaikuttaa kielen siirtymisherkkyyteen, mikä kannattaa ottaa kliinisessä työssä huomioon.
... Volterra and Taeschner (1978) interpreted this discovery as evidence of a unitary language system. However, later research by Meisel (1989), Genesee (1989, and more recently Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996), Müller and Hulk (2001), and DeHouwer (2005), amongst others argue that multilingual children can differentiate between their language systems from early on. Following this line of research, the debate on multilingualism has moved from whether multilingual children have one or more language systems to the debate on how much influence these languages have on each other in the development of the multilingual's language. ...
... This correlates with the different acquisition stages in Hannah's languages as at this stage of development, the child has not acquired the TP layer in English, whereas she has acquired the TP layer in German. Following this observation and based on the numerous mixing constructions produced by Hannah, Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) argue that the bilingual child uses a grammatical structure available to her in German in her production of English, so as to create a more complex sentence in her English. The target deviant constructions in Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy's (1996) study differs from those discussed in our study as Hannah has the use of the TP in her German and transfers this knowledge to her English to produce a more complex construction. ...
This paper discusses an unusual structure in the English of a trilingual child acquiring English, Italian and Scottish Gaelic. The child uses a structure where it appears that an object DP is “dou-bled” by a pronoun for an extended period of time (10 months): (1) He don't like it dinosaur (2) He forget it the teddy In Italian, sentences that contain old information take two possible structures: they might contain a left dislocated topic resumed by a clitic: (3) Il libro, l'ho letto the book it-have.1SG read 'The book, I have read it' These are called Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) structures in the literature. Alternatively, the topic (the given information) can be introduced as a right dislocated element, again linked to a clitic: (4) L'ho letto, il libro It-have.1SG read the book ‘I have read it, the book’ These are called clitic right dislocation (CLRD) structures. The structures produced in English by the subject of this study seem to be similar in some fundamental ways to this second kind of topi-calisation strategy. We suggest that this reflects a "deep: transfer of CLRD structures from Italian, even though at the stage when the "doubling" structures occur, there is no evidence of overt clitics in the child’s Italian. Our paper contributes to the debate in the literature concerning the existence or not of some form of transfer in multilingual acquisition
... Today, from a psycholinguistic perspective, the interaction of distinct linguistic systems is not regarded as an indication of linguistic confusion, but is rather deemed to reflect different degrees of co-activation and co-production of the two languages on the monolingual-bilingual continuum of linguistic modes in which bilinguals operate (Grosjean 1997;De Groot 2002). Finally, developmental linguistics is providing important insights on how children become bilingual communicators and pool their linguistic resources in their development of a multilingual competence (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996;Döpke 2000;Müller et al. 2002). ...
... Bilingual learners: The dynamics of sign bilingualism in language developmentResearch into bilingual language development has sought to establish whether the development of language in this type of acquisition situation differs qualitatively from the one in monolingual acquisition(Meisel 2004).Beyond the (psycho-)linguistic interest in clarifying this question, the insights gathered concerning the question of whether or not bilingual language acquisition has negative effects on the development of the child viz. her acquisition of language also have a sociopolitical and an educational dimension(Tracy 1996;Siebert-Ott 2001) in that they may reinforce or help in debunking the monolingual myths that continue to abound around bilingual learners. Apart from potential delays in the languages acquired, evidence of language mixing or fusion of the two systems during the initial stages are often considered to show bilingual learners' difficulties in language acquisition, an interpretation that clearly reflects the "monolingual yardstick" against which bilinguals have been commonly measured as becomes apparent in the numerous studies that have been undertaken on bilingual language acquisition.AsPlaza-Pust explains in her contribution, the progressive convergence of the different lines of research in the area of developmental linguistics has provided important insights about the differences and the commonalities across acquisition types. ...
This chapter is a reflection and an update, until 2008, of research on sign bilingualism.
... In that case, transfer could be interpreted as a strategy to accelerate the acquisition of the voicing contrast in Spanish. This type of acceleration has been dubbed bilingual bootstrapping by Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996). We discuss some of these patterns below. ...
... On the other hand, it can be argued that bilingualism has an advantageous effect in that it allows this child to make a contrast that is not available in the monolingual context; that is, it has the bootstrapping effect proposed by Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996), according to which, 'something that has been acquired in language A fulfills a booster function for language B' (Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy, 1996, p. 903). As these authors put it, the 'bootstrapping metaphor avoids the negative connotations often associated with terms like interference or transfer and underscores the resourcefulness of the bilingual child' (ibid., p. 901). ...
