Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:52:27.134Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cross-linguistic influence in Welsh–English bilingual children's adjectival constructions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2014

ELENA NICOLADIS  and
ANDRA GAVRILA
ELENA NICOLADIS*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Canada
ANDRA GAVRILA
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Canada
*
Address for correspondence: Elena Nicoladis, University of Alberta – Psychology, P217 Biological Sciences Building, Edmonton, Alberta T6 G 2E9, Canada. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) refers to the linguistic influence of one of a bilingual's languages while processing the other. Researchers have debated whether CLI is better explained by the structure of bilinguals' two languages or by a combination of processing demands and structure. In this study, we test if Welsh–English bilingual children manifest CLI when producing adjectival constructions. Welsh adjectives typically appear postnominally, English adjectives typically appear prenominally. Since these structures do not overlap, there may be no CLI. If, however, CLI is a result of competition between languages, children's adjectival constructions may be reversed in both languages. We elicited adjectival constructions from Welsh–English bilingual children and English monolingual children between three and six years of age. The bilingual children produced more reversals than monolinguals and equivalent rates of reversals in both languages. In other words, the results support an interpretation of CLI resulting, at least in part, from processing demands.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 903 - 916
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

Grants to the first author from both the ESRC and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada provided partial funding for this study. Enlli Thomas was an invaluable resource about Welsh and made sure the study ran even when the first author was no longer in Wales. Catrin Hughes, Emily Roberts, and Kathryn Sharp helped with the data collection.

References

REFERENCES

Ball, M. J., Müller, N. & Munro, S. (2001). The acquisition of the rhotic consonants by Welsh–English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism 5, 71–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, P. & Deuchar, M. (2010). Using the Matrix Language Frame model to measure the extent of word-order convergence in Welsh–English bilingual speech. In Breitbarth, A., Lucas, C., Watts, S. & Willis, D. (eds), Continuity and change in grammar, 77–95. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deuchar, M. (2005). Congruence and Welsh–English code-switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 8, 255–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deuchar, M. (2006). Welsh–English code-switching and the Matrix Language Frame model. Lingua 116, 1986–2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döpke, S. (1998). Competing language structures: the acquisition of verb placement by bilingual German–English children. Journal of Child Language 25, 555–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunn, L. M. & Dunn, L. M. (1997). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, 3rd ed. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Dunn, L. M., Dunn, L. M., Whetton, C., and Burley, J. (1997). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale, 2nd ed. Swindon: NFER-Nelson.Google Scholar
Elder, N. & Nicoladis, E. (2012). “I have three years old”: Evidence for compositional representation of fixed expressions in a bilingual child. Unpublished paper, University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Fabiano, L. & Goldstein, B. (2005). Phonological cross-linguistic effects in bilingual Spanish–English speaking children. Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders 3, 56–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, V. S. & Dell, G. S. (2000). Effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production. Cognitive Psychology 40, 296–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foroodi-Nejad, F. & Paradis, J. (2009). Crosslinguistic transfer in the acquisition of compound words in Persian–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12, 411–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M. (2007). Miami and North Wales, so far and yet so near: a constructivist account of morphosyntactic development in bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10, 224–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., Thomas, E. M. & Hughes, E. (2008). Designing a normed receptive vocabulary test for bilingual populations: a model from Welsh. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 11, 678–720.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gollan, T. H. & Silverberg, N. B. (2001). Tip-of-the-tongue states in Hebrew–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4, 63–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosjean, F. (2001). The bilingual's language modes. In Nicol, J. L. (ed.), One mind, two languages: bilingual language processing, 1–20. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: life and reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulk, A. & Müller, N. (2000). Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3, 227–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulk, A. C. J. & van der Linden, E. (1996). Language mixing in a French–Dutch bilingual child. In Kellerman, E., Weltens, B. & Borgaerts, T. (eds), Eurosla 6: a selection of papers, 89–103. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kehoe, M. M., Lleó, C. & Rakow, M. (2004). Voice onset time in bilingual German–Spanish children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7, 71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keith, M. & Nicoladis, E. (2013). The role of within-language vocabulary size in bilingual children's semantic development. Journal of Child Language 40, 873–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuczaj, S. A. (1977). The acquisition of regular and irregular past tense forms. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16, 589–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A. & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22, 1–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liceras, J. M., Fuertes, R. F. & de la Fuente, A. A. (2012). Overt subjects and copula omission in the Spanish and the English grammar of English–Spanish bilinguals: on the locus and directionality of interlinguistic influence. First Language 32, 88–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lleó, C. (2002). The role of markedness in the acquisition of complex prosodic structures by German–Spanish bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism 6, 291–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, V. A. & Nicoladis, E. (2006). When answer-phone makes a difference in children's acquisition of English compounds. Journal of Child Language 33, 677–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nicoladis, E. (2003). Cross-linguistic transfer in deverbal compounds of preschool bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 6, 17–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2006). Cross-linguistic transfer in adjective–noun strings by preschool bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 9, 15–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2012). Cross-linguistic influence in French–English bilingual children's possessive constructions. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15, 320–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E. & Rhemtulla, M. (2012). Children's acquisition of word order depends on semantic/syntactic role: evidence from adjective–noun order. First Language 32, 479–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Rose, A. & Foursha-Stevenson, C. (2010). Talking for speaking and cross-linguistic transfer in preschool bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 13, 345–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of the input? Journal of Child Language 30, 371–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Serratrice, L. (2007). Cross-linguistic influence in the interpretation of anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns in English–Italian bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 10, 225–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waxman, S. R. & Klibanoff, R. S. (2000). The role of comparison in the extension of novel adjectives. Developmental Psychology 36, 571–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wijnen, F. (1992). Incidental word and sound errors in young speakers. Journal of Memory and Language 31, 734–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yip, V. & Matthews, S. (2000). Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese–English bilingual child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3, 193–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yip, V. & Matthews, S. (2007). The bilingual child: early development and language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwanziger, E. E., Allen, S. A. & Genesee, F. (2005). Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual acquisition: subject omission in learners of Inuktitut and English. Journal of Child Language 32, 893–909.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed