Syntactic development in early foreign language learning: Effects of L1 transfer, input, and individual factors

Abstract

This study explores parallels and differences in the comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses between early foreign-language (FL) learners and monolingual children. We test for (a) effects of syntactic first-language (L1) transfer, (b) the impact of input on syntactic development, and (c) the impact of individual differences on early FL syntactic development. We compare the results to findings in child second language (L2) naturalistic acquisition and adult FL acquisition. Following work on adult FL acquisition, we carried out a picture-based interpretation task with 243 child FL learners in fourth grade at different regular, partial, and high-immersion schools in Germany plus 68 monolingual English children aged 5 to 8 years as controls. The child FL learners display a strong subject-first preference but do not appear to use the L1 syntax in comprehension. Input differences across different schools affect overall accuracy, with students at high-immersion FL schools catching up to monolingual performance within 4 years of learning. Finally, phonological awareness is implicated in both early FL learning and naturalistic child L2 development. These findings suggest that early FL development resembles child L2 acquisition in speed and effects of individual factors, yet is different from adult FL acquisition due to the absence of L1 transfer effects.

Effects of Plurilingual Teaching on Grammatical Development in Early Foreign‐Language Learning

“…In a recent study on German 9–10‐year‐old 3rd‐ and 4th‐grade primary school minority and majority language students, Hopp, Vogelbacher et al. (2019) reported that both cognitive and linguistic skills in the minority language contribute significantly to vocabulary and grammar skills in FL English. When all cognitive and linguistic factors were statistically controlled for, minority language speakers had advantages over majority language speakers in the FL, in particular, if they had a large vocabulary in the minority language (see also Maluch & Kempert, 2017; Fleckenstein, Möller, & Baumert, 2018).…”

“…As a case in point, Hopp, Vogelbacher, et al. (2019a) reported that beneficial effects of previously acquired languages on FL skills wane from 3rd to 4th grade in primary school (see also Maluch et al., 2016). This may be taken to indicate that traditional (i.e., target‐language only) FL teaching does not sufficiently address the linguistic resources of minority language learners in FL learning.…”

“…In order to go beyond item‐specific learning of vocabulary, the present study examines effects of plurilingual FL teaching on grammatical development. In addition, the present study focuses on early FL learning in view of findings that effects of minority languages on FL learning decrease as students get older and transition into secondary schooling (Hopp, Vogelbacher et al., 2019; Maluch et al., 2016).…”

Mandarin–Italian Dual-Language Children’s Comprehension of Head-Final and Head-Initial Relative Clauses

“…The comprehension of RCs by dual-language children has been investigated in a number of studies (e.g., Garraffa et al, 2015;Hopp et al, 2019). Here, we concentrate on the studies focused on language pairs whose RCs have opposite orders, namely, head-initial RCs (such as English and Italian) vs. head-final RCs (such as Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean) (e.g., Lee and Lee, 2004;Kidd et al, 2015;Chan et al, 2017;Hu and Guasti, 2017;Tsoi et al, 2019;Jia and Paradis, 2020).…”

Reflection in Speech of the Individual-Typological Features of Language Personality

“…Следует заметить, что отечественными и зарубежными психолингвистами активно изучаются такие важные и интересные проблемы, как психосемантика (Бутакова, 2018;Jet et al, 2019;Shen et al, 2019); особенности дискурса (Калмиков, 2017); становление детской речи (Мисан, 2017;Калмикова, 2016;Седов, 2008;Bahramlou & Esmaeili, 2019;Kamal, 2019); овладение различными языками (Tremblay et al, 2019;Salim Abu Rabia, 2019;Makhoul & Sabah, 2019;Rodríguez-Ortiz, 2019;Ke et al, 2019), в том числе вторым языком (Zhang & Wen, 2019;Koval, 2019;Zhang, 2019); особенности раннего двуязычия (Hopp et al, 2019;Sierens et al, 2019); связи речи и нарушений психического развития (Pezzino, Marec-Breton & Lacroix, 2019;Bååth et al, 2019;Gullhaugen & Sakshaug, 2019;Zhou, Zhan & Ma, 2019;Pereira, Sampson & DiCola, 2019).…”