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Mountain Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Eastern Caucasus used two heritage languages, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat) and Russian. Juhuri was their home and Russian the societal languages prior to migration. In Israel, Juhuri and Russian are Heritage Languages and Hebrew is the societal language. The present study reports on frequency of use and codeswitching behaviour across three generations of Mountain Jewish speakers in order to account for patterns of language maintenance and language shift (LMLS). Audio-recorded conversations were collected from six female middle-generation speakers (G1.5: ages 33-50) with their mothers (G1: ages 60-75) and children (G2: ages 9-21). Findings for language use showed significant cross-generational differences, where use of both Russian and Juhuri declined and use of Hebrew increased across generations. Juhuri was maintained only among G1 participants, G1.5 speakers using it mainly for comprehension and G2 speakers abandoning it entirely. G1.5 participants maintained Russian for interaction with parents but did not use it with their children, for whom Hebrew was the dominant means of communication. Code-switching data showed the same overall shift to Hebrew with some maintenance of Russian among G1.5 speakers. Results are discussed in terms of LMLS and motivations for code-switching.

Israel's population includes over a million Russian-speaking immigrants and more than 300,000 native English speakers. These groups differ in social integration and in the status of their heritage languages in Israel. We compared children's and parents' perceptions of children's identities, language abilities, and language preferences among Russian-Hebrew and English-Hebrew bilinguals via sociolinguistic questionnaires. Forty-six Russian-Hebrew (RH) and 15 English-Hebrew (EH) bilingual children and their parents participated. Analyses addressed inter-generational (children vs. parents) and inter-group (RH vs. EH) differences. Identity ratings revealed both child--parent and group differences. Identity. RH parents and children differed regarding perceived Home and Societal identities. EH children and parents agreed about Home identity but not about Israeli identity. RH parents gave higher ratings to their children's HL/Russian abilities than their children did, while EH parents and children both rated HL abilities as higher than Societal language abilities. Both RH and EH parents expressed greater preferences for the SL/Hebrew than their children, but parents' and children's ratings of preferences for the Home language differed for the two groups. Examining relations among perceived identity, language abilities, and preferences in children and their parents, the study sheds light on the children's patterns of socialisation, acculturation, and maintenance of home language identity.

The current study investigates narrative retelling and comprehension among 30 native Arabic-speaking preschool children with a mean age of 5:10. Narrative features of text-complexity (less-complex and more-complex episodic structure) and language variety (Spoken Palestinian Arabic [PA] and Modern Standard Arabic [MSA]) were analyzed for their effect on narrative retelling and comprehension. Four narratives accompanied by six pictures each (Gagarina et al., 2012) were used. Two were presented in MSA and two in PA, the children's spoken vernacular. Two of them, one per each language variety, matched on episodic structure, were less complex, and two were more complex. Although children were free to choose which language to use for the retelling, they all used PA. Retelling performance was analyzed according to macrostructure, microstructure, and the use of Internal State Terms (ISTs). Comprehension was tested via questions addressing the character's goals, ISTs, and Theory of Mind. With respect to text complexity, the results showed that the participants produced longer texts and demonstrated better comprehension when the narratives were more complex. Language variety was only associated with a difference in comprehension, with higher scores for the narratives presented in MSA. Older children produced longer texts and a higher number of ISTs. Finally, a three-way interaction emerged in the use of ISTs -- while younger children produced more ISTs for the PA narratives, the older ones produced more of those for the MSA narratives. The study suggests that language variety and text complexity may exert different effects on narrative production and comprehension in Arabic-speaking preschool children.

Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic communities in Israel maintain the use of Yiddish as a prestigious language, connecting generations and preserving the communities’ traditional way of living (Hary and BenorBerlin, 2019)). Yiddish, the Community Language (CL), is supported within the family and the Hasidic community outside the family, while Hebrew, the Majority Language (ML), is used with members outside the community. Hasidic communities present a unique model of bilingualism to be discussed within the framework of the Ethno-linguistic Vitality Theory (Giles et al., 1977). The current study presents language exposure practices among bilingual Yiddish-Hebrew-speaking children in Israel and aims to reveal its possible influence on both language abilities and the communities’ vitality.Thirty-five parents and children (aged 37 months–80 months) participated in the study. Parents filled out the Bilingual Parents' Questionnaire (BIPAQ) (Abutbul-Oz and Armon-Lotem, 2022) addressing the children’s language-exposure practices as well as linguistic abilities and children's ML-Hebrew abilities were assessed with the Goralnik (2009) standardized test. Results indicated higher exposure to Yiddish when significant differences between daily hours of exposure for each language, number of months in an educational setting of CL-Yiddish and ML-Hebrew as well as the richness of the languages the children are exposed to. Furthermore, interpersonal exchanges conducted in CL-Yiddish outside the family supported Yiddish and influenced ML-Hebrew abilities; more usage of Yiddish with grandparents, teachers and peers was related to lower results of ML-Hebrew assessment whereas Yiddish use with younger siblings was related to higher evaluation of Yiddish abilities. Support of CL-Yiddish usage combined with its prestigious status and demographic characteristics of the Hasidic communities suggests a high vitality of the Yiddish-speaking community in Israel and its success in maintaining its language despite the dominance of the majority language (Hebrew).

