Enlli Môn Thomas

Bilingual first-language development: Dominant language takeover, threatened minority language take-up *

This study explores the extent to which bilingual speakers in stable bilingual communities become fully bilingual in their two community languages. Growing evidence shows that in bilingual communities in which one language is very dominant, acquisition of the dominant language may be quite unproblematic across sub-groups, while acquisition of the minority language can be hampered under conditions of reduced input. In Wales, children are exposed to both English and Welsh from an early age, either in the home or at school, or both. The data reported here indicate that regardless of home language background, speakers develop equivalent, mature command of English, but that command of Welsh is directly correlated with the level of input in Welsh in the home and at school. Furthermore, maintenance of Welsh in adulthood may be contingent on continued exposure to the language. The data have implications for theories of bilingual acquisition in stable versus immigrant bilingual communities, for optimal conditions for bringing up bilingual children, and for theories of critical periods of acquisition.

Does language dominance affect cognitive performance in bilinguals? Lifespan evidence from preschoolers through older adults on card sorting, Simon, and metalinguistic tasks

This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for three tasks in an established population of fully fluent bilinguals from childhood through adulthood. Welsh-English simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, as well as English monolinguals, aged 3 years through older adults, were tested on three sets of cognitive and executive function tasks. Bilinguals were Welsh-dominant, balanced, or English-dominant, with only Welsh, Welsh and English, or only English at home. Card sorting, Simon, and a metalinguistic judgment task (650, 557, and 354 participants, respectively) reveal little support for a bilingual advantage, either in relation to control or globally. Primarily there is no difference in performance across groups, but there is occasionally better performance by monolinguals or persons dominant in the language being tested, and in one case-in one condition and in one age group-lower performance by the monolinguals. The lack of evidence for a bilingual advantage in these simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals suggests the need for much closer scrutiny of what type of bilingual might demonstrate the reported effects, under what conditions, and why.

Brain potentials reveal semantic priming in both the ‘active’ and the ‘non-attended’ language of early bilinguals

A key question in the study of bilingual functioning is whether both the languages known are active at all times or whether one language can be selectively inactivated when bilingual individuals are tuned to the other language. Psycholinguistic and neuroscientific investigations have provided inconsistent data regarding the level of semantic activation of the two languages, even in the case of highly proficient bilinguals. In the present study, highly proficient, early Welsh/English bilinguals were presented with words in both their languages and were required to make word length decisions on words in one language while disregarding words in the other. Participants were not explicitly told about the organization of the word stream in pairs manipulating (a) semantic relatedness, (b) language of the prime and (c) language of the target in a fully counterbalanced two-by-two-by-two design. We observed significant semantic priming for both English and Welsh target words, irrespective of the active language, and independent of performance in the low-level letter counting task. We conclude that accessing the meaning of a written word is automatic in the two languages even when fluent bilingual adults are instructed to disregard words in one of their languages.

Designing a Normed Receptive Vocabulary Test for Bilingual Populations: A Model from Welsh

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to propose an applied model for the assessment of bilingual childrens language abilities with standardised tests. We discuss the purposes of such tests, especially in relation to vocabulary knowledge, and potential applications of test results for each of those purposes. The specific case to be examined here is that of Welsh vocabulary, but the principles are relevant to any other bilingual population and any other aspect of language. Our proposal is that all standardised language tests for bilinguals should take into account childrens exposure to the language in question and should report both a general score comparing a given child to all children – bilingual or monolingual – and a score that indicates the childs placement relative to (bilingual) children who have similar language exposure profiles.

Cognitive effects of bilingualism: digging deeper for the contributions of language dominance, linguistic knowledge, socio-economic status and cognitive abilities

Abstract This study explores the extent to which a bilingual advantage can be observed for executive function tasks in children of varying levels of language dominance, and examines the contributions of general cognitive knowledge, linguistic abilities, language use and socio-economic level to performance. Welsh–English bilingual and English monolingual primary school age and teenage children were tested on two executive function tasks, a tapping task and a Stroop task. Bilingual children came from homes in which only Welsh, Welsh and English, or only English was spoken. Results differed by task. On the tapping task, bilingual children from only Welsh homes showed overall superior performance, monolinguals inferior, with the other two bilingual groups between them. Performance correlated with general cognitive abilities with number and pattern discrimination, as well as, at the older age, with balanced use of the two languages. On the Stroop task, language tested mattered; there were no differences across groups in Welsh, but complex patterns in English. The only strictly bilingual advantage on the Stroop was at the younger age for children from Welsh and English homes when tested in English, and performance was also influenced by SES level, cognitive abilities, vocabulary levels and use of the two languages.

