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The present paper aims to investigate the interplay of lexical and grammatical development in school-aged Greek-Albanian bilingual children by providing evidence both from majority, Greek, and heritage, Albanian. To this end, 47 8 to 10-year-old bilingual children were tested by means of expressive vocabulary tests in Greek and in Albanian, while their grammatical skills were evaluated by means of the LITMUS Sentence Repetition Task administered in both languages. Additionally, input-related measures in both languages, such as oral language practices, literacy, and educational practices were used to assess the bilingual experience and examine how it would correlate with lexical and grammatical skills. The analysis showed that within each language, lexical and grammatical skills were closely related both for the majority and the heritage language, while when examining across-language effects, grammatical skills in the heritage language were correlated with grammatical skills in the majority language. Concerning the role of input, we found that input in the heritage language supported skills both in the heritage and the majority language. The study's contribution is that by providing novel evidence from this specific language pair it shows that supporting the use of heritage language can boost language skills in both languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some grammatical phenomena are more resistant to diachronic change than others. The syntactic core is particularly resilient, raising the question why this is the case and what causes the least vulnerable properties to change. Since fundamental alterations of grammars do not occur across the lifespan of adults, first language acquisition is commonly considered to be the main locus of syntactic change. Under the assumption that language contact leads to cross-linguistic interaction, early bilinguals have been claimed to be the main agents of change. I revisit this debate, focusing on head directionality and V2. Summaries of studies of various acquisition types lead to the conclusion that reanalysis in core syntax does not happen in the course of neither monolingual nor bilingual L1 acquisition. Contrary to hypotheses entertained in diachronic linguistics, neither language contact nor structural ambiguity/complexity has this effect. For core properties to change in L1, the triggering information must be contained in the input. Insufficient exposure, as in heritage language acquisition, can cause morphosyntactic change, though not in the syntactic core. Only second language acquisition exhibits such effects. L2 learners are thus the most likely agents of fundamental syntactic change. I conclude that explanations of the resilience of syntactic phenomena cannot rely exclusively on structural aspects. It results from an interaction of syntactic and developmental factors, defined by grammatical constraint, acquisition principles, and processing demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how Alor Malay–Abui child bilinguals, a non-WEIRD and underrepresented population in the field, comprehend and produce reflexive and non-reflexive possessive constructions in Abui. Their profiles of language development are explored through functionalist accounts that highlight the close connection between language and domain-general learning capacities, with special emphasis on three models: Competition Model, usage-based approach, and processing determinism.A total of 17 children (experimental group) and 17 adults (comparison group) complete a forced-choice sentence comprehension task (where they listen to two sentences following a short video prompt and verbally select the sentence that best describes the clip) and an elicited production task (where they watch a series of video clips and describe what is happening in each clip in a semi-spontaneous way).This study employs mixed-effects modelling for data analysis. The global model per experiment includes Condition (reflexive; non-reflexive) and Group (child; adult) as fixed effects and Participant and Item as random effects, with the maximal random-effects structure allowed by the model.Results show asymmetric performance by bilingual children on the two construction types across both experiments. Our findings provide insight into the developing processor in bilingual children, influenced by various factors such as usage frequency, cognitive skills, and task effects, within the functionalist framework.The findings of this study align with functionalist accounts for language development, illuminating the intricate deployment of linguistic knowledge in the minds of bilingual children interfacing with language-usage experience and domain-general factors. By combining the three models of functionalism, our findings are more properly understood, highlighting their complementary nature in addressing developmental trajectories of linguistic knowledge for child bilinguals. Importantly, our study shifts our attention to a unique bilingual context that has not been explored – lesser-studied languages and learning environments, contributing to offsetting the sampling bias persistent in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research shows that family language patterns (i.e., which languages are spoken in the family and by whom) are associated with bilingual children's language use. However, it is unclear how input properties such as input quantity, parental proficiency, and language mixing may differ across family language patterns. It is also unclear whether the effects of family language patterns on children's language proficiency remain when differences in input properties are controlled. We investigated (i) which family language patterns occurred in bilingual families in the Netherlands (n = 136), (ii) whether input properties differed across patterns, and (iii) how patterns related to children's proficiency, once input properties were controlled. Home language situations were assessed through a questionnaire, children's proficiency in Dutch and the minority language through vocabulary tests and parent ratings. Three language patterns were found: one-parent-one-language, both parents mixed languages or used the minority language. The results showed differences in input properties across all patterns, as well as effects of these patterns on children's proficiency in Dutch and the minority language that disappeared once