Yiddish-Hebrew speakers residing in Israel are primarily Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Jews, living in relatively closed communities, characterized by their large number of children, low parental formal education, and low family income. Religious literacy and schooling are highly respected. We tested the impact of these demographic factors on children's vocabulary size and language dominance. Data was collected for 34 bilingual children aged 2–4, in Yiddish, the Minority Language (MiL-Yiddish), and in Hebrew, the Majority Language (MaL-Hebrew). Demographic and language use information was gathered using a multicultural questionnaire, completed by the mothers. Significantly larger vocabulary sizes were observed across the group for Yiddish, and significant correlations were found between vocabulary measures and exposure variables. Vocabulary size in the MiL-Yiddish increased with family size. This unbalanced bilingualism may be explained by the strong Yiddish-based identity of this population and the support of MiL-Yiddish by these closed communities and particularly by their schools. The positive effect of family size on Yiddish may stem from the number of children attending these Yiddish-speaking schools. The unexpected role of family size and the dominance of MiL-Yiddish among these bilinguals undermines the definition of Yiddish as the MiL, calling for a different paradigm of in-group and out-group languages.

The present study examines the role of maternal years of education and family language policy (FLP) in monolingual and bilingual children’s acquisition of Hebrew plural morphology. The case of the Hebrew plural system is especially interesting when examining the influence of the above factors on morphological performance, given that it demands both a mastery of morphological rules (characterized by a high degree of transparency in Hebrew) and a lexicon-based mastery of exceptions. Participants were 146 children, 74 bilinguals (heritage language: Russian; societal language: Hebrew) and 72 Hebrew monolinguals, aged 5–8 (kindergarten, first grade, and second grade), from the same schools and neighborhoods. A Hebrew pluralization, sentence completion task that included 99 items from two categories: fully regular words whose plural forms are based on a morphological rule and non-regular words whose plural forms (also) require lexical and/or morpho-lexical knowledge. The parents of the bilingual children filled out a questionnaire with questions on background variables (e.g., maternal education) and language practice in both languages by different family members and language use at home. The findings indicated that maternal education contributes differently and distinctly to the linguistic performance of children from different linguistic backgrounds. For monolingual children, an increase in the number of years of maternal education is associated with an increase in the likelihood of success in the lexical and morpho-lexical aspects of Hebrew. By contrast, for bilingual children, no significant contribution of maternal education to children’s performance was found. For bilingual participants, their performance in the lexical and morpho-lexical aspects of the Hebrew plural system was consistently influenced by FLP across all school settings—increased use of Russian at home was associated with a lower likelihood of success in the societal language. FLP characteristics were not found to be related to maternal education. These findings have clinical implications for both assessment and intervention processes when working with bilingual children.

Purpose: Diagnostic tools developed for monolinguals are frequently used for bilingual linguistic assessment. The absence of evaluation criteria for using monolingual norms for bilinguals contributes to inconsistent diagnostic procedures, impacting research and clinical practice. This study considers the reliance on monolingual tools to assess the heritage language to identify bilingual atypical language development (ALD) even when bilingual norms are available for the societal language. Method: One hundred thirty-one English-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;6-5;11 (years;months) were assessed using diagnostic tools. Bilingual standards are available for the societal language but not for the heritage language. Fifteen English-Hebrew bilingual children were suspected of ALD. They were individually compared with 116 typically developing bilingual peers. The Core Language Score and seven subtest standardized scores of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool--Second Edition were analyzed in the heritage language, English. Results: Results revealed that a composite score used for differential diagnosis in monolingual children cannot be relied upon for bilingual children. Measurements vary in their diagnostic accuracy, with Concepts and Following Directions (comprehension of instructions), Receptive and Expressive Word Classes (lexicon), and Sentence Repetition (syntax) being the most promising for identifying ALD in bilingual children. Lastly, bilingual children's age of onset of bilingualism must be considered in the analysis of linguistic outcomes. Conclusions: Findings elucidate that monolingual assessments for heritage speakers must consider bilingual models of development to ensure a reliable and informative diagnosis. Interacting factors, such as reliance on language-specific knowledge and the recruitment of other nonlinguistic processing skills, may influence a measurement's sensitivity. The findings are pertinent to the practice of speech-language pathologists, informing evidence-based assessment procedures for bilingual children. A group study to determine whether the suggested bilingual standards can identify ALD with acceptable specificity and sensitivity is now recommended.

Causal relations allow a very detailed insight into the narrative skills of children from various backgrounds; however, their contribution has not been sufficiently studied in bilingual populations. The present study examines the expression of causal relations and the linguistic forms used to encode them in narratives of bilingual children speaking Russian as the Heritage Language (HL) and Hebrew as the Societal Language (SL). Narratives were collected from 21 typically developing Russian–Hebrew bilingual children using the Frog story picture book and were coded for frequency and type of episodic components, and for causal relations focusing on enabling and motivational relations. Results showed that the number of episodic components was higher in Hebrew than in Russian. An in-depth analysis showed that more components were mentioned in the first five episodes, particularly at the onset of the story. Causal relations were similar in both languages but were differently distributed across the languages—more enabling relations in Russian stories and more motivational relations in Hebrew stories. Production of episodic components and causal relations was affected by language proficiency but not by age of onset of bilingualism (AoB). In terms of language forms, lexical chains (e.g., search~find) were the most frequent means for inferring relations. Syntactic and referential cohesion were used in dedicated episodes to convey relations in both languages. Finally, a higher number of significant correlations between narrative productivity measures, episodic components, and causal relations were found in SL/Hebrew than in HL/Russian. The study results underscore the need to understand how language-specific abilities interact with knowledge of narrative discourse construction.

Family language policy (FLP) provides a critical framework to explain the planning of language use in the home. It constitutes a dynamic construct that sheds light on variations in the language acquisition of bilingual children, potentially explaining the shifts that may occur in language dominance and preference. The environment and life experiences are thought to shape FLP, yet little is known about the function of age. This study examines the association of FLP with children’s chronological age and the age they become bilingual. Data were collected via questionnaires from parents and their bilingual children (n = 82) aged 5.08–14.08 (M = 8.98, SD = 3.27) speaking English (heritage language) and Hebrew (societal language). Correlations and logistic regressions indicate a relationship between FLP and dimensions of age. Findings reveal that age may have repercussions for parent language beliefs, patterns of language use within the home, and the adoption of language promotion strategies. Younger children and children with a later age of onset of bilingualism are associated with families who lean towards a pro-heritage language FLP. Considering dimensions of age enhances our understanding of FLP and may offer a greater insight into how languages are supported in the bilingual home.

Parental questionnaires have been widely used to assess children’s vocabularies. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories (MB-CDI) have been adapted into over 100 languages, providing researchers with access to various languages. As the vocabularies of bilingual children are distributed across their two languages, language knowledge must be assessed in both languages. While this can be done with two questionnaires, one for each language, the present study makes use of a multicultural adaptation of the MB-CDI, within a single questionnaire, that was geared specifically for bilingual context. In order to explore the developmental trajectories of the vocabularies of 90 bilingual children from diverse linguistic populations (English-Hebrew (n = 30), French-Hebrew (n = 30), and Russian-Hebrew (n = 30) speaking families) parents reported on both the Home Language (HL) and the Societal Language-Hebrew (SL-Hebrew). Parents also provided background information about the child, the child’s family, and exposure to each language. Our findings show no significant difference between vocabulary size of children from diverse bilingual populations in the HL and the SL, for both production and comprehension. Moreover, children from all three groups demonstrate balanced bilingualism at the group level. Correlations were found between both exposure to and use of each language by children, and various vocabulary measures across the three groups. The similar vocabulary levels demonstrated by the three groups as well as the balanced bilingualism can be explained by the relatively high prestige of all languages tested. Exposure to each language shows support in that language and a negative effect on the other language, demonstrating the crucial role exposure plays in bilingual children’s language performance.

Bilingualism involves cross-linguistic influence (CLI) prompted by communicative function, which impacts the activation of the bilingual's L1/L2 language processing mechanisms. The current study examines the extent of CLI when semantic information is reduced. Semitic languages are known for their templatic words composed of intertwined sub-lexical root and template morphemes, entailing non-linear morphological processing. As the roots constitute the semantic core, comprehension was found to impact morphological processing among Hebrew-L2 readers. Herein, we assessed the processing mechanism activated among adult Hebrew-L2 bilinguals in an auditory rhyme judgment task that requires linear processing. The task was provided with Hebrew templatic word pairs comprising accentuated (meta)linguistic information irrespective of semantics: phonological co-occurrence restrictions (root), grammatical information of vocalic melodies (template), and contrastive stress. We hypothesized that CLI in Hebrew-L2 speakers would be reflected in low accuracy rates in rhyming pairs when linguistic information is accentuated, indicating distraction from the linear processing due to activation levels of the L2 processing mechanism caused by competing linguistic cues drawn on transferred linguistic information. We compared the performance of 58 adult Hebrew native speakers with 54 Hebrew-L2 speakers with Semitic and non-Semitic-L1. The findings demonstrate that Hebrew-L2 speakers performed the task using their L1 processing mechanism with varying activation levels of L2, showing awareness of the morphological processing due to the vocalic melody for non-Semitic-L1 and awareness of contrastive stress for Semitic-L1. The results confirm CLI also when semantics is reduced, elucidating how much CLI modulates the bilingual's language processing mechanism.

