Elena Nicoladis

Talking with strangers: A study of bilingual children's communicative competence

An important component of the communicative competence of proficient bilinguals is the ability to use each of their languages differentially and appropriately according to relevant characteristics of the interlocutors and communicative situations. The research reported here examined the communicative competence of four young children (average age of 2;2, average MLU of 1·56) who were acquiring English and French simultaneously in the home. We observed the ways these children used their languages with monolingual strangers and with their bilingual parents. Specifically, the childrens use of English-only, French-only, and mixed (English and French) utterances with the strangers during naturalistic play situations was compared with patterns of use with their parents, also during play sessions. We found that all of the children made some accommodations that could be linked to the monolingualism of the stranger; some of the children were more accommodating than others. The results are discussed in terms of young bilingual childrens ability to modify their language on-line in response to the particular language characteristics of their interlocutors.

Gesture and early bilingual development.

The relationship between speech and gestural proficiency was investigated longitudinally (from 2 years to 3 years 6 months, at 6-month intervals) in 5 French-English bilingual boys with varying proficiency in their 2 languages. Because of their different levels of proficiency in the 2 languages at the same age, these childrens data were used to examine the relative contribution of language and cognitive development to gestural development. In terms of rate of gesture production, rate of gesture production with speech, and meaning of gesture and speech, the children used gestures much like adults from 2 years on. In contrast, the use of iconic and beat gestures showed differential development in the childrens 2 languages as a function of mean length of utterance. These data suggest that the development of these kinds of gestures may be more closely linked to language development than other kinds (such as points). Reasons why this might be so are discussed.

Cross-linguistic transfer in adjective-noun strings by preschool bilingual children*

One hypothesis holds that bilingual childrens cross-linguistic transfer occurs in spontaneous production when there is structural overlap between the two languages and ambiguity in at least one language (Dopke, 1998; Hulk and Muller, 2000). This study tested whether overlap/ambiguity of adjective–noun strings in English and French predicted transfer. In English, there is only one order (adjective–noun) while in French both adjective–noun and noun–adjective order are allowed, with the latter as the default. Unidirectional transfer from English to French was predicted. 35 French–English preschool bilingual children (and 35 age-matched English monolinguals and 10 French monolinguals) were asked to name pictures by using an adjective–noun string. In addition to the reversing adjective–noun strings in French as predicted by the overlap/ambiguity hypothesis, the bilingual children reversed more adjective–noun strings in English than monolinguals. It is proposed that cross-linguistic transfer might better be understood as an epiphenomenon of speech production.

Bilingual children's acquisition of the past tense: a usage­based approach

Bilingual and monolingual childrens (mean age=4;10) elicited production of the past tense in both English and French was examined in order to test predictions from Usage-Based theory regarding the sensitivity of childrens acquisition rates to input factors such as variation in exposure time and the type/token frequency of morphosyntactic structures. Both bilingual and monolingual children were less accurate with irregular than regular past tense forms in both languages. Bilingual children, as a group, were less accurate than monolinguals with the English regular and irregular past tense, and with the French irregular past tense, but not with the French regular past tense. However, bilingual children were as accurate as monolinguals with the past tense in their language of greater exposure, except for English irregular verbs. It is argued that these results support the view that childrens acquisition rates are sensitive to input factors, but with some qualifications.

What's the difference between ‘toilet paper’ and ‘paper toilet’? French-English bilingual children's crosslinguistic transfer in compound nouns

Bilingual acquisition can shed light on the cues children used in acquiring language. The purpose of this paper was to examine whether frequency, ambiguity or language dominance could explain crosslinguistic transfer in compound nouns. Crosslinguistic transfer would appear in the form of compound reversals. 25 monolingual English children between the ages of three and four years and 25 age-matched French-English bilingual children were asked to create and indicate their understanding of novel compound nouns. In production, the bilingual children reversed compounds in English more often than the monolingual children but equally often in French and English. In comprehension, there were no differences between groups. These results cannot be explained by any previous explanation of transfer. Implications for the theory of language acquisition are discussed.