input properties were controlled. These findings do not provide robust evidence that family language patterns predict children's proficiency, but rather, that input quantity is crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has highlighted the significance of the family and community in minority language revitalisation, whilst raising concern for efforts solely focused at the school level. This article draws upon research with children in Gaelic Medium Education, in Scotland, to explore their experiences and perceptions of their language use. The findings illustrate the dominance of English language across multiple aspects of children's lives and highlight the opportunities/threats of recent revitalisation efforts to push the bilingual benefits of language learning. The findings suggest the need for a more considered approach, such as translanguaging pedagogies, in order to effectively revitalise Gaelic language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has highlighted the significance of the family and community in minority language revitalisation, whilst raising concern for efforts solely focused at the school level. This article draws upon research with children in Gaelic Medium Education, in Scotland, to explore their experiences and perceptions of their language use. The findings illustrate the dominance of English language across multiple aspects of children's lives and highlight the opportunities/threats of recent revitalisation efforts to push the bilingual benefits of language learning. The findings suggest the need for a more considered approach, such as translanguaging pedagogies, in order to effectively revitalise Gaelic language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Research Questions: Codeswitching (CS) was investigated among English-Hebrew bilingual preschool children in a sentence repetition task focusing on switching at different points in prepositional phrases (PPs). We asked the extent to which sentence repetition accuracy differed (1) as a function of the switch site in the PP and (2) as a function of directionality, English-to-Hebrew versus Hebrew-to-English CS. Design/Methodology: English/first language (L1)-Hebrew/second language (L2), sequential bilingual children (N = 65), ages 5;5–6;5, participated. Thirty-six English and 36 Hebrew stimulus sentences were matched for semantic content and syntax. English stimulus sentences contained switches to Hebrew; Hebrew stimuli contained switches to English. Six 'switch' conditions were examined: a single codeswitched noun (N), a determiner–noun switch (DET+N), a codeswitched preposition (P), a preposition–determiner switch (P+DET), a switch of the entire PP (P+DET+N), and a no-switch condition. Data and Analysis: Audio recordings were transcribed and coded. Full sentence repetition was coded as correct/incorrect. The number of errors and the proportion of CS errors were computed. A 6 × 2 repeated-measures analysis of variance examined the effects of switch site within the PP and directionality (L1-to-L2 versus L2-to-L1). Findings/Conclusions: Accuracy was highest for the non-switched, N, and P+DET+N conditions. Accuracy was lowest for DET+N switches in English sentences, and for P switches in Hebrew sentences, and these two conditions showed the highest proportion of CS errors. The findings show evidence for a hierarchy of processing costs and directionality differences, which are interpreted in terms of contrastive typological features, particularly definiteness marking in the two languages, English by a free morpheme, and Hebrew by a bound clitic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilingual children may choose to reply to utterances in one language with another language. This behavior, which we call interspeaker code-switching, reportedly varies in frequency across children yet the sources of such variation are not well understood. While its use has been linked to variation in proficiency both concurrently and longitudinally, quantitative analyses of this relationship are limited. Here we measure frequency of interspeaker code-switching in a new population, French–English bilinguals in France (ages 5–8), using parental report and relate it to children's self-reported language attitudes and perceptions of dominance, English receptive and expressive vocabulary, and sentence repetition ability. These children use interspeaker code-switching infrequently and nearly exclusively in the direction of French. Use is predicted by children's expressive lexical and grammatical proficiency but not their attitudes toward English and French and exhibits only a marginally significant relationship with self-reported dominance. It shows a closer relationship with proficiency than other more well studied experience variables such as current exposure and output, especially for children with lesser English use. These results support a strong link between interspeaker code-switching and proficiency but not for children's attitudes in a context where they are generally favorable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study examines the characteristics of the child heritage language during the period of its relative dominance in early sequential bilinguals. Our objectives are twofold: to compare lexical accuracy and access in heritage and monolingual speakers across the primary school years, and to examine whether the results point to any early shifts in the heritage language strength. Design/methodology/approach: The participants are 38 Polish–English early sequential bilinguals and 24 Polish monolinguals aged 4;7–13;2, divided into four age groups. We use a new psycholinguistic tool, the Child HALA, to measure shifts in language strength by comparing lexical accuracy and access between the heritage and monolingual Polish. This picture-naming test is based on the HALA tool. Data and analysis: The data consists of accuracy and response time scores. The results are compared between the age groups and between the heritage and monolingual speakers to document any changes as a function of age and type of acquisition. Findings/conclusions: The heritage speakers achieve similar accuracy scores as the monolinguals; however, their rate of acquisition is slower. Their response time scores are lower across all age spans, which points to a slower language access. The results may suggest that the heritage language displays early shifts in its strength before a switch to a more dominant L2 between the mean age of 8–11;5. Originality: We document early changes in the heritage language strength that occur during a period of its relative dominance in bilingual children. The study employs a new psycholinguistic test applicable in the assessments of language maintenance in children. Significance/implications: The study provides insights into the heritage language maintenance during the early years of exposure to the majority language. The results may offer a greater understanding of the characteristics of the heritage language development in bilingual children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research in the field of bi-/multilingualism has shown that the acquisition of two (or more) languages during childhood is significantly influenced by the sociolinguistic experience of each individual, namely by the quantity and the quality of language exposure to the target languages (Unsworth 2016a). In fact, the heterogeneity of sociolinguistic contexts in which bilingual acquisition takes place leads to variation in the quantity and quality of the input to which bilingual children are exposed on a daily basis, which, in turn, originates individual variation in the levels of language development in the languages under acquisition, mainly, in the minority language (also known as heritage language/HL; cf. Montrul 2016). In order to assess the effect of language experience on bilingual development, studies usually resort to sociolinguistic questionnaires, which allow the researcher to outline the sociolinguistic profile of the subjects under analysis, as well as to obtain crucial information about predictive variables of bilingual development (see Unsworth 2019). In this paper, we present a sociolinguistic questionnaire, in Portuguese, developed for the collection of data on the sociolinguistic experience of bilingual children, between the ages of six and ten, with a migration background - the Questionário Sociolinguístico Parental para Famílias Emigrantes Bilingues (QuesFEB). This parental questionnaire, intended for researchers who conduct studies in the field of heritage bilingualism, has as its main objective the collection of biographical and sociolinguistic information not only for the detailed characterisation of the context in which bilingual children acquire the heritage language, but also, and mainly, for the quantification of their language experience in the target language, enabling the assessment of the effect that variables related to input quantity and quality have on that language. Besides providing a detailed description of the content of the sections that compose the QuesFEB, we will present, in detail, the method of codification and calculation of four key variables that have been found to be predictive of HL development, namely: (i) current quantity of HL use (i.e., input and output) in the household; (ii) quantity of cumulative exposure to the HL in the household; (iii) quantity of HL use (i.e., input and output) with migrant grandparents who are native speakers of the language of origin; and (iv) richness of the language exposure to the HL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Language exposure is known to be a key factor influencing bilingual vocabulary development in typically developing (TD) children. There is, however, a lack of knowledge in terms of exposure effects in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and, especially, in interaction with age of onset (AoO) of second language acquisition. Aims: In the Helsinki longitudinal SLI study (HelSLI), we investigated the receptive and expressive second language (L2) vocabulary performance and cross‐sectional vocabulary development of sequentially bilingual children with TD and DLD in order to resolve whether the groups could be differentiated based on their vocabulary performance. More importantly, we examined the effects of AoO and exposure in the vocabulary performance of these two bilingual groups. Methods & Procedures: A total of 70 children with DLD from a hospital clinic and 82 with TD from kindergartens were recruited. Children were 3–7 years old with different AoOs for the L2 and varying degrees of language exposure. Multiple regression analysis was used to compare the groups in two receptive and three expressive vocabulary tests while considering the effects of AoO and language exposure. Outcomes & Results: Children with TD outperformed children with DLD in both receptive and expressive vocabulary measures. Exposure predicted vocabulary but AoO did not. The effect of exposure was different in TD and DLD groups in receptive but not in expressive vocabulary. Additionally, the interaction of exposure and AoO was found for receptive vocabulary, but similarly in both groups. With increasing exposure, a difference in performance between the groups became more notable in receptive vocabulary compared with the expressive vocabulary. Conclusions & Implications: Bilingual children with TD and DLD can be differentiated by using L2 vocabulary tests when exposure is taken into consideration. Non‐significant AoO effects in 3–7 year olds suggest flexibility in terms of when to start L2 immersion. However, exposure is important, and especially children with DLD would need a substantial amount of it relative to their TD peers, so that they would not fall even further behind over time. Differences in benefiting from exposure in receptive mode might offer clinicians and kindergarten personnel an insight for evaluating challenges in bilingual development. Severe challenges in vocabulary development in the DLD group also call for both individually targeted small‐group activities for learning words as well as strategies for strengthening vocabulary in various environments and everyday life situations. What this paper addsWhat is already known on the subjectLanguage exposure is often found to explain more of the variation compared with AoO in early L2 vocabulary. On the other hand, it has been suggested by some researchers, but not all, that AoO effects would be found. Exposure and AoO might also interact differently depending on the task and whether the development is typical or disordered. Contrary to the clinical observation, diagnostic value of receptive vocabulary has often been questioned.What this paper adds to existing knowledgeThis study indicates that receptive vocabulary might be useful in differentiating bilingual TD and DLD. Language exposure effects differ between TD and DLD groups, but depending on task. Lower performance, but also slower cross‐sectional development, is found in receptive vocabulary for children with DLD. Interaction between language exposure and AoO stresses the importance of taking both into consideration when studying bilingual development.What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?L2 vocabulary tests can be used in differentiating bilingual children with TD and DLD when exposure is taken into consideration. Difficulties using exposure and, hence, slower development in children with DLD suggest that especially receptive vocabulary might be diagnostic by the accumulating exposure. Investing in ways of supporting vocabulary development through small‐group activities and in everyday situations of bilingual children at risk of DLD is highly recommended. This is important to prevent them from incrementally falling further behind their TD peers over time. A limited AoO effect suggests that families have more flexibility in terms of when to place their child in L2 immersion in their early years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the development of the phonological system of Russian as a heritage language (RHL) in the speech by bi/multilingual children. The chapter reports the results of a qualitative study examining phonological characteristics in the Russian speech of 29 bi/multilingual children (between 5 and 6 years old) from immigrant families in Saskatchewan. The results provided with reference to Russian monolingual child (MR) speech data demonstrate that child RHL speakers produce non-canonical forms (forms different from standard adult language use) similar to the ones by MR speakers. These forms include rhotacism, consonant cluster reductions, gliding, sonorant deletions, and other processes common in child speech. Some RHL speakers also employ dialectal and colloquial forms. In particular, Southern Russian/Ukrainian [?] sound use was observed in the speech of 8 participants whose parents immigrated from Eastern Ukraine. Some limited evidence suggesting the possibility of a double phonemic system (with elements of Russian and Ukrainian or Suržik) has been observed in the speech of two RHL participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how bilingualism in an atonal language, in addition to a tonal language, influences lexical and non-lexical tone perception and word learning during childhood. Forty children aged 5;3–7;2, bilingual either in English and Mandarin or English and another atonal language, were tested on Mandarin lexical tone discrimination, level-pitch sine-wave tone discrimination, and learning of novel words differing minimally in Mandarin lexical tone. Mandarin–English bilingual children discriminated between and learned novel words differing minimally in Mandarin lexical tone more accurately than their atonal–English bilingual peers. However, Mandarin–English and atonal–English bilingual children discriminated between level-pitch sine-wave tones with similar accuracy. Moreover, atonal–English bilingual children showed a tendency to perceive differing Mandarin lexical and level-pitch sine-wave tones as identical, whereas their Mandarin–English peers showed no such tendency. These results indicate that bilingualism in a tonal language in addition to an atonal language—but not bilingualism in two atonal languages—allows for continued sensitivity to lexical tone beyond infancy. Moreover, they suggest that although tonal–atonal bilingualism does not enhance sensitivity to differences in pitch between sine-wave tones beyond infancy any more effectively than atonal–atonal bilingualism, it protects against the development of biases to perceive differing lexical and non-lexical tones as identical. Together, the results indicate that, beyond infancy, tonal–atonal bilinguals process lexical tones using different cognitive mechanisms than atonal–atonal bilinguals, but that both groups process level-pitch non-lexical tone using the same cognitive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: Differences in directionality, motivations and locus of codeswitching have been reported for children's codeswitching, but these constructs have not been subjected to experimental study in order to examine how they may interact. This study investigated these variables in bilingual preschool children's codeswitching. Methodology: Thirty-two Russian-Hebrew bilingual children (mean age 6;3) performed two tasks: Retelling of narratives manipulated for setting/topic and listener and Conversation with a bilingual adult. Retelling conditions included a Russian story retold to a Hebrew-speaking puppet, a Hebrew story retold to a Russian speaking puppet and a Mixed language story retold to a bilingual puppet. The Conversation task involved responses to questions in Russian, Hebrew and codeswitched speech about holidays and activities at home and in preschool. Data and Analysis: All children's speech was audio recorded and transcribed using CHILDES conventions for data transcription. Codeswitched utterances were coded for the following: Directionality (Hebrew-to-Russian/Russian-to-Hebrew); Motivation (psycholinguistic/sociopragmatic); and Locus (intra-utterance/cross-speaker). Results: Overall children produced more codeswitching from Russian to Hebrew and did so more for psycholinguistic motivations (to maintain fluency or to overcome difficulties in lexical access). Originality: High rates of codeswitching occurred in this study, ranging from 15% to 22% for Conversation and Retelling, respectively (calculated as codeswitched instances per utterance). This high rate may be attributed to the experimental nature of the tasks, which intended to elicit codeswitching in children's speech. Significance: Drawing from Green and Wei's processing model, findings regarding directionality and motivation are discussed in terms of connectivity and activation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We examined narratives in bilinguals with TD and bilinguals with DLD. • DLD bilinguals had significantly lower story grammar scores than their TD peers. • Groups showed similar scores for microstructure components. • L2 exposure and richness predict narrative abilities for TD bilinguals, not DLD. Abstract Purpose : The narrative abilities of bilinguals with TD and with DLD/SLI in their English L2 were examined in order to 1) identify the narrative components that differentiate these two groups and 