This study examines the acquisition of the voicing contrast in German-Spanish bilingual children, on the basis of the acoustic measurement of Voice Onset Time (VOT). VOT in four bilingual children (aged 2;0–3;0) was measured and compared to VOT in three monolingual German children (aged 1;9–2;6), and to previous literature findings in Spanish. All measurements were based on word-initial stops extracted from naturalistic speech recordings. Results revealed that the bilingual children displayed three different patterns of VOT development: 1. Delay in the phonetic realization of voicing: two bilingual children did not acquire long lag stops in German during the testing period; 2. Transfer of voicing features: one child produced German voiced stops with lead voicing and Spanish voiceless stops with long lag voicing; and 3. No cross-language influence in the phonetic realization of voicing. The relevance of the findings for cross-linguistic interaction in bilingual phonetic/phonological development is discussed.
... Thus, it was concluded that bilingual children might actually be using one language to aid in acquisition of the other, allowing for commensurate accuracy on most manner classes (in two languages) in the same amount of time as monolinguals acquiring only one language. Therefore, interaction could be causing a slower rate of development on the production of some phonological skills (i.e., accuracy) and simultaneously causing a variation of acceleration, or bootstrapping (Tracy, 1995;Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996), of other phonological skills (i.e., phonetic inventories). ...
... In addition, evidence of transfer would demonstrate that bilingual children can exhibit deceleration and transfer simultaneously in acquisition. The influence of one language on the other could perhaps bootstrap some phonological skills in bilinguals, even if other phonological skills are being acquired at a slower rate, allowing them to stay on par with their monolingual, age-matched peers (Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, in press;Tracy, 1995;Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996). ...
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 Cataño, 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.
... If a particular category is acquired early in one of the languages, its development in the other language can be accelerated (Armon-Lotem 2010). This phenomenon is known as "positive transfer" or "bilingual bootstrapping" (Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy 1996). According to the bilingual bootstrapping hypothesis, "something that has been acquired in language A fulfills a booster function for language B" (Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy 1996, 903). ...
... Many published accounts of CS are based on studies of middle-class children in expat families in Western countries where there is an expectation of language separation (e.g., Bernardini & Schlyter, 2004;Cantone, 2007;Cantone & Müller, 2005;Deuchar & Quay, 2000;Deuchar & Vihman, 2005;Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996;Lanza, 1997;Müller et al., 2015;Vihman, 1985Vihman, , 2018. Such children grow up in families that practise parent-based language choice ('One Parent One Language', or OPOL) as their 'Family Language Policy', sometimes strictly adhered to (Quick et al., 2021b), at other times perhaps violated despite claims of strict adherence (Genesee et al., 1995). ...
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.
... While nowadays most researchers working on bilingual acquisition agree that bilingual children are capable of separating the two grammatical target-systems, more recent investigations have shown that there may be language influence despite of language separation (e.g. Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996, Hulk & Müller 2000. In particular, if two languages overlap with respect to the properties of a grammatical domain, language A may influence language B positively or negatively and accelerate or slow down the acquisition of that grammatical property . ...
... Moreover, learners may resort to lexical and structural borrowings in the case of a developmental asynchrony between both languages. The more advanced language may thus fulfil a pioneering function in terms of "bilingual bootstrapping" (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996). The data also show that once the target structural properties are established, language mixing may serve other, i.e. pragmatic functions (code-switching). ...
Research into the acquisition and use of two or more languages shows that the human mind is well equipped to deal with contact situations and that bilingual individuals skilfully exploit their linguistic resources (Auer 1998; Muysken 2004; Myers-Scotton 2002; Tracy 1996, 12). While language contact phenomena like code-switching or the mixing of elements of two distinct languages in bilinguals' productions have often been regarded as evidence of a linguistic confusion there is a consensus today in the area of bilingualism research that these phenomena reflect a sophisticated interaction of two distinct grammars in the productions of bilingual speakers/signers. In the domain of developmental linguistics, the study of language contact phenomena in the productions of bilingual learners provides further insights into the structures available and the learners' metalinguistic awareness about their bilingualism (cf. Lanza 1997, Tracy & Gawlitzek-Maiwald 2000 among others). In sign bilingualism research, there is a general agreement about the positive effects deriving from an early exposure to sign language for the acquisition of literacy in young deaf signers in the sense of Cummins' Interdependence theory (Dubuisson et al., to appear, Hoffmeister 2000, Niederberger, to appear, Strong & Prinz 2000; for a strong critique of the use of this model see Mayer & Wells 1996). However, only few studies have been dedicated to the investigation of the interaction of both languages at the level of grammar. As theories about second language and bilingual language acquisition have been refined over the last three decades, they shed a new light on this topic. If, as is currently assumed, language mixing occurs as a developmentally constrained phenomenon that affects specific linguistic properties during specific phases in the bilingual Sign Languages: spinning and unraveling the past, present and future. TISLR9, forty five papers and three posters from the 9th.
... Research within the last twenty years (Meisel 1989, Paradis and Genesee 1995, De Houwer 1994, however, has convincingly shown that children being brought up bilingually from birth (2L1) are perfectly capable of separating their two grammars from very early on and pass through the same developmental stages as their monolingual peers with respect to both their grammars. Whereas some have claimed (Meisel 1989) that the two grammars of such children develop autonomously, i.e. completely independent of each other, others (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996, Muysken 2000 have nevertheless shown that cross-linguistic influence not only occurs in the lexicon but also in the syntactic components of the grammars. Hulk and Müller (2000) and Müller and Hulk (2001) argued that cross-linguistic influence is to be expected only under certain specific conditions. ...
... Other researchers, on the other hand, argued that some degree of crosslinguistic influence is prevalent in early bilingual speech (e.g. GawlitzekMaiwald and Tracy, 1996;Döpke, 1998; Hulk and van derLinden, 1998;Hulk and Müller, 2000;Yip and Matthews, 2000;Müller and Hulk, 2001). In more specific terms, the focus of interest has been placed on the appearance of systematic influence from one language to another during the course of bilingual development in syntactic, phonological and morphological domains, as well as in language contact situations (e.g.Döpke, 1998Müller, 1998;Yip and Matthews, 2000;Paradis, 2001;Nicoladis, 2002;Herkenrath et al., 2003). ...
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.
... Cross-linguistic influences have been well-documented in the literature for expressive phonology (e.g., Fabiano-Smith & Goldstein, 2010;Kehoe, Lleó, & Rakow, 2004;Schnitzer & Krasinski, 1996) and syntax (e.g., Döpke, 2000;Gathercole, 2007;Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996;Müller & Hulk, 2001;Paradis & Navarro, 2003;Paradis & Genesee, 1996). For example, Fabiano-Smith and Goldstein (2010) found evidence of bilingual Spanish-English children using the English aspirated voiceless stop in Spanish productions of initial voiceless stops and using the Spanish unaspirated voiceless stop in productions of English. ...
The purpose of this study was to determine if children exposed to two languages would benefit from the phonotactic probability cues of a single language in the same way as monolingual peers and to determine if cross-linguistic influence would be present in a fast mapping task.
Two groups of typically-developing children (monolingual English and bilingual Spanish-English) took part in a computer-based fast mapping task which manipulated phonotactic probability. Children were preschool-aged (N = 50) or school-aged (N = 34). Fast mapping was assessed through name identification and naming tasks. Data were analyzed using mixed ANOVAs with post-hoc testing and simple regression.
Bilingual and monolingual preschoolers showed sensitivity to English phonotactic cues in both tasks, but bilingual preschoolers were less accurate than monolingual peers in the naming task. School-aged bilingual children had nearly identical performance to monolingual peers.
Knowing that children exposed to two languages can benefit from the statistical cues of a single language can help inform ideas about instruction and assessment for bilingual learners.
... This type of departure from the norm was interpreted as the application of the model for Aspect-Tense use from the opposite language, and may be explained as bilingual bootstrapping (as defined by Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996)). ...
In this poster, the results of an investigation of the use of Aspect-Tense forms in Russian and Tense forms in German (subsequently referred to collectively as A-T forms) in a specific kind of data will be presented: Monolingual and bilingual (Russian and German) subjects were asked to retell the "Frog story" from a picture book.
