What is bilingualism?
The practice of alternately using two languages, L1, L2 (Weinreich)
Native-like control of two languages (balanced bilingualism, 2L1)
The ability to produce complete meaningful utterances in two languages
Knowing two languages is a normal part of existence for most human beings (Cook)
Earlier is better
Research on L1A show that infants begin acquisition of language before birth (de Boysson-Bardies, Kuhl)
Children use unconscious ‘less is more’ learning strategies (Newport, Herschensohn)
Studies of early and late learners of L2 show earlier is better for mastering phonology and morphosyntax (Birdsong)
Phonology, the sound system
Newborn infants can recognize their mother’s voice and are sensitive to the rhythmic features of the language (Boysson-Bardies)
Two month olds begin parsing their language according to its syllable type (Mehler)
Six month olds have established language-specific prototypes of its sounds (Kuhl)
Phonology
Evidence for a Critical Period: Remnants from forgotten languages (Larson-Hall & Connell)
Comparison of L1 Japanese perception and production of English /l/ and /r/
Three groups: Early Immersionists (AoA 0-7); Late Immersionists (AoA 18+); Non Immersionists (instructed learning)
Remnants of language
On all tests of perception and production the Early Immersionists outperformed the other two groups, even though they hadn’t spoken English since age 7
Conclusions– There are age effects separate from education– There are age effects separate from use – Advantages for age can persist
Morphology, word construction
Verbal tense / agreement (person) inflection is gained by children around age two (Guasti)
Less is More: the limitations of the child’s processing powers furnish the basis for language acquisition (Newport)
Limited cognitive abilities allow children to perceive and store only component parts, not complex wholes
Less is more
Child L2A of verb inflection and word order (Herschensohn et al.)
6-7 year olds in a Spanish immersion academic setting develop (over two years) nearly perfect word order in Spanish production
Verbal morphology (third person present tense inflection) is at less than 50% accuracy
Less is more
Young children follow a pattern of acquisition of morphosyntax resembling both L1A and adult L2A
They show a sensitivity to the morphological ending of the verb
This sensitivity to bound morphemes suggests “less is more”
They also show L2A pattern in the quality of the errors and the accurate syntax compared to the flawed morphology
Syntax, word sequencing
Processing: Gender concord (la table) facilitates native speaker processing in reaction time to word access
Processing data from behavioral studies of French-English / German / bilinguals show that L1 gender affects processing of L2 gender
French L2 gender
le [m,sg] livre [m,sg] anglais [m,sg] ‘the English book’
les [m,pl] livres [m,pl] blancs [m,pl] ‘the white books’ la [f,sg] livre [f,sg] anglaise [f,sg] ‘the English
pound’ les [f,pl] lèvres [f,pl] blanches [f,pl] ‘the white lips’
French gender is not signaled morphologically Gender must be learned idiosyncratically for each
noun Lack of direct evidence = difficulty for acquisition
French L2 gender
• Children with L1 grammatical gender rapidly acquire knowledge that nouns have different gender and make very few errors, even early on (French, German, Hebrew, Spanish)
• They acquire determiner+noun as a single unit
• Phonological properties of the noun (ending) initially guide gender classification and choice of determiner
French L2 gender
Natives take longer to access words with incorrect (*le table) or no gender information (les tables) than correct (la table)
Bilingual replication of study (Guillelmon & Grosjean) French mono & early bilinguals show both facilitation
(gender-correct) & inhibition (gender-incorrect) Late Anglo-French bilinguals show neither « …it would seem that certain processing mechanisms
in a second language are never acquired after a certain (critical) point. »
French L2 gender
French and German have gender classes and gender concord in the DP; English has neither.
Few nouns have same gender between French and German der [-fem] Sand[-fem] der weißer Sand ein weißer Sand
die [+fem] Milch[+fem] die weißer Milch eine weiße Milch
das Meer[neu] das weißer Meer ein weißes Meer
N= 16 Germ-Fren adv bilinguals, LOR = 6 mos, formal study = 6 yrs; 16 Eng-Fren int bilinguals, LOR = 6 mos, formal study =4 yrs; 16 Fren monolinguals
French L2 gender
Task & design: identify visually presented French nouns preceded by a definite / no article as “known / unknown” (singular = gender marked, no art = neutral)
6 conditions: same / opposite gender (Germ) x correct gen / incorrect gen / neut gen
Target noun Cor gen Incor gen Neu gen Same gen Le pneu La pneu xx pneu Same gen Le choix La choix xx choix Opposite gen Le lait La lait xx lait Opposite gen La chaise Le chaise xxchaise
French L2 gender
750
800
850
900
950
COR INC NEU
1000
1050
1100
1150
1200
COR INC NEU
PRIMING EFFECT FOR GERMAN-FRENCH
1000
1050
1100
1150
1200
1250
Opposite Same
COR INC NEU
French L2 gender
Germ-Fren bilinguals: both facilitation & inhibition of lexical access, independent of the German gender of the target nouns
Eng-Fren bilinguals show no significant differences
Conclusion: Gender clearly affects lexical processing for individuals with L1 gender, maybe to accelerate access
Cognition
Child balanced bilinguals show greater ability in certain metalinguistic tasks than monolinguals (Bialystok)
Symbol substitution (e.g. ‘spaghetti’ for ‘we’) is easier for bilinguals
They are better at judging grammaticality However, there is no blanket advantage
Conclusion
I’d hoped that language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don’t talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don’t hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say “potty” or “wawa.” It got to the point where I’d see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up. (Sedaris)