2) determine the role of age and input factors in predicting L2 narrative abilities in each group. Method : Participants were 24 English L2 children with DLD and 63 English L2 children with TD, matched on age (mean = 5; 8) and length of exposure to the L2 (mean = 24 months). Narrative samples were elicited using a story generation task and a parent questionnaire provided age and input variables. Results : Bilinguals with DLD had significantly lower scores for story grammar than their TD peers, but showed similar scores for narrative microstructure components. Length of L2 exposure in school and richness of the L2 environment predicted better narrative abilities for the group with TD but not with DLD. Older age predicted better narrative abilities for the group with DLD but not with TD. Quantity of L2 input/output at home did not predict story grammar or microstructure abilities in either group. Conclusion : Story grammar might differentiate between children with TD and DLD better than microstructure among bilinguals with less exposure to the L2 and when a story generation task is used. Bilinguals with TD make more efficient use of L2 input than bilinguals with DLD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the effects of age and language exposure on VOT production in 29 simultaneous bilingual children aged 3;7 to 5;11 who speak German as a heritage language in the Netherlands. Dutch and German have a binary voicing contrast, but the contrast is implemented with different VOT values in the two languages. The results suggest that bilingual children produce ‘voiced’ plosives similarly in their two languages, and these productions are not monolingual-like in either language. Bidirectional cross-linguistic influence between Dutch and German can explain these results. Yet, the bilinguals seemingly have two autonomous categories for Dutch and German ‘voiceless’ plosives. In German, the bilinguals’ aspiration is not monolingual-like, but bilinguals with more heritage language exposure produce more target-like aspiration. Importantly, the amount of exposure to German has no effect on the majority language's ‘voiceless’ category. This implies that more heritage language exposure is associated with more language-specific voicing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The main research question we seek to answer in the present study is: “What effect does reduced input in the non-dominant and dispreferred language have on the acquisition of Russian gender morphology by a bilingual Turkish–Russian child: Is it still sufficient for its monolingual-like development or can it cause incomplete acquisition of Russian gender morphology, at least, in some domains?” Design/methodology/approach: This study is a longitudinal case study. Data and analysis: The main source of data collection is video and audio recordings. Twenty-five recordings are available. They cover the period of between two years and 11 months (2;11) and 4;0. The data are examined in terms of the availability of masculine, feminine and neuter form-related genders, as well as availability of feminine and masculine semantic-related genders of nouns and pronouns in the first-, second- and third-person contexts. We look into whether the data of the bilingual child is marked with deviations from monolingual Russian data and/or incomplete acquisition of gender in any domain. Findings/conclusions: The findings of the present study, on the one hand, support the view that, by and large, reduced to a certain degree, input is still sufficient for monolingual-like language development; on the other hand, it demonstrates that reduced input may lead to non-monolingual-like and/or incomplete acquisition and, therefore, appears to be a main factor determining the development of a language and accounting for its strengths and weaknesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study investigates wh-in-situ transfer for sequential bilingual children whose first language (L1) is Korean and early second language (L2) is English. Previous research has shown evidence that bilingual children who speak one in-situ language and one wh-movement language often show transfer from the dominant language to the weaker language, and from the in-situ language to the wh-movement language. The purpose of this study is to explore whether wh-in-situ is transferred to English, under the influence of Korean. The research questions are as follows: Do K-E bilingual children produce more wh-in-situ questions in English than their monolingual counterparts? If so, do these wh-in-situ questions appear in illicit constructions? Design/Methodology: The design of this study is longitudinal in nature, in order to best capture a holistic picture of the children’s productions of English over time. Seven K-E children spanning ages 2;4 to 7;11 were observed in their spontaneous play interactions over approximately two years. Data/Analysis: The data consists of 120 recordings, which were transcribed and coded in ELAN. Monolingual comparison data were obtained from the CHILDES database. Findings/Conclusions: Results show no instances of wh-in-situ in the children’s English; the bilingual children pattern similarly to English-monolingual children in wh-in-situ production. No direct influence from Korean to English for wh-in-situ formation was found, contrary to what has been found in studies with other language pairs. Originality: This paper provides new evidence from a language pairing that has not been previously explored for crosslinguistic influence of wh-in-situ questions. Significance/Implications: The findings suggest that a dominance approach or structural complexity approach to predicting crosslinguistic influence for bilingual speakers may not fully capture the conditions for such influence to occur and may require some modification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents, teachers and institutions often attempt to implement monolingual policies in bilingual settings, believing that they thereby facilitate children’s bilingual development. Children, however, often have their own communicative agendas. In this study, we investigate how the twofold language policy of an English-medium preschool in Sweden is put into practice in everyday interaction. The results show that children (aged 3–4) develop a broader range of code alternation practices than the staff uses in their interaction with the children. The paper analyses several examples of