The Influence of Dominance and Sociolinguistic Context on Bilingual Preschoolers' Language Choice

Two-year-old bilingual children can show sensitivity to the language choice of their interlocutor, but do not necessarily achieve perfect separation by discourse context, e.g. speaking only French with a French interlocutor; dominance in one language is often cited as a reason for this. In this study we asked whether older bilingual preschoolers would show more absolute discourse separation than had been established with younger children because their more advanced linguistic development may diminish the constraining role of dominance in language choice. These children resided in an English majority–French minority region of Canada where virtually all francophone adults are bilingual, but not necessarily anglophone adults. Therefore, we also considered the potential interacting effects of the minority French context on childrens dominance and language choice. Four French-dominant and four English-dominant bilingual children participated in two free-play situations, in French and in English. The French-dominant children showed discourse separation of the two languages in both English and French contexts, while most of the Englishdominant children spoke a lot of English in the French context. These results suggest that discourse separation of two languages by bilingual preschool children is possible, but not always practised due to the interaction of language dominance and childrens sensitivity to the sociolinguistic context.

Learning English and Losing Chinese: A Case Study of a Child Adopted from China.

Studies of early language acquisition show that children focus on the language in their environment toward the end of the first year. This study concerned the acquisition of English and the loss of Chinese by a child adopted from China into an English-speaking family in Canada at the age of 17 months. As she was adopted after the age of one year, her switch to English might be expected to be slow and difficult. The childs production and comprehension of Chinese and English were observed from four weeks after her arrival. Her acquisition of English was remarkably fast, as was her loss of Chinese. These data suggest that the childs language acquisition was founded on already established social and communicative processes. Her previous exposure to Chinese may have allowed her to learn about language use in general, thus facilitating her rapid acquisition of English.

Gesture Reflects Language Development: Evidence From Bilingual Children

There is a growing awareness that language and gesture are deeply intertwined in the spontaneous expression of adults. Although some research suggests that children use gesture independently of speech, there is scant research on how language and gesture develop in children older than 2 years. We report here on a longitudinal investigation of the relation between gesture and language development in French-English bilingual children from 2 to 3 1/2 years old. The specific gesture types of iconics and beats correlated with the development of the childrens two languages, whereas pointing types of gestures generally did not. The onset of iconic and beat gestures coincided with the onset of sentencelike utterances separately in each of the childrens two languages. The findings show that gesture is related to language development rather than being independent from it. Contrasting theories about how gesture is related to language development are discussed.

Cross-linguistic Transfer in Deverbal Compounds of Preschool Bilingual Children.

Cross-linguistic transfer can be explained by structural ambiguity in a bilingual childs two languages (Dopke, 1998; Hulk and Muller, 2000). This study examined the effect of morphological ambiguity in transfer of deverbal compounds in English and French. English-speaking children go through a stage of producing ungrammatical verb-object compounds in their acquisition of object-verb-er compounds. In French, verb-object compounds are productive. If structural ambiguity predicts when transfer occurs, French-English bilingual children should use more ungrammatical verb-object compounds than English-speaking children and more grammatical verb-object compounds than French-speaking children. This study focused on 36 French-English bilingual childrens production and comprehension of novel deverbal compounds in both languages. The results supported these predictions for production but not for comprehension. It is concluded that cross-linguistic transfer is a language production phenomenon and that structural ambiguity can predict when morphological transfer can occur.

A cross-cultural study on the use of gestures: Evidence for cross-linguistic transfer?

Anecdotal reports provide evidence of so called “hybrid” gesturer whose non-verbal behavior of one language/culture becomes visible in the other. The direction of this gestural transfer seems to occur from a high to a low frequency gesture language. The purpose of this study was therefore to test systematically 1) whether gestural transfer occurs from a high frequency gesture language to a low frequency gesture language, 2) if the frequency of production of some gesture types is more likely to be transferred than others, and 3) whether gestural transfer can also occur bi-directionally. To address these questions, we investigated the use of gestures of English–Spanish bilinguals, French–English bilinguals, and English monolinguals while retelling a cartoon. Our analysis focused on the rate of gestures and the frequency of production of gesture types. There was a significant difference in the overall rate of gestures: both bilingual groups gestured more than monolingual participants. This difference was particularly salient for iconic gestures. In addition, we found that French–English bilinguals used more deictic gestures in their L2. The results suggest that knowledge of a high frequency gesture language affects the gesture rate in a low-frequency gesture language.