Objectives: Object wh -questions are more difficult for monolingual children to comprehend than subject questions. Especially difficult are object- which questions that appear to be significantly more difficult than both (object/subject) who and subject- which questions. Our research examines the manifestation of this difficulty among bilingual preschool children (L1-English, L2-Hebrew) as compared with their Hebrew monolingual peers, exploring the two languages of the bilinguals. Approach: Using a character selection task, the empirical goal of the study is to analyze the differences between monolinguals and bilinguals and between the languages of the bilinguals. The theoretical goal is to explain the difficulty which cuts across the two populations, namely, the comprehension of object- which questions. Data and Analysis: A total of A total of 55 preschool children, aged 4.4–6.4, participated in the study: 20 monolinguals and 35 bilinguals. A mixed linear model analysis, a general linear model, multiple linear regression analyses, and chi-square tests were used to analyze the data. Findings: (1) Monolingual and bilingual children (in their L2) have similar trajectories: object- which questions present difficulties to all participants, and their comprehension systematically follows the comprehension of object- who questions ; (2) similar trajectories are also found in the two languages of the bilingual children, with L1-English object- which questions lagging behind L2-Hebrew object- which questions. Originality: The comparison between the two populations, and especially between the two languages of the bilinguals, led us to take a closer look at the syntactic processing of which -questions. We explored the possibility that the set restriction computation is the source of children's difficulty, overloading their working memory resources. Significance: Our research demonstrates that monolingual and bilingual (syntactic) development is essentially the same. However, when syntactic processes interact with additional factors, such as working memory resources and language-specific properties, as is the case in object- which questions in Hebrew versus English, the gap between the two populations might widen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores typically developing bilingual children's performance in their English as a heritage language. The aim of this study is to advance our understanding of heritage language expectations and the role of chronological age and bilingual exposure. A broad range of receptive and expressive linguistic domains are investigated as a function of chronological age and age of onset of bilingualism. English-Hebrew typically developing bilingual children (N = 240), ages 60-77 months, were compared to monolingual norms, using seven subtest standardized scores from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool-2 (CELF-Preschool-2). Descriptive statistics, t-tests, ANCOVAs, multiple regression analysis, and post-hoc comparisons were conducted. English heritage language speakers presented with an asymmetric linguistic system influenced by their chronological age and age of onset of bilingualism. Results demonstrated that performance was more advanced for measures that were less reliant on language-specific skills. Measures dependent on grammatical knowledge were vulnerable to limitations but they were within the monolingual norms. In contrast, the lexicon was heavily influenced by bilingualism. These findings contribute to the literature on bilingual linguistic expectations and will have implications for theories of heritage language acquisition and language acquisition in general.

The present research analyzes causal relations between events in the narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical development (BiTD) and with developmental language disorder (BiDLD). The analyses focused on story grammar elements (attempts and goals) and mental state terms between events in Enabling relations as features contributing to narrative discourse coherence. Narratives, collected from 48 bilingual children (14 with DLD) aged 5;06-6;06, were examined for the expression of enabling causal relations in both L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew. Children in both groups showed frequent omission of goals, but they used mental state terms to convey Enabling relations between events across episodes. Coherence is argued to be affected by syntactic, referential, and lexical skills.

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effect of bilingual narrative intervention on vocabulary gains in Hebrew (school language) and English (home language) among English-Hebrew bilinguals, using a block design (one language at a time), and to determine whether there was cross-linguistic transfer to the language that was not receiving intervention. Method: Sixteen English-Hebrew bilingual children participated in the study using an adaptation of the Puente de Cuentos intervention. Vocabulary was examined using a word definition task before the intervention, post English intervention, post Hebrew intervention, and 4 weeks after the interventions ended to examine maintenance of skills. Results: Repeated-measures analyses of variance revealed that children made significant gains in vocabulary in the language of intervention as expected. In addition, children made cross-linguistic gains in Hebrew during the English intervention, but made no gains in English following Hebrew intervention. Conclusion: These results underscore the need to provide language support in the home language to ensure growth and that intervention in the home language does not hinder growth in the school language.

