Different sources of delay and acceleration in early child bilingualism

Müller, Natascha

doi:10.1515/zfs-2017-0002

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Studies comparing 2L1 children to monolingual children have generally found that simultaneous bilinguals were not disadvantaged, acquiring the two languages in a similar fashion and at a similar pace as their monolinguals peers (for an overview see Genesee and Nicoladis, 2007). Some studies reported specific acceleration effects, whereas other studies reported delays (see Hager and Müller, 2015, for a discussion of robust and non-robust domains in 2L1 children in comparison to monolingual children of the same language; see Müller, 2017, for a discussion of sources for acceleration and delay). Acceleration has been found for the area of morpho-syntax, with functional elements from the more developed language serving as a bootstrap for the acquisition of the functional elements of the other language (e.g., Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy, 1996).…”

Section: Factors Influencing Child Bilingual Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Age Factor Revisited: Timing in Acquisition Interacts With Age of Onset in Bilingual Acquisition

Schulz

Grimm

2019

Front. Psychol.

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In this paper, we investigate whether timing in monolingual acquisition interacts with age of onset and input effects in child bilingualism. Six different morpho-syntactic and semantic phenomena acquired early, late or very late are considered, with their timing in L1 acquisition varying between age 3 (subject-verb agreement) and after age 6 (case marking). Data from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) whose mean age of onset to German was 3 months are compared with data from early second language learners of German (eL2) whose mean age of onset to German was 35 months as well as with data from monolingual children. To explore change over time, children were tested twice at the ages of 4;4 and 5;8 years. The main findings were that 2L1 children had an advantage over their eL2 peers in early acquired phenomena, which disappeared with time, whereas in late acquired phenomena 2L1 and eL2 children did not differ. Moreover, 2L1 children performed like monolingual children in early acquired phenomena but had a disadvantage in the late acquired phenomena with the amount of delay decreasing with time. We conclude that age of onset effects are modulated by effects of timing in monolingual acquisition. Contrary to expectation, input in terms of language dominance, measured as the dominant language used at home, did not affect simultaneous bilingual children’s performance in any of the phenomena. We discuss the implications of our findings for the hypothesis that acquisition of late phenomena is determined by input alone and suggest an alternative concept: the learner’s internal need for time to master a phenomenon, which is determined by its complexity and cross-linguistic robustness.

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Section: Factors Influencing Child Bilingual Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Age Factor Revisited: Timing in Acquisition Interacts With Age of Onset in Bilingual Acquisition

Schulz

Grimm

2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…Instead, Müller [47] argues that sometimes bilinguals rely on domain-general mechanisms in response to superficial similarities in their two languages, and this is mischaracterized as acceleration (see also [48,49]). For example, bilingual learners of German in combination with a Romance language, such as Italian or French, tend to correctly place finite verbs in second position in German [50].…”

Section: Domain-general Accountsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints on Acceleration in Bilingual Development: Evidence from Word Segmentation by Spanish Learning Infants

Mateu,

Sundara

2024

Behavioral Sciences

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We have previously shown that bilingual Spanish and English-learning infants can segment English iambs, two-syllable words with final stress (e.g., guiTAR), earlier than their monolingual peers. This is consistent with accelerated development in bilinguals and was attributed to bilingual infants’ increased exposure to iambs through Spanish; about 10% of English content words start with an unstressed syllable, compared to 40% in Spanish. Here, we evaluated whether increased exposure to a stress pattern alone is sufficient to account for acceleration in bilingual infants. In English, 90% of content words start with a stressed syllable (e.g., KINGdom), compared to 60% in Spanish. However, we found no evidence for accelerated segmentation of Spanish trochees by Spanish-English bilingual infants compared to their monolingual Spanish-learning peers. Based on this finding, we argue that merely increased exposure to a linguistic feature in one language does not result in accelerated development in the other. Instead, only the acquisition of infrequent patterns in one language may be accelerated due to the additive effects of the other language.

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“…Arnaus Arnaus , Müller (2017), Repetto and Müller (2010), and Schmeißer and Jansen (2016) have first indications from a cross-sectional study (only 18 of the 91 children were younger than 42 months, the age at which monolingual German children have acquired target-like word order) and eight longitudinal studies (1;6-3;6) that bilingual French/Italian/Spanish-German children are accelerated in finite-verb placement in German main clauses. German is a V2-language, in which any constituent (the subject, the object or a clause) appears in first position of main clauses, and the finite verb immediately follows it.…”

Section: Shared Structures As a Useful Concept?mentioning

confidence: 99%

AAiMLL: Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners: The Case of the Multilingual Child

Müller

2023

Languages

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Cognitive science has demonstrated that multilinguals (including children) show a cognitive advantage over monolinguals. Linguistics has provided evidence that multilinguals (including children) are able to successfully separate their lexicons and grammars and negotiate multilingual environments. Apart from these achievements, linguistics has generally failed to demonstrate a multilingual advantage related to the multilingual’s linguistic proficiency. The present article summarizes the current literature, which shows that there are first indications of an acceleration effect in multilingual children. This effect is discernable if the languages radically differ, if the child uses a ‘weak’ language (often a minority language), if the child acquires more than two languages from birth, and if contact with the language exhibiting the acceleration effect is delayed until kindergarten age. This kind of acceleration effect represents an explanation gap under current theorizing in cognitive science and linguistics, and calls for a new language acquisition theory, a best-of-breed solution for further research in language acquisition. AAiMLL (Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners) combines cognitive and linguistic aspects with a threshold theory. It is claimed here that the multilingual child learns from two cognitive acquisition strategies. One is fed by grammatical features, and requires the child to (re-)use already acquired knowledge by generalizing to new domains. The other strategy enables the child to consider rejected alternatives of earlier decisions in one language, for use in the other language. An acceleration effect related to the multilingual’s linguistic proficiency is indicative of the success of both strategies. The success of the strategies is argued to be related to a threshold of language usage from a quantitative or a qualitative perspective.

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Different sources of delay and acceleration in early child bilingualism

Cited by 9 publications

References 45 publications

The Age Factor Revisited: Timing in Acquisition Interacts With Age of Onset in Bilingual Acquisition

The Age Factor Revisited: Timing in Acquisition Interacts With Age of Onset in Bilingual Acquisition

Constraints on Acceleration in Bilingual Development: Evidence from Word Segmentation by Spanish Learning Infants

AAiMLL: Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners: The Case of the Multilingual Child

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