Bilingualism as a first language: language dominance and crosslinguistic influence

Fuertes, Raquel Fernández; Liceras, Juana M.

doi:10.1515/9781501509988-007

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…An important limitation in the current study is that, due to the reliance on multiple corpora, the child heritage speakers’ exposure to Spanish and English, language dominance, and language proficiency could not be measured (c.f., Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2018; Silva-Corvalán, 2014). This is an important shortcoming given that amount of exposure to the heritage language has been shown to significantly predict gender matching in other studies of child heritage speakers (e.g.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

Goebel-Mahrle

Shin

2020

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Objectives: This study investigates (a) whether child heritage speakers produce more gender mismatches in Spanish ( un piedra “a-masc. stone-fem.”) than monolingual children, (b) whether older child heritage speakers mismatch more than younger ones, and (c) linguistic contexts in which mismatches occur. Methodology: 3893 agreement forms were extracted from corpora of Spanish spoken by six monolingual children, ages 5–6 years, and three groups of US child heritage speakers: ten 5–6-year-olds, fifteen 7–8-year-olds, and twenty-one 9–11-year-olds. Data and analysis: Logistic regressions measured the impact of agreement form type, noun gender, noncanonical noun ending, and noun frequency on gender matching. One regression included 5–6-year-olds only (monolingual and heritage); the second included child heritage speakers only (5–11-year-olds). Findings: There were no significant differences between monolingual and heritage 5–6-year-olds; for these children, adjectives, direct object clitics, noncanonical nouns, and feminine nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. Among the 5–11-year-old heritage speakers, direct object clitics referring to feminine nouns and noncanonical nouns increased the likelihood of mismatches. The 9–11-year-olds produced more gender mismatches referring to feminine nouns than the younger child heritage speakers, especially with direct object clitics. Originality: This corpus study provides evidence for high rates of gender matching and clarifies the contexts that increase the likelihood that children will mismatch. Implications: Gender matching remains an intact part of child heritage speakers’ Spanish grammars. The distribution of mismatches found provides evidence of a strong article–noun association and a weaker noun–direct object clitic association. The oldest child heritage speakers’ use of masculine clitic lo to refer to feminine nouns may reflect an association between English “it” and Spanish lo. More generally, the finding that mismatches tend to involve masculine forms referring to feminine nouns supports the idea that masculine is the default, unmarked form in Spanish.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

Goebel-Mahrle

Shin

2020

International Journal of Bilingualism

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“…This challenge stems, in part, from the norming of many standardized language tests on monolingual speakers. Indeed, there is no gold standard for diagnosing bilingual children with a DLD (Camilleri and Botting, 2013), and the establishment of developmental norms for such children is complicated by factors such as the length and quality of their language exposure (Peña et al, 2020) and the similarities of the languages they acquire (Fuertes and Liceras, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Dynamic assessment of narratives: Case studies of bilingual Filipino kindergarteners with language difficulties

Laurie,

Pesco

2024

Child Language Teaching and Therapy

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The goal of the present study was to investigate the performance of four Filipino–English bilingual kindergarteners with language difficulties on a dynamic assessment of English narratives. Using a multiple case-study design, we examined the children's modifiability by detailing their responsiveness, level of skill transfer, and the amount and type of effort the examiner expended during two mediation sessions. We also assessed the children's narrative skills using the Test of Narrative Language—second edition (TNL-2). During mediation, similarities among the four children included difficulty answering wh-questions, little transfer of the newly learned skills, frequent focus on the story problem, and the need for continual prompting and repetition. However, the children showed individual learning styles, behavior when learning, and learning potential, prompting the examiner to apply different strategies to support their individual abilities. Gains on the TNL-2 were also negligible, consistent with the modifiability findings, apart from one child who showed improvement in comprehension scores. The case studies provide novel information regarding the narrative skills of Filipino bilingual children with language difficulties, an under-researched population. They can help guide expectations of such children during a dynamic assessment and suggest mediation strategies that clinicians could incorporate into their practice with other groups of bilingual children.

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“…A bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person (Grosjean, 1989), although a logical assumption could be that the bilingual mind is organized into the two independently represented language systems (e.g., Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2018b).…”

Section: Bilingual Processing: One Mind Two Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Joint activation and constant interaction are manifested through the existence of phenomena such as crosslinguistic influence or codeswitching (Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2018b) (see section 2.2. for more details). Codeswitching consists in the alternation of two languages within the same discourse, so there is a constant interplay between activation and inhibition.…”

Section: Bilingual Processing: One Mind Two Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…and online (i.e., eyetracking, reaction tasks). This way, we can gain knowledge not only on the bilingual speaker's intuitions about different switched structures but, most importantly, on how grammatical properties of the two languages involved in the switch are represented in the mind and how they interact (Beatty-Martínez & Dussias, 2017;Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2018b).…”

Section: Chapter 3 Empirical Accounts On Codeswitchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The role of grammatical gender in Spanish-English switched DPs and copula constructions..

Gómez Carrero

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Codeswitching is a language-contact phenomenon which is characterized by the simultaneous use of the two languages of the bilingual and which has been used as a tool to investigate how these two languages interact in the mind of the bilingual. The present investigation focuses on English-Spanish codeswitching within Determiner Phrases (DP switches) and within copulative constructions with an Adjective Phrase (Adj switches). By following the minimalist premises proposed by MacSwan (1999MacSwan ( , 2000 and by Liceras et al. (2005Liceras et al. ( , 2008, two issues have been under consideration: (i) the directionality of the switch, and (ii) the gender agreement mechanisms in Spanish DP switches and in Spanish Adj switches (i.e., the analogical criterion, both [+AC] and [-AC], and the masculine as default). Experimental data have been collected via three experiments from two groups of L1 Spanish -L2 English bilingual speakers (i.e., children and adults): (i) an eyetracking during reading task, (ii) a reaction time task in Gorilla, and (iii) a visual world paradigm task. Thus, both offline and online experimental data have been elicited and analyzed, as well as compared to those in previous studies. Overall, regarding the directionality of the switch, the results indicate that English DP switches and English Adj switches are processed faster and are preferred. In the case of the gender agreement mechanisms, the results point to a hierarchy (i.e., [+AC] < masculine as default < [-AC]), which shows how strongly represented Spanish gender features are in the mind of these bilinguals for whom Spanish is their L1. However, children and adults show differences which could be attributed to (i) the complexity of the structure in terms of lexical access (i.e., Adj switches are more complex than DP switches), (ii) the type of data (i.e., different patterns are found depending on whether offline data or online data are considered), (iii) the implementation of the requirements imposed by feature strength (i.e., children's performance is affected when experimental conditions make the task harder), and (iv) the interplay between the three. Keywords: codeswitching; Spanish grammatical gender; DP switches; Adj switches; directionality of the switch; gender agreement mechanisms; offline and online data; children and adults; L1 Spanish -L2 English.

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Bilingualism as a first language: language dominance and crosslinguistic influence

Cited by 7 publications

References 39 publications

A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

A corpus study of child heritage speakers’ Spanish gender agreement

Dynamic assessment of narratives: Case studies of bilingual Filipino kindergarteners with language difficulties

The role of grammatical gender in Spanish-English switched DPs and copula constructions..

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