IntroductionArabic, a Semitic language, displays a particularly rich derivational morphological system with all verb stems consisting of a semantic root and a prosodic verb-pattern. Such regular and frequently encountered knowledge is expected to be acquired early. The present study presents a developmental perspective on the relative contribution of morphological and semantic complexity to the acquisition of verbs in Spoken Arabic.MethodVerbs in a spontaneous corpus from 133 typically developing children, 2; 6–6; 0-year-old, were coded for type and token frequency of verbal patterns and root type, and classified according to semantic complexity.ResultsResults support an item-based emergence driven by semantic complexity at the earliest stages of acquisition. A developmental expansion in the diversity of verbal patterns and morphological complexity was observed with age. Morphological complexity is only identified when the same root appears in different verb patterns.DiscussionThe late emergence of the same root in different verb patterns indicates that the perception of verb patterns as abstract linguistic entities beyond the actual verbs is attained later than the semantically-constrained verbs in earlier childhood. We conclude that whereas semantic complexity obstructs verbs from emerging in the lexicon in younger age groups, morphological complexity constitutes no such obstruction, since their perception as morphological devices is attained later in acquisition.

The present study examines the linguistic expression of causal relations between the motion events within the main episode in a picture-based narrative. One hundred and fifty children aged 5-7 were asked to narrate a story based on a series of pictures: 45 Hebrew monolinguals (19 with Developmental Language Disorders [DLD]), 57 English-Hebrew bilinguals (20 with DLD) and 48 Russian-Hebrew bilinguals (21 with DLD). The narratives told by bilingual children with Typical Language Development (TLD) were as complex as those of their monolingual peers in occurrence of causal relations to establish a goal-oriented episode, and in the use of language forms as cohesive devices. By contrast, bilingual and monolingual children with DLD showed lower performance on expression of causal relations, particularly those involving more complex scenes that demand higher levels of linguistic complexity and content elaboration. The form-function analyses enabled an exploration of cognitive and language abilities in interaction in the context of narrative discourse production. The study reinforced the differences between children with TLD and children with DLD, showing that typical language development rather than the proficiency in a particular language is necessary for generating causal relations and the particular linguistic forms that together yield a coherent narrative.