spontaneous interaction either between staff and children, or among children playing with each other in the preschool. We show how the preschool’s English language profile in practice becomes a bilingual policy, which encourages children not only to acquire English and Swedish in the preschool, but also to learn different ways to manage their bilingualism in the school context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines longitudinal standardized test scores in both languages of a group of successive bilinguals with L1 English acquiring L2 French. Participants included 22 native English-speaking children living in France. French was evaluated using a standardized receptive vocabulary test, as well as tests of phonology and morphosyntax. English was evaluated using the Core Language Score subtests from the CELF-4-UK. The children varied in age (6;9–12;7) and length of exposure (0;11–3;9) to French and were tested twice at 12-month intervals. At T1, 7 children scored below norms in both languages, while only 3 did so at T2. Two out of these 3 were arguably not typically developing children. Length of exposure to French emerged as an important factor only at T1, when a number of children were in early stages of acquisition (≤18 months of exposure). English scores varied by age and weekly use of English. In successive bilingual children, language performance on L2 standardized tests can be expected to be (well) below norms during the first 18 months of exposure. English scores revealed that weak L1 performance is part of typical development in this bilingual context, but that L1 retention is also a possibility. Learning outcomes The reader will be able to: (1) describe challenges associated with language assessment of successive bilingual children, (2) describe the impact that age and length of exposure can have on language performance in bilinguals, and (3) understand how assessing successive bilinguals using monolingual norms can lead to underestimation of language abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: In this paper we investigate measures for the evaluation of a child’s bilingualism. Methodology: We compare a caretaker report on the estimated quantity and quality of a child’s bilingualism to results from direct assessment of the bilingual child’s production of complex sentences in Korean and English. We adopt an integrated methodology in which two case studies, closely matched on caretaker report and general background, are investigated directly through an elicited imitation task, for their knowledge of syntactic factors underlying development of coordinate sentence structure in both languages. Data and analysis: The participants are two four-year-old Korean-English bilingual children. We compare the caretaker report on the estimated quantity and quality of the children’s bilingualism to results from the direct assessment of their production of comparable complex sentences in both languages. We adopt an integrated methodology in which the two case studies, closely matched on caretaker report and general background, are investigated directly through an elicited imitation task for their knowledge of syntactic factors underlying development of coordinate sentence structure in both languages. Findings: Direct assessment reveals significant differences between the two children in the quantity and quality of their bilingualism, in spite of commonalities in caretaker reports. Limitations: This study compared only two children and two languages, and focused on language production. Replication with a larger number of subjects, including variation in child age, and measurement through other tasks, for example, tests of language comprehension, are merited. Implications: Results are interpreted as motivating both the refinement of caretaker report questionnaires and the necessity for direct assessment of bilingual participants, and suggest the elicited imitation task as a valuable method for conducting such direct assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé L’objectif de cette étude est de mesurer la fiabilité des épreuves de langage oral d’une batterie standardisée monolingue, l’Exalang 5-8, chez des enfants grandissant en contexte bilingue. Pour cela, nous avons comparé les performances d’un groupe de 21 enfants bilingues, âgés de 5 ans 11 mois à 7 ans 11 mois, à celles d’un groupe témoin de 21 enfants monolingues de même âge et de même niveau socio-culturel, à travers 17 épreuves évaluant différents domaines langagiers : la phonologie, la métaphonologie, le lexique et la morphosyntaxe. Les résultats montrent un effet négatif du bilinguisme à seulement deux épreuves : la dénomination d’images et la production de récit à partir d’une séquence animée. Pour ces deux épreuves, l’établissement d’une norme bilingue apparaît nécessaire. Ainsi, la standardisation de certaines épreuves destinées à l’évaluation du langage oral des enfants monolingues apparaît utilisable dans le cadre de l’évaluation du langage d’enfants bilingues précoces. Un impact de la longueur d’exposition et du taux d’exposition au français a également été observé sur les performances des bilingues à certaines épreuves, montrant la nécessité de prendre en compte l’hétérogénéité des profils de bilinguisme lors de l’évaluation du langage oral de ces enfants. Assessing the language of bilingual children is highly challenging for speech and language pathologists, especially in a country like France that has a strong monolingual tradition. In France, the possibility of testing bilingual children in another language than French remains to date limited and there are virtually no available French language tests providing bilingual norms. Additionally, many factors related to the bilingualism situation of the children can influence their performance on language tests, such as the length of exposure to the language of testing, i.e. the number of years and months the child has been exposed to that language at the moment of testing, or the rate of exposure, i.e. the percentage of exposure the child gets to that language on a daily basis at home. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability for bilingual children of a French test battery, Exalang 5-8, originally standardized for French monolingual children. Using 17 different tasks, four language domains were examined: phonology, metaphonology, lexicon and morphosyntax. Performance of 21 bilingual children with a mean age of 6;10 (range: 5;11–7;11) was compared to the performance of 21 monolingual peers. The bilingual children had started being exposed to French at a mean age of 10 months (range: 0–3;0) and had an average rate of exposure to French around 50% (range: 7–81%). Monolingual and bilingual children were of similar high socio-economic status, with all mothers having achieved at least a secondary level education. The effect of bilingualism was assessed for each of the 12 tasks. We also measured the influence of length and rate of exposure to French on the performance of the bilingual children. Results showed an effect of bilingualism, with bilinguals performing significantly more poorly than monolinguals, on two tasks only: the lexical task of picture naming and the syntactic task of narrative production. These results suggest that for these two specific tasks, bilingual norms are necessary. However, the monolingual standardization of the other tasks seems to remain useful in the context of bilingualism. We also observed an influence of length and/or rate of exposure to French on the performance of the bilingual children on three tasks: the picture-naming task, the grammaticality judgment task and the task of receptive grammar. Greater length and/or rate of exposure to French led to better performance on these tasks. These results confirm the need of considering the specific situation of each bilingual child in terms of amount and pattern of language exposure when assessing his or her language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to discuss myths which circulate not only among laity but among professionals, about the bilingual language acquisition. Although unsupported, these common misconceptions interfere with the behavior of parents and teachers who, despite wishing to maintain and develop the heritage language, do not know how to do it and fear they will confuse the children. Through statements collected in different areas, we will show that as much as most of the world's population is not monolingual and most have acquired their languages in infancy, according to the studies in the context of the Languages in Contact, the topic still raises doubts of varied kind in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crosslinguistically, children begin producing the person and number features of personal pronouns in a similar order. This article explored whether the same is true of verbal agreement morphology and evaluated three potential explanatory hypotheses which could account for a universal sequence of the development of phi features: the existence of an innate feature geometry, statistical properties in the input, and the organization of verbal paradigms. I examined these hypotheses in light of data from 20 bilingual children aged 2;00–3;06 years acquiring Basque and Spanish as well as child-directed speech from four adult speakers of Basque and Spanish. The results did not fit the predictions of the feature-geometric analysis nor the frequency-driven approach. However, there is evidence of paradigm building from the children’s early errors in the production of finite verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This commentary on the preceding six articles focuses on three issues concerning simultaneous and successive acquisition in early childhood which are addressed directly or indirectly in the contributions under discussion. The first issue concerns crosslinguistic interaction. It is argued that the evidence presented here speaks in favour of autonomous grammatical development in simultaneous bilingualism. Crosslinguistic interaction seems to happen only when grammatical knowledge is activated, i.e. in language use. The second problem area discussed here concerns the respective roles of input, universal mechanisms, and age of onset of acquisition as factors determining the course of acquisition. The claim is that these and other variables all contribute to an explanation of developmental sequences in monolingual and bilingual first language acquisition but that quantitative properties of the input do not override universal principles in the domain of grammar. The third point consists in emphasizing the role of second language speakers as role models for bilingual children. This provides an explanation of contact-induced change in core areas of grammar where, otherwise, empirical evidence does not support the claim of crosslinguistic interaction in bilingual children acquiring two languagessimultaneously. It also constitutes a plausible scenario accounting for diachronic grammaticalchange. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose: In this study, the authors sought to determine whether a combination of English-language measures and a parent questionnaire on first-language development could adequately discriminate between English-language learners (ELLs) with and without language impairment (LI) when children had diverse first-language backgrounds. Method: Participants were 152 typically developing (TD) children and 26 children with LI; groups were matched for age (M = 5;10 [years;months]) and exposure to English (M = 21 months). Children were given English standardized tests of nonword repetition, tense morphology, narrative story grammar, and receptive vocabulary. Parents were given a questionnaire on children’s first-language development. Results: ELLs with LI had significantly lower scores than the TD ELLs on the first-language questionnaire and all the English-language measures except for vocabulary. Linear discriminant function analyses showed that good discrimination between the TD and LI groups could be achieved with all measures, except vocabulary, combined. The strongest discriminator was the questionnaire, followed by nonword repetition and tense morphology. Conclusion: Discrimination of children with LI among a diverse group of ELLs might be possible when using a combination of measures. Children with LI exhibit deficits in similar linguistic/cognitive domains regardless of whether English is their first or second language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the language development of 2- to 3-year-old Turkish—Dutch bilingual children with different amounts of input quantity. Developmental patterns in spontaneous speech data of the bilingual children are compared to those of monolingual children of the same age. It is found that low input quantity leads to slower grammatical development, but only if input is clearly reduced. The