Children's productive command of grammatical gender and mutation in Welsh: An alternative to rule-based learning

This paper examines Welsh-speaking childrens productive command of mutation — a set of morphophonological changes, conditioned by lexical and syntactic environments, that affect the initial consonants of words. In Welsh, grammatical gender is marked by mutations, and the mapping between mutation and gender is opaque. Using a Cloze-type procedure, Experiment 1 presented children between the ages of 41/2 and 9 years with a distant gender-marked context, and Experiments 2 and 3 presented similar-aged children with triggering contexts for mutation that were not conditioned by gender. Results suggest that childrens ability to mark gender categories is not limited by their underlying knowledge of the mutation system in general, but the course of development is protracted and complex.

What's in a noun? Welsh-, English-, and Spanish- speaking children see it differently

This paper examines young childrens abilities to interpret new words as referring to collections. Two experiments examine English-, Spanish-, and Welsh-speaking childrens interpretations of novel nouns that could refer either to a single object or to a collection. Experiment 1 tested 53 3- and 4-year-olds; Experiment 2 tested 30 2- to 3-year-olds and 30 4- to 5-year-olds. As early as two years of age, childrens responses to new nouns differ across these languages in ways that are consistent with differences in the languages they are learning. These results go counter to recent hypotheses claiming that children have innate or built-in biases concerning the meanings of new words. We argue that what the empirical data in those studies have been showing is not that children rely on built-in word meaning biases to determine the meanings of words, but rather that English-speaking children have learned something about the structure of English nouns and are relying on this knowledge to learn new nouns. We conclude that children learning distinct languages develop different types of first best guesses about the meanings of new words. Those first best guesses are a product of what children have already learned about how meanings get encoded in their language.

Posterior N1 asymmetry to English and Welsh words in Early and Late English–Welsh bilinguals

We investigated the lateralization of the posterior event-related potential (ERP) component N1 (120-170 ms) to written words in two groups of bilinguals. Fourteen Early English-Welsh bilinguals and 14 late learners of Welsh performed a semantic categorization task on separate blocks of English and Welsh words. In both groups, the N1 was strongly lateralized over the left posterior sites for both languages. A robust correlation was found between N1 asymmetry for English and N1 asymmetry for Welsh words in both groups. Furthermore, in Late Bilinguals, the N1 asymmetry for Welsh words increased with years of experience in Welsh. These data suggest that, in Late Bilinguals, the lateralization of neural circuits involved in written word recognition for the second language is associated to the organization for the first language, and that increased experience with the second language is associated to a larger functional cerebral asymmetry in favor of the left hemisphere.

Acquiring complex structures under minority language conditions: Bilingual acquisition of plural morphology in Welsh

This study explored the effects of quantity and quality of input on bilingual childrens acquisition of complex plural morphology in Welsh. Study 1 explored the quality of adult input and revealed target-like marking of plural forms in naturalistic adult speech. Study 2 presented eighty-eight 7-11-year-old children, across three bilingual language groups (L1 Welsh, 2L1, and L2 Welsh), with a plural production task. Results revealed performances approaching L1 adult norms among L1 Welsh-speaking bilinguals, but delayed progression among 2L1 and L2 Welsh bilinguals, although analyses of errors revealed various levels of structural knowledge. Forms requiring the addition of a plural suffix were less difficult to acquire than those involving alterations to the root, with each type acquired with greater levels of accuracy with increasing levels of exposure to the language. The implications of these findings for our understanding of bilingual acquisition of complex structures under minority language conditions are discussed.

Exploring bilinguals’ social use of language inside and out of the minority language classroom

This paper examines bilingual childrens use of language inside and out of the minority language classroom. A total of 145 children between 8 and 11 years of age, attending 16 bilingual Welsh-English primary schools in North Wales, responded to questionnaires (supplemented by classroom observations) requesting information about their language backgrounds, their use of language at school (inside and out of the classroom) and in the wider community, their self-ratings about their linguistic competence in Welsh and in English and their attitudes towards Welsh and English and towards bilingualism per se. Whilst the results, in general, demonstrated a positive attitude towards bilingualism, there was a clear trend towards favouring the use of English outside the classroom. This pattern was mediated by language experiences and perceived language abilities within the individual. The implications of the findings for language policy and planning in education and in minority situations are discussed.