Mountain Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Eastern Caucasus used two heritage languages, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat) and Russian. Juhuri was their home and Russian the societal languages prior to migration. In Israel, Juhuri and Russian are Heritage Languages and Hebrew is the societal language. The present study reports on frequency of use and codeswitching behaviour across three generations of Mountain Jewish speakers in order to account for patterns of language maintenance and language shift (LMLS). Audio-recorded conversations were collected from six female middle-generation speakers (G1.5: ages 33–50) with their mothers (G1: ages 60–75) and children (G2: ages 9–21). Findings for language use showed significant cross-generational differences, where use of both Russian and Juhuri declined and use of Hebrew increased across generations. Juhuri was maintained only among G1 participants, G1.5 speakers using it mainly for comprehension and G2 speakers abandoning it entirely. G1.5 participants maintained Russian for interaction with parents but did not use it with their children, for whom Hebrew was the dominant means of communication. Code-switching data showed the same overall shift to Hebrew with some maintenance of Russian among G1.5 speakers. Results are discussed in terms of LMLS and motivations for code-switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family language policy (FLP) is a key focus of immigrant families, as parents are considered to play a vital role in children’s bilingual language development. Nevertheless, many parents report that they do not have an FLP. Accordingly, their FLP planning style is unplanned and spontaneous. This study compares families’ FLP planning styles (overt vs. covert). Data was collected via questionnaires from parents and their English-Hebrew bilingual children (n = 82). Children’s receptive and expressive vocabulary of both languages were assessed to explore the impact of FLP planning style. Results confirm that families present with a desire for proficient outcomes in both languages. However, families with an overt planning style present with more pro-heritage language policies (e.g. promoting English use with siblings). Those with a covert planning style lean towards pro-societal language policies and children may be allowed to speak any language at home. Differences in FLP planning did not significantly impact ratings of home language use or children’s vocabulary. The perceived value of English as a global language may be partially responsible for the findings. The study confirms that although there are many effective ways to raise a bilingual child, FLP planning has implications for the bilingual language learning environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the role of maternal years of education and family language policy (FLP) in monolingual and bilingual children's acquisition of Hebrew plural morphology. The case of the Hebrew plural system is especially interesting when examining the influence of the above factors on morphological performance, given that it demands both a mastery of morphological rules (characterized by a high degree of transparency in Hebrew) and a lexicon-based mastery of exceptions. Participants were 146 children, 74 bilinguals (heritage language: Russian; societal language: Hebrew) and 72 Hebrew monolinguals, aged 5–8 (kindergarten, first grade, and second grade), from the same schools and neighborhoods. A Hebrew pluralization, sentence completion task that included 99 items from two categories: fully regular words whose plural forms are based on a morphological rule and non-regular words whose plural forms (also) require lexical and/or morpho-lexical knowledge. The parents of the bilingual children filled out a questionnaire with questions on background variables (e.g., maternal education) and language practice in both languages by different family members and language use at home. The findings indicated that maternal education contributes differently and distinctly to the linguistic performance of children from different linguistic backgrounds. For monolingual children, an increase in the number of years of maternal education is associated with an increase in the likelihood of success in the lexical and morpho-lexical aspects of Hebrew. By contrast, for bilingual children, no significant contribution of maternal education to children's performance was found. For bilingual participants, their performance in the lexical and morpho-lexical aspects of the Hebrew plural system was consistently influenced by FLP across all school settings—increased use of Russian at home was associated with a lower likelihood of success in the societal language. FLP characteristics were not found to be related to maternal education. These findings have clinical implications for both assessment and intervention processes when working with bilingual children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Screening for Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) among bilingual children in Speech and Language Clinics is challenged by the use of Societal Language (SL) monolingual norms and by the absence of knowledge about children’s performance in the Home Language (HL) leading to over diagnosis of DLD among bilingual children. The current study examined how bilingual parents’ questionnaire can contribute to a more accurate clinical protocol that can help mitigate the diagnosis difficulties and help disentangle the impact of bilingualism from DLD. Parents of 75 bilingual children (ages 48–82 months) participated in this study. Forty six children were referred to Speech and Language Pathologists (SLPs) due to language performance difficulties (Clinically Referred- CR) and 29 were never referred to a SLP (Non-referred- NR). Of the CR group only 19 were diagnosed by the SLP with DLD using dynamic assessment (CR-DLD), while 27 were diagnosed as having typical language development (CR-TLD). Parents of all children filled a Bilingual Parent Questionnaire (BIPAQ), developed from a SLP’s perspective, ith information in five domains: (a) Demographic Information, (b) Developmental background, (c) HL abilities, (d) SL abilities, and (e) Quantity and quality of exposure to both HL and SL. Significantly lower scores were observed for the CR-DLD group compared to the other groups on Developmental background, HL abilities, and SL abilities as well as on the total score. Sentence complexity, difference from other children in language development, and family history significantly distinguished between the CR-DLD and CR-TLD groups. Sentence complexity, difference from other children in language development, and confidence speaking freely distinguished between CR-DLD and NR children. No significant difference was observed between CR-TLD and NR children. A comparison of the CR- DLD and the CR-TLD bilinguals using a ROC curve analysis yielded good sensitivity and specificity, as well as good accuracy (AUC = 0.869). Our findings show that parent questionnaires can be a valuable part of diagnosis protocol and provide missing information needed for more accurate diagnosis before treatment commences, allowing clinicians alternative options of treatment as well as reducing caseloads at clinics.

Introduction: Research in recent years has explored the vocabulary size (lexical breadth) of bilingual children, but less is known about the richness of bilingual word knowledge (lexical depth), and about how knowledge of words in the two languages interact. This study explores how bilingual narrative intervention with vocabulary instruction in each language may modulate crosslinguistic influence (CLI) between the languages of bilingual kindergarten children, focusing on CLI of lexical knowledge, and which factors modulate performance.Methods: Forty-one typically developing English-Hebrew bilingual children (M = 64.63 months) participated. A bilingual adaptation of Story Champs narrative intervention program (Spencer and Petersen, 2012) was used to deliver vocabulary instruction in separate blocks of home language (HL) and school language (SL) sessions. Different intervention words were targeted in each language, but the children were tested on all target words in both languages. Lexical knowledge was assessed with a definition task four times throughout the study: prior to intervention, after each intervention block, and 4–6 weeks later. Learner characteristics (chronological age, age of onset of bilingualism and length of exposure) and proficiency in each language (standardized tests, familiarity with the vocabulary introduced in the intervention at baseline) were examined as possible modulators of performance.Results: Children showed growth in lexical breadth and depth in their HL/English after HL intervention and in lexical breadth in the SL/Hebrew following SL intervention, with CLI for semantic depth observed via a qualitative analysis, but not quantitatively. Better HL/English performance was correlated with later AoB (and shorter SL exposure) and higher HL language proficiency scores. Children with higher HL/English proficiency responded better to the SL/Hebrew intervention, gaining more than those with lower English proficiency. Children with SL/Hebrew vocabulary dominance at the outset of the study also gained more from the HL/English intervention. No correlations were found between learner characteristics and SL performance.Discussion: The current study indicates that bilingual narrative intervention with vocabulary instruction may be efficacious for improving the lexical breadth and depth of bilingual kindergarten children. It suggests that CLI may enhance bilingual children’s language learning success, and points to the importance of strengthening both languages of bilingual children.