observation that not only mean length of utterance but also the development of finiteness can show pronounced delays in bilingual language acquisition contradicts maturational views of grammatical development. However, such overall delays are expected given input-based theories of grammatical acquisition. All four bilingual children show difficulties in establishing the relation between finiteness and expression of grammatical subjects in Dutch. It is argued that cross-linguistic influence, driven by surface overlap between Turkish and Dutch, may account for this observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to examine the factors that are proposed in the literature to explain the success-failure in the child L2 (second language) acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch definite determiners. Focusing on four different groups of bilingual children, we discuss four external success factors put forward in the literature: (1) early age of onset, (2) lengthy and intensive input, (3) the quality of the input and (4) the role of the other language. We argue that the first two factors may indeed contribute to explaining the differences in success between the less and more successful bilingual children. However, the influence of the quality of the input in (standard) Dutch appears to be inconclusive, whereas the (structural) similarity of the gender systems in the two languages may reinforce the children's awareness of the grammatical gender category. Moreover, it appears that individual bilingualism vs. societal bilingualism, that is the sociolinguistic context in which Dutch is acquired, is not a factor for failure or success with respect to the acquisition of grammatical gender. In the final part of this article, we hypothesize that the important role of the input is related to a language internal factor, which distinguishes the Dutch gender system of the definite determiner from that of other languages, resulting in different acquisition paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates morphological vulnerability in incomplete bilingual L1 acquisition. It examines the production of L1 inflections by L2-dominant bilingual children, with the aim of exploring causes of difficulty in agreement marking. Spontaneous data (18 hours) from six Hungarian-English bilingual children, aged seven to nine, is used to compare the production of possessive inflections and verbal inflections, which are expressed by identical surface morphology in Hungarian. Drawing on recent analysis of Hungarian (Alberti, 1995; Szabolcsi, 1994), the paper asks where and why agreement morphology is susceptible to variability in bilingual children's weaker L1. Results indicate significant differences in the accuracy of agreement morphology. Inflections are almost error-free in possessive nominals and subject-verb agreement. However, they are frequently omitted in possessive be-clauses, which can be attributed to a combination of factors: (i) influence of semantic-syntactic properties of English have on Hungarian be possessive construction (transfer from L2); (ii) difficulty with long-distance agreement in Hungarian be-possessives (structural complexity of L1); and (iii) influence of Hungarian existential and locative constructions on possessive-be (ambiguity in L1). It is argued that morphological variability is selective, and the main source of vulnerability is the syntax-semantics interface where the weaker L1 is most susceptible to L2 influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article proposes a theoretical approach to bilingual development that is in line with general guidelines on language behavior. As we view bilingual development as a particular case of language development we first present a general approach to language development. We argue that language development is dependent upon a number of prerequisites; this includes socialization processes, the development of the functions for which language will be used, and the existence of language-behavior models in the child's environment. The principal feature of this model is that it attempts to take simultaneously into account a macrological analysis at the societal level, a micrological analysis at the individual level and the interface between both. In accordance with the Bates and MacWhinney approach, we suggest that language develops through a constant form-function, form-form, and function-function mapping We apply this approach to bilinguality and analyze a number of case studies of bilingual development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Bilingual and monolingual 9‐month‐olds completed a face‐voice matching task. • In contrast to previous work, the test language was familiar to all infants. • Monolingual and bilingual infants learned the face-voice pairings equally well. • Thus, the bilingual advantage reported earlier does not extend to familiar languages. • Implications for the development of talker recognition are discussed. Recent work has shown that exposure to multiple languages affects nonlinguistic processing of speech during infancy. Specifically, Fecher and Johnson found that bilingual 9-month-olds outperformed their monolingual peers in a face–voice matching task in an unfamiliar language [ Developmental Science (2019a), 22 (4), e12778]. What factors were driving this effect? That is, was this finding truly reflective of a bilingual advantage specific to talker processing, or did the study demonstrate a general cognitive advantage in bilingual infants? Here, we revisited this question by testing bilingual and monolingual 9-month-olds (N = 48) on their ability to associate previously unknown voices with animated cartoon characters. In comparison with earlier work, where infants were presented with characters speaking an unfamiliar language (Spanish), the characters in this study spoke a language familiar to both groups of infants (English). Critically, we found that the monolingual and bilingual infants learned the face–voice pairings equally well when they were tested on the familiar language. We conclude that whereas bilingual infants are skilled at recognizing talkers regardless of the language spoken by the talkers, monolingual infants succeed at talker recognition in a familiar language only. These results begin to clarify the underlying nature of the talker recognition benefit previously reported for bilingual infants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]