Margareta Almgren

Differences between Girls and Boys in Emerging Language Skills: Evidence from 10 Language Communities.

The present study explored gender differences in emerging language skills in 13,783 European children from 10 non-English language communities. It was based on a synthesis of published data assessed with adapted versions of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) from age 0.08 to 2.06. The results showed that girls are slightly ahead of boys in early communicative gestures, in productive vocabulary, and in combining words. The difference increased with age. Boys were not found to be more variable than girls. Despite extensive variation in language skills between language communities, the difference between girls and boys remained. This suggests that the difference is caused by robust factors that do not change between language communities.

Basque L2 development in immersion school settings

The aim of this article is to study the development of Basque L2 by Spanish L1 children who attend school in a total immersion programme where Basque is the vehicular language. Narratives based on an adult model produced at ages 5 and 8 are analysed in order to better understand the acquisition process of Basque L2 in an immersion school context. Basque L1 children who are also educated in Basque from preschool age constitute a reference group. The same subjects participate in the research at both ages, which gives a longitudinal as well as a cross-sectional approach to the study. The degree of narrative autonomy, the organisation of the narrative structure and features of nominal and verbal cohesion and some metalinguistic strategies are analysed. The results show similar skills in both groups, and the differences are not always in favour of the L1 subjects. On the whole, L2 subjects seem to reproduce the adult model more closely. This study contributes to a better understanding of L2 development in a school context, focussing on the positive effects of Basque immersion programmes.

The development of narrative skills in learners of Basque as a second language

The aim of this paper is to analyse some aspects of development of Basque as a second language (L2) in children for whom Spanish is their first language (L1) who attended immersion school in Basque in a Spanish-speaking sociolinguistic context. Data consist of oral story retellings produced in a classroom setting where the same children participated at ages 5, 8 and 11. Another group of children for whom Basque was the L1 and who lived in a strong Basque-speaking environment also took part in the study. Two aspects are analysed in the stories: lexical difficulties and the production of text organisers. According to the results, the Basque L2 children seemed to have acquired a linguistic competence quite comparable to L1 capacity: the lexical aspects studied show a clear development in L2, since lexical gaps were frequent at age 5, diminished at age 8 and were practically non-existent at age 11. The production of text organisers also shows a clear developmental pattern and, with increasing age, the children produced a higher variety of text organisers, providing precise temporal links to different segments of the story. It is concluded that Basque immersion seems to foster the development of Basque L2 in contexts where the use of Basque is quite reduced.

Object–verb and verb–object in Basque and Spanish monolinguals and bilinguals

The aim of this article is to analyse the acquisition of object–verb/verb–object word order in Spanish and Basque by monolinguals (L1), early simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) and successive bilinguals, exposed to their second language before ages 5–6 (child L2). In this study, the second language (child L2) is acquired naturalistically, in a preschool setting with no formal instruction for the Basque L2 speakers and by environmental contact for the Spanish L2 speakers. Spanish and Basque are differentiated by their canonical word order as subject–verb–object and subject–object–verb, respectively. In Spanish, the subject–verb–object order is predominant (almost exclusive) in narrative contexts, whereas in Basque, both object–verb and verb–object word orders are possible in these contexts for pragmatic reasons, with a similar use in everyday language. The productions of a few L1 and 2L1 subjects are analysed longitudinally within the 1;06–3;00 age span. Cross-sectional data from 49 subjects who developed a child L2 are analysed at ages 5 and 8. The results reveal that the bilingual children apply the same syntactic patterns as the monolinguals in their respective languages independently of 2L1 or child L2 acquisition.

Marcas de sujetos y objetos en euskara y español y separación de códigos lingüísticos

Resumen La hipótesis defendida en este trabajo es la diferenciación de los sistemas gramaticales desde el momento del desarrollo lingüístico en que los niños comienzan a utilizar elementos morfológicos y sintácticos en los procesos de adquisición bilingüe, tal como ha sido propuesto por Bowerman (1973), Meisel (1989) o De Houwer, (1991,1995), entre otros. Analizamos el proceso de adquisición de las diferentes maneras de marcar las relaciones sintácticas básicas de los sujetos intransitivos, los sujetos transitivos y los objetos en euskara y español. En euskara, lengua ergativa, los sujetos intransitivos y los objetos son marcados en los sintagmas nominales mediante el caso absolutivo y los sujetos transitivos mediante el caso ergativo. También en la concordancia verbal los sujetos intransitivosy los objetos son representadospor los mismos morfemas prefijados, frente a los sujetos transitivos que son reflejados mediante sufijos. En español, por el contrario, los sujetos intransitives y los transitivos no se diferencian morfológicamentey son representados mediante los mismos sufijos en la morfología verbal. Los objetos, en cambio, se diferencian morfológicamente de los sujetos transitivo e intransitivo. Presentamos los datos de un niño bilingüe vasco-español desde 1,06 hasta 3,00 y cotejamos sus datos con los observados en procesos de adquisición monolingües, tanto vascos como españoles.