Culture-specific vocabulary denotes objects that bear cultural weight and are not readily translatable or understood in other languages. The present study explores cultural items in an endangered language, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat), the traditional language of Mountain Jews (MJ) who immigrated to Israel and the United States. A set of ten items, five cultural and five neutral, served as stimuli for a picture recognition task inserted in a questionnaire distributed to MJs from three generations (G1, G1.5, and G2). In addition, participants rated their ethnocultural and national identities and their level of Juhuri proficiency. Results yielded significantly better recognition of culture-specific over neutral items by G1.5 and G2 participants, but no difference among more proficient G1 participants. Regression analyses revealed a significant effect of MJ identity on the recognition of cultural items. Neither Israeli nor American national background had an effect on the recognition of either cultural or neutral items. The findings shed light on the role of ethnocultural identity in the recognition of culture-specific vocabulary. Results are discussed in terms of research on heritage language maintenance and shift, identity, and the status of the MJ community in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel's population includes over a million Russian-speaking immigrants and more than 300,000 native English speakers. These groups differ in social integration and in the status of their heritage languages in Israel. We compared children's and parents' perceptions of children's identities, language abilities, and language preferences among Russian-Hebrew and English-Hebrew bilinguals via sociolinguistic questionnaires. Forty-six Russian-Hebrew (RH) and 15 English-Hebrew (EH) bilingual children and their parents participated. Analyses addressed inter-generational (children vs. parents) and inter-group (RH vs. EH) differences. Identity ratings revealed both child–parent and group differences. Identity. RH parents and children differed regarding perceived Home and Societal identities. EH children and parents agreed about Home identity but not about Israeli identity. RH parents gave higher ratings to their children's HL/Russian abilities than their children did, while EH parents and children both rated HL abilities as higher than Societal language abilities. Both RH and EH parents expressed greater preferences for the SL/Hebrew than their children, but parents' and children's ratings of preferences for the Home language differed for the two groups. Examining relations among perceived identity, language abilities, and preferences in children and their parents, the study sheds light on the children's patterns of socialisation, acculturation, and maintenance of home language identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountain Jews (MJs), native of the eastern Caucasus, mass immigrated in the 1990s to Israel and the US. MJs brought with them two heritage languages (HLs): Russian, the language of wider communication in the former Soviet Union, and Juhuri, their traditional home language. The present study explores the effects of HL attitudes on proficiency among 146 Israeli and 138 American MJs differing in age (M = 35.42) and in education level. A questionnaire based on a triadic attitude model comprised of Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive items was used to examine the impact of language attitudes on self-rated Comprehension and Production of the two HLs. Results showed more positive attitudes toward Russian than Juhuri in both Israel and the US, with highest values registered for the Affective component. Attitudes toward Russian did not differ across countries, whereas attitudes toward Juhuri were more positive in the US. Attitudes predicted proficiency of Russian better than Juhuri and better in Israel than in the US. The findings are discussed in light of societal and cultural differences between Israel and the US, in terms of ethnolinguistic vitality and the status of the societal languages, as well as the implications of the unique attitude structure of the two HLs in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causal relations allow a very detailed insight into the narrative skills of children from various backgrounds; however, their contribution has not been sufficiently studied in bilingual populations. The present study examines the expression of causal relations and the linguistic forms used to encode them in narratives of bilingual children speaking Russian as the Heritage Language (HL) and Hebrew as the Societal Language (SL). Narratives were collected from 21 typically developing Russian–Hebrew bilingual children using the Frog story picture book and were coded for frequency and type of episodic components, and for causal relations focusing on enabling and motivational relations. Results showed that the number of episodic components was higher in Hebrew than in Russian. An in-depth analysis showed that more components were mentioned in the first five episodes, particularly at the onset of the story. Causal relations were similar in both languages but were differently distributed across the languages—more enabling relations in Russian stories and more motivational relations in Hebrew stories. Production of episodic components and causal relations was affected by language proficiency but not by age of onset of bilingualism (AoB). In terms of language forms, lexical chains (e.g., search~find) were the most frequent means for inferring relations. Syntactic and referential cohesion were used in dedicated episodes to convey relations in both languages. Finally, a higher number of significant correlations between narrative productivity measures, episodic components, and causal relations were found in SL/Hebrew than in HL/Russian. The study results underscore the need to understand how language-specific abilities interact with knowledge of narrative discourse construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores the vocabulary development of bilingual children when neither of their languages has a minority language status. With both languages having high relative prestige, it is possible to address the impact of exposure variables: age of onset, length of exposure, and frequency of exposure (FoE) to both languages. Parents of 40 English-Hebrew bilingual children, from mid-high socio-economic status, completed the vocabulary checklist of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) [Fenson et al. 1991. "MacArthur-Bates CDI Words and Sentences." Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing], its Hebrew adaptation [Maital et al. 2000. "The Hebrew CDI: Language Specific Properties and Cross-Linguistic Generalizations." "Journal of Child Language" 27: 43-67], and a background questionnaire. Two-thirds of the children showed balanced bilingualism, reflecting the relatively higher prestige of the two languages. FoE emerged as the major exposure variable, other than chronological age that contributes to the maintenance of L1 and acquisition of L2 by bilinguals who are dominant in one of their languages. Analysis of individual data shows how using a bilingual CDI can help identify children who are at risk for Specific Language Impairment, testing both languages and generating provisional bilingual norms, or using conceptual vocabulary with monolingual norms.