... Research within the last twenty years (Meisel 1989, Paradis and Genesee 1995, De Houwer 1994, however, has convincingly shown that children being brought up bilingually from birth (2L1) are perfectly capable of separating their two grammars from very early on and pass through the same developmental stages as their monolingual peers with respect to both their grammars. Whereas some have claimed (Meisel 1989) that the two grammars of such children develop autonomously, i.e. completely independent of each other, others (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996, Muysken 2000 have nevertheless shown that cross-linguistic influence not only occurs in the lexicon but also in the syntactic components of the grammars. Hulk and Müller (2000) and Müller and Hulk (2001) argued that cross-linguistic influence is to be expected only under certain specific conditions. ...
... This possibility, which requires detailed comparison with monolingual development of each language, has not been studied extensively. On the other hand, a number of studies report incorporation of elements from a dominant to a less dominant language (Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy, 1996;Hulk and van der Linden, 1996;Do È pke, 1997). Language dominance can be measured most objectively by computing Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) for each language at different stages: the dominant language is expected to have a higher MLU value than the less dominant one. ...
Research on early bilingual development has suggested that syntactic transfer in bilingual acquisition is dependent on patterns of dominance and properties of the dual input the child is exposed to. In a case study of a Hong Kong bilingual child we present evidence of transfer from Cantonese to English in three areas where the two languages contrast typologically: wh-in-situ interrogatives, null objects and prenominal relatives are observed at a period when Cantonese is dominant as measured by MLUw. Comparisons with monolingual development show both qualitative and quantitative differences attributable to transfer. Language dominance is seen as the major determinant of transfer, with input ambiguity playing a role in the domain of null objects. While two distinct and separate linguistic systems are simultaneously developing in the bilingual mind, the pervasiveness of transfer implies a high degree of interaction between them. The findings show that the bilingual subject in our case study has taken a different path from monolinguals toward the target.
... The role of structural overlap in transfer has been emphasized in studies on bilingual child syntax (e.g., Döpke, 1998;Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 1996). Hulk and Müller (2000) and Müller and Hulk (2001) identified higher rates of occurrence of illicit null objects in bilingual children who spoke a Germanic and a Romance language. ...
Can transfer occur in child bilingual syntax when surface overlap does not involve the syntax-pragmatics interface? Twenty-three Spanish/English bilingual children participated in an elicited imitation study of clitic placement in Spanish restructuring contexts, where variable word order is not associated with pragmatic or semantic factors. Bilingual children performed poorly with preverbal clitics, the order that does not overlap with English. Distinct bilingual patterns emerged: backward repositioning, omissions (for simultaneous bilinguals) and a reduction in forward repositioning bias. We conclude that transfer should be defined in lexical terms as the result of priming effects leading to shifts in lexical items.
... That bilinguals would be more advanced than monolinguals in their acquisition of a complex morphosyntactic structure seems to be a surprising finding. However, in contrast to the predictions of the GSH/SH, it has been suggested elsewhere for typical acquisition that dual-language learning may have a facilitative effect on the emergence of late-acquired structures in one language if the other language's counterpart structure emerges earlier in acquisition (Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996), Kehoe, Trujillo, and Lleó (2001), Paradis and Genesee (1996)). Perhaps the coextensive development of the English pronoun system acquired earlier confers some advantages on children's French pronominal development. ...
In this study, we tested the predictions of 2 opposing perspectives on the nature of the deficit in specific language impairment (SLI): the domain-general, cognitive/ perceptual processing view and the domain-specific, linguistic representational view. Data consisted of spontaneous speech samples from French–English bilingual children with SLI; younger, typically developing, bilingual language peers, and monolingual French comparison groups. We analyzed the children's use of direct object clitics/pronouns and definite articles in French and English. The bilingual children had more difficulty with clitics in French than articles in French and pro-nouns in English; and bilingual children with SLI performed like their younger, un-affected bilingual peers and like monolinguals with SLI. We argue that these findings present challenges to the domain-general perspective and support the claim that domain-specific limitations in linguistic representation are a component of SLI.
... It stands to reason that the children resorted to using structures from their respective stronger language in order to manage completing the narration in the weaker language. In this way, the structures of one language took on a bootstrapping-function for the other, a mechanism that has also been observed for bilingual children in other contexts (see Gawlitzek-Maiwald/Tracy 1996). ...
В данной статье рассматривается употребление вида и времени в русских и немецких рассказах по истории в картинках. Анализируются
рассказы 30-ти русских и 30-ти немецких одноязычных детей, 5-ти русских и 5-ти немецких одноязычных взрослых, а также немецкие
и русские рассказы 30-ти двуязычных детей. В исследовании выявлены следующие результаты: во-первых, нарративные стратегии
русских и немецких монолингвов ярко отличаются друг от друга. В рассказах русских одноязычных детей и взрослых употребляется
прежде всего совершенный вид прошедшего времени, в то время как у немецких одноязычных детей и взрослых преобладают глаголы
в настоящем времени. Во-вторых, анализ употребления глаголов у двуязычных детей показал влияние русской модели рассказывания
на немецкую и наоборот: частотность глаголов в нетипичном для данного языка времени (и виде) была у двуязычных детей значительно
выше, чем у одноязычных. Это отклонение от нормы следует интерпретировать как применение нарративной стратегии соответственно
другого языка. Данная нарративная стратегия помогает двуязычным детям успешно построить рассказ, особенно в мeнee oсвoeннoм
ими языке.
... A number of studies have shown support for this hypothesis as well. Specifically, Tracy (1995) and Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) examined German-English bilingual children and observed that certain structural properties of German allow for faster acquisition of some structural properties in English. For example, they found that one of the bilingual children in their study, Hannah, acquired English infinitival phrase structure at a faster rate than did age-matched monolingual English-speaking children. ...
In this study, the authors aimed to determine how between-language interaction contributes to phonological acquisition in bilingual Spanish-English speaking children.
A total of 24 typically developing children, ages 3;0 (years;months) to 4;0, were included in this study: 8 bilingual Spanish-English speaking children, 8 monolingual Spanish speakers, and 8 monolingual English speakers. Single word and connected speech samples were obtained for each child. This study examined interaction between the two languages of bilingual children during phonological acquisition through the measurement of (a) transfer (the frequency and types of phonological transfer present in the speech of bilingual children); (b) deceleration (a slower rate of acquisition for bilinguals as compared with monolinguals); and (c) acceleration (a faster rate of acquisition for bilinguals as compared with monolinguals.
Findings demonstrated that (a) transfer was evident in the productions of bilingual children, (b) differences were found in accuracy between monolingual and bilingual children, and (c) sound frequency did not predict differential accuracy of either phonetically similar sounds between languages or phonetically dissimilar sounds specific to Spanish or English.
The results from this study indicate that transfer, deceleration, and a possible variation of the acceleration hypothesis occur in bilingual phonological acquisition. Evidence was found for separation and interaction between the bilingual children's 2 languages (J. Paradis & F. Genesee, 1996).
... It is important to keep in mind that code switching does not inhibit semantic development. Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) argued that semantic knowledge in both of a bilingual's languages (as reflected in vocabulary use) boosts productivity across the lexical and syntactic systems. Thus, the need for vocabulary in one language may nudge the child to seek out comparable vocabulary in the other language. ...
This study evaluates the extent to which bilingual children produce the same or overlapping responses on tasks assessing semantic skills in each of their languages and whether classification analysis based on monolingual or conceptual scoring can accurately classify the semantic development of typically developing (TD) bilingual children.
In Study 1, 55 TD children (ages 4;0 [years;months] to 7;11) from bilingual backgrounds named characteristic properties of familiar items. The extent to which children produced overlapping responses in each of their languages and their errors were examined. In Study 2, 40 TD children (ages 5;0 to 6;1), group matched for age and bilingual language exposure, responded to the Phase 2 version of the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA; E. D. Peña, V. Gutierrez-Clellen, A. Iglesias, B. A. Goldstein, and L. M. Bedore, in development). Conceptual and monolingual scores were compared to determine the extent to which were comparable for groups of children.
The results of Study 1 indicated that TD children from bilingual backgrounds are more likely to produce unique than overlapping responses when they respond to test items. Children were more likely to code switch when tested in Spanish than in English, but they were more likely to produce errors in English. In Study 2, monolingual and bilingual children achieved comparable conceptual scores. For Spanish-speaking bilingual children, the conceptual score was more likely to be in the average range of the monolingual children than was their monolingual score. For testing in English, monolingual and conceptual scores were similar.
Bilingual children will benefit from conceptual scoring, especially when they are tested in Spanish.
