Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2020

This study examined the phenomena of incomplete acquisition, attrition, and protracted acquisition of the L1 in HL children by focusing on the comprehension and production of subject and object relative clauses (RCs) in Mandarin HL children. A cross-sectional design (study 1) and a longitudinal design (study 2) were both included. Our results showed that HL children were comparable to monolinguals for the comprehension of RCs in both study 1 and 2. For the production of RCs, although monolinguals outperformed HL children in study 1, HL children’s production of RCs was convergent with monolingual-like levels over time (study 2). We conclude that the reduced L1 input HL children receive in the host country does not necessarily lead to deficient acquisition of the L1. Perhaps for some complex structures in the L1 (e.g., RCs), HL children may need more time than monolingual children to accumulate the critical mass of input needed to acquire them.

This paper tests the universal Topic Prominence (TP) stage hypothesis and L1 transfer hypothesis by analyzing attested TP features, namely zero pronouns, bare (i.e., article-less) nouns, and post-nominal topic marking found in Korean written narratives collected from L2 Korean (TP language) speakers whose L1 is English (SP language) and Mandarin Chinese (TP language), respectively. The results showed that L2 Korean speakers used zero pronouns as frequently as L1 Korean speakers did from the early stage of their acquisition, whereas the use of the topic marking lagged behind, regardless of their L1 backgrounds. We explain the results by appealing to the universal acquisition path based on pragmatic-lexical-morphosyntactic cline: while the concept of the topic is (arguably) universal, its morphological marking is influenced by L1 as well as learning experience.

In this paper, we present the results on (re)production of relative clauses in a sentence repetition task by Russian and Polish monolingual and bilingual children (3;6–6;6 years). Russian and Polish both involve overt case marking in the relative clause formation, but the case marking in Polish is more regular and transparent. Our results suggest that, when case marking is the only disambiguating cue, its transparency and regularity contributes to a significantly better performance. This explains why the Polish children, both monolingual and bilingual, were more successful in reproduction of subject and object relatives compared to their Russian peers.

The present study aimed to explore the metalinguistic awareness of Persian- and Persian-Baluchi-speaking students who were in the process of learning English as their second and third languages, respectively. In order to study learners’ metalinguistic awareness in error identification, correction and explanation they were asked to complete a syntactic awareness test. Findings demonstrated that Baluch respondents noted and corrected a greater proportion of grammatical errors than Persian respondents in English. Moreover, Baluch participants had a more grammar-oriented approach in correcting the errors they noted than the Persian participants, whose approaches were relatively content-oriented for some errors. As for error explanation, Baluch participants produced a greater proportion of error explanations and had a more grammar-oriented approach than did the Persian participants, however, their differences in this case were not statistically significant. These differences were observed on the dimensions that were both similar and dissimilar across the three languages (Persian, Baluchi, and English).

Bimodal bilinguals sometimes use code-blending, simultaneous production of (parts of) an utterance in both speech and sign. We ask what spoken language material is blended with entity and handling depicting signs (DS), representations of action that combine discrete components with iconic depictions of aspects of a referenced event in a gradient, analog manner. We test a semantic approach that DS may involve a demonstration, involving a predicate which obligatorily includes a modificational demonstrational component, and adopt a syntactic analysis which crucially distinguishes between entity and handling DS. Given the model of bilingualism we use, we expect both DS can be produced with speech that occurs in the verbal structure, along with vocal gestures, but speech that includes a subject is only expected to be blended with handling DS, not entity. The data we report from three Codas, native bimodal bilinguals, from the United States and one from Brazil conform with this prediction.