This paper compared the vocabulary size of a group of 250 bilinguals aged 24-36 months acquiring six different language pairs using an analogous tool, and attempted to identify factors that influence vocabulary sizes and ultimately place children at risk for language delay. Each research group used adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Sentences and a specially designed developmental and language background questionnaire to gather information on risk factors for language impairment, demographic and language exposure variables. The results showed a wide range in vocabulary development which could be somewhat attributed to mothers' education status, parental concerns about language development and amount of exposure to the second language. We looked at those children performing below the 10th and above the 90th percentile to determine what factors were related to their vocabulary size. Features of the entire group of lower performing children were fewer than 50 words and the absence of two-word combinations by 24 months, lower levels of parental education and parental concerns about language development. The implications for identifying bilingual children at risk for language impairment as well as the language enrichment that might be needed for young bilinguals are outlined.

The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors on question formation: (a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like "who" or a complex one like "which princess", and (b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb. The findings show that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children's performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children's understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both "who" and "which", and the use of synthetic verbal forms.

This cross-linguistic study evaluates children's understanding of passives in 11 typologically different languages: Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish. The study intends to determine whether the reported gaps between the comprehension of active and passive and between short and full passive hold cross-linguistically. The present study offers two major findings. The first is the relative ease in which 5-year-old children across 11 different languages are able to comprehend short passive constructions (compared to the full passive). The second and perhaps the more intriguing finding is the variation seen across the different languages in children's comprehension of full passive constructions. We argued, based on the present findings, that given the relevant linguistic input (e.g., flexibility in word order and experience with argument reduction), children at the age of 5 are capable of acquiring both the short passive and the full passive. Variation, however, stems from the specific characteristics of each language, and good mastery of passives by the age of 5 is not a universal, cross-linguistically valid milestone in typical language acquisition. Therefore, difficulties with passives (short or full) can be used for identifying SLI at the age of 5 only in those languages in which it has already been mastered by typically developing children.

Background: Previous research demonstrates that repetition tasks are valuable tools for diagnosing specific language impairment (SLI) in monolingual children in English and a variety of other languages, with non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SRep) yielding high levels of sensitivity and specificity. Yet, only a few studies have addressed the diagnostic accuracy of repetition tasks in bilingual children, and most available research focuses on English-Spanish sequential bilinguals. Aims: To evaluate the efficacy of three repetition tasks (forward digit span (FWD), NWR and SRep) in order to distinguish mono- and bilingual children with and without SLI in Russian and Hebrew. Methods & Procedures: A total of 230 mono- and bilingual children aged 5;5-6;8 participated in the study: 144 bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking children (27 with SLI); and 52 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children (14 with SLI) and 34 monolingual Russian-speaking children (14 with SLI). Parallel repetition tasks were designed in both Russian and Hebrew. Bilingual children were tested in both languages. Outcomes & Results: The findings confirmed that NWR and SRep are valuable tools in distinguishing monolingual children with and without SLI in Russian and Hebrew, while the results for FWD were mixed. Yet, testing of bilingual children with the same tools using monolingual cut-off points resulted in inadequate diagnostic accuracy. We demonstrate, however, that the use of bilingual cut-off points yielded acceptable levels of diagnostic accuracy. The combination of SRep tasks in L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew yielded the highest overall accuracy (i.e., 94%), but even SRep alone in L2/Hebrew showed excellent levels of sensitivity (i.e., 100%) and specificity (i.e., 89%), reaching 91% of total diagnostic accuracy. Conclusions & Implications: The results are very promising for identifying SLI in bilingual children and for showing that testing in the majority language with bilingual cut-off points can provide an accurate classification.