According to usage-based theories, children initially acquire surface-level constructions and then abstract representations. If so, bilingual children might show lags relative to monolingual children early in acquisition, but not later on, once they rely on abstract representations. We tested this prediction with comprehension of passives in 3- to 6-year-old children: French–English bilinguals and English monolinguals. As predicted, younger bilingual children tended to be less accurate than monolingual children. In contrast, the older bilingual children scored equivalently to monolinguals, despite less exposure to English. When the children made errors, the bilingual children were more likely to interpret the subject as the agent of the action than the monolingual children. These results are consistent with the argument that children develop increasingly abstract representations of linguistic constructions with usage. They further suggest that bilingual children might catch up with monolingual through use of selective attention and/or a semantic bias.
In order to communicate effectively with a variety of conversation partners and in a variety of settings, bilingual children must develop language control, the ability to control which language is used for production. Past work has focused on linguistic skills as the limiting factor in children’s ability to control their language choice, while cognitive control has been the focus of adult models of language control. The current study examined the effects of both language ability and cognitive control on language control in 4−6 year old Spanish/English bilingual children with a broad range of language skills, including those with low skills in both languages. To measure language control, children participated in an interactive scripted confederate dialogue paradigm in which they took turns describing picture scenes with video partners who presented themselves as monolingual speakers of English or monolingual speakers of Spanish. The paradigm had two conditions: a single-language context, in which children interacted with only one partner, and a dual-language context, in which children needed to switch between languages to address different partners. The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) indexed cognitive control. The findings revealed an overall effect of language ability, such that children with lower language skills were more likely to produce words in the language not understood by their conversation partner. There was also an effect of cognitive control on children’s ability to adjust to the dual-language context. Based on these findings, we suggest that a model of language control in children should consider both linguistic and cognitive factors. However, language ability appears to be the main limiting factor, with cognitive control playing a more restricted role in adapting to a dual-language context.
The present study investigates whether the tense-aspect development of Cantonese-English bilingual children conforms to the Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen and Shirai 1994. Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition principles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16(2). 133–156.), which has been shown to predict the development of monolingual children of many different languages well, and whether the two languages influence each other during development. Analysis of longitudinal production data from three Cantonese-English bilinguals (Yip and Matthews 2000. Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese-English bilingual child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3). 193–208.) shows that the development of bilingual children resemble that of monolingual children and generally follow the Aspect Hypothesis, but to a lesser degree. Interactions were also observed in that the acquisition of the Cantonese progressive marker gan was accelerated by the -ing in the bilingual children, and transfer from Cantonese to English allowed them to use the English past tense marking with verbs of different lexical aspect early in their development, deviating from the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis.
The present article argues that the two effects observed in bilingual first language acquisition, delay and acceleration,
have different sources. Whereas delay can be due to cross-linguistic influence on the competence or the performance level
and to the mere cognitive burden to process two languages, acceleration is always rooted in efficient computation in a
non-linguistic sense. The evidence for the difference between delay and acceleration effects stems from children who are
raised bilingually from birth and who are studied during spontaneous speech production. It falls out rather naturally that
linguistic development is immune to acceleration, while it can be delayed in bilingual children as compared to monolinguals.
“Code mixing” refers to a multilingual's or a bilingual's use of two or more languages in a single unit of discourse, such as a word, an utterance, or a conversation (see, e.g., Genesee, Paradis, & Crago, 2004).
The extent to which the two independent grammatical systems of a bilingual child may actually interact has been the focus of much investigation since the late 1990s after more evidence had been gathered in support of language differentiation in simultaneous bilingualism. This chapter reviews recent advances in the field in terms of phonological, lexical, and morpho-syntactic development. It covers some of the more recent work on language and cognition, in particular executive function skills, in young bilinguals. Issues of language differentiation that have preoccupied researchers studying speech perception also loom large in the investigation of the acquisition of segmental and supra-segmental phonology in speech production. Paying attention to word boundaries is extremely advantageous to infants' developing word learning abilities. It is significant that these skills seem to emerge in the second half of the first year of life when children start to produce their first words.
This paper describes the development of temporal expressions in a bilingual child acquiring two typologically distinct languages: Italian and Indonesian. These languages differ from one another in the way tense and aspect are encoded and it is interesting to observe what kind of cross-linguistic influence one language system has on the other. Italian verbs are heavily inflected for person, number as well as for tense, aspect and mood, whereas, in Indonesian, the encoding of tense and aspect is lexical rather than morphological; moreover encoding is optional when the context is sufficiently clear. This means that tense and aspect in Indonesian is often marked pragmatically rather than grammatically. This paper considers the interference effects that result from simultaneously acquiring these two typologically distinct systems.
It has been noted by many researchers that young bilingual children pass through a stage of early mixing which extends approximately until the age of 2;6 and ends abruptly. Research on bilingual first language acquisition has clearly excluded the possibility to explain mixed utterances as the result of a fused lexical or grammatical system. However, the actual debate on the reasons for early mixing still continues. Two main approaches have dominated the field of language mixing in adults: One assumes that adult's codeswitching is constrained by grammatical principles, suggesting that a third grammar is responsible for the grammaticality of mixed utterances (e.g., the Equivalence Constraint formulated by Poplack (1980), or the Functional Head Constraint formulated by Belazi, Rubin & Toribio (1994) among others). Since child grammar is supposed to be organized differently from adult grammar, the grammatical “ingredients” of the principles which constrain codeswitching are absent in early child language (Köppe & Meisel, 1995). It therefore follows that early mixing in young bilingual children is not to be considered as constrained by any grammatical principles. The other approach argues that codeswitching in adults is not regulated by external grammatical principles, but that the only constraints which govern codeswitching are those required by the two languages involved (MacSwan, 2000). We will show that this assumption holds for child language as well. Our analysis of mixing opens the perspective that child grammar can be considered to be organized in the same way as adult grammar. Furthermore, we will argue that early mixing is related to developing performance abilities, in the present paper to the readiness on the bilingual child's part to speak the language(s).
The present study investigates the effects of child internal (age/time) and child external/environmental factors on the development of a wide range of language domains in successive bilingual (L2) Turkish-English children of homogeneously low SES. Forty-three L2 children were tested on standardized assessments examining the acquisition of vocabulary and morpho-syntax. The L2 children exhibited a differential acquisition of the various domains: they were better on the general comprehension of grammar and tense morphology and less accurate on the acquisition of vocabulary and (complex) morpho-syntax. Profile effects were confirmed by the differential effects of internal and external factors on the language domains. The development of vocabulary and complex syntax were affected by internal and external factors, whereas external factors had no contribution to the development of tense morphology. These results are discussed in light of previous studies on the impact of internal and external factors in child L2 acquisition.
Recent research on pragmatic and syntactic development in bilingual 2-year-olds has shown that these children have differentiated language systems. However, it remains to be shown whether their grammars develop autonomously or interdependently from 2 years onward. The present study investigates the potential interference between the grammars of French-English bilingual children, aged 2–3 years. We examined their acquisition of functional categories, specifically the properties of INFL (finiteness and agreement) and negation, as these grammatical properties differ in both adult French and English and child French and English. Our results indicate that the bilingual children show no evidence of transfer, acceleration, or delay in acquisition, and support the hypothesis that their grammars are acquired autonomously. Some implications of these findings for the debate on continuity in the emergence of functional categories are discussed.
In this article we compare the acquisition of determiners in bilingual children acquiring Italian simultaneously with German or Swedish. We are concerned with cross-linguistic differences in the rate of acquisition and we discuss in particular the Nominal Mapping Parameter, a model according to which the syntax-semantics interface is crucial in acquisition and which predicts similar developmental patterns for children acquiring a Germanic language. We show that Swedish determiners are acquired more easily than German determiners, which implies that predictions for developmental patterns should not be based on syntactic factors alone, but must make reference to typological differences in morphology and phonology. Furthermore, we show that the acquisition of Italian determiners is affected positively by the simultaneous acquisition of Swedish but that no such effect arises when Italian is acquired simultaneously with German.
Infant bilingualism offers a unique opportunity to study the relative effects of language experience and maturation on brain development, with each child serving as his or her own control. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to words were examined in 19- to 22-month-old English-Spanish bilingual toddlers. The children's dominant vs. nondominant languages elicited different patterns of neural activity in the lateral asymmetry of an early positive component (P100), and the latencies and distributions of ERP differences to known vs. unknown words from 200-400 and 400-600 ms. ERP effects also differed for 'high' and 'low' vocabulary groups based on total conceptual vocabulary scores. The results indicate that the organization of language-relevant brain activity is linked to experience with language rather than brain maturation.
Children's Syntax: An Introduction to Principles and Parameter Theory Google Scholar
- M Atkinson