Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Volume 10, Issue 5, 2020

This paper investigates vocabulary comprehension and production in 46 bilingual Swedish-German children age 4–6 growing up in Sweden. Using a newly developed tool, the Cross-linguistic Lexical Task (CLT, Haman, Łuniewska & Pomiechowska 2015), the children’s receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge of nouns and verbs is assessed in both their languages, compared to each other and over age. Performance on test items of different word types (nouns/verbs; cognates/non-cognates) is also explored. There are clear vocabulary gains with age for the majority language Swedish, but not for the minority (home) language German. Overall vocabulary scores are higher in Swedish than in German, but this difference only concerns verbs, not nouns. Cognate facilitation occurs both ways in these closely-related languages, but is stronger in the minority language German. We suggest that what at first sight looks like a noun advantage on the German CLT is largely an effect of Swedish/German cognate status.

In two eye tracking experiments, we investigate how adult child-L2 speakers of English resolve prepositional phrase (PP) attachment ambiguity in their dominant language (English), and whether they use prosodic information to aid in the process of garden-path recovery. The findings showed an increased processing cost associated with the revision of temporary ambiguous sentences for the child-L2 adults relative to the native English speakers. When prosody was informative, the child-L2 adults were able to use prosodic information to guide the interpretation of their later acquired, dominant language. However, they performed revision significantly less successfully than the native speakers. Although processing was similar for the native English speakers and the adult child-L2 speakers of English, when it comes to sensitivity to prosodic information and referential context, the two groups differed with regards to reanalysis both in the presence and absence of salient prosodic and referential information.

The present study investigates whether prior experience with formal study of an L2 influences L3 Korean learners’ Type 1 variation (i.e., use of obligatory forms) and Type 2 variation (i.e., variation between alternative acceptable variants). The patterns of variation in Korean argument realization of early bilingual learners (English-Chinese/Malay/Indonesian/Tamil) of L3 Korean were assessed in light of the distribution of variants present in classroom input, learners’ prior L2 learning experience and home language background, argument animacy and number, and familiarity of verb structure type.

Our findings demonstrate that prior experience with a typologically-similar L2 facilitates acquisition of grammatical patterns as well as acquisition of native-like patterns of variation between grammatical forms that are constrained by a range of internal linguistic factors. Any L2 experience, regardless of typological proximity, is found to facilitate acquisition of internal linguistic constraints, but not acquisition of grammatical patterns.

The article addresses the issue of an assumed correlation between heritage language speakers’ linguistic system and their fluency. Previous research has shown that heritage language speakers who have grammatical patterns that are divergent from the language spoken in the homeland also have lexical retrieval problems and speak with a slower speech rate. We approach the issue by examining two linguistic features and 11 different fluency features (‘structural’ and ‘performance features’) of 10 speakers of Argentine Heritage Danish. A factor analysis shows that the 11 performance features can be reduced to 2 factors that characterize the speakers ‘lexical retrieval’ and ‘fluency’. A correlation analysis with the two structural features, weakening of a phonological contrast between /oː/ and /ɔː/ and simplification of the gender system, shows that there are no correlations at all between these two measures of the speakers’ language production, in contrast to what previous research has found.

This paper focuses on Spanish grammatical mood variation in Comment Clauses (e.g., es mejor que no vayas (subjunctive) / vas (indicative) ‘it’s better you not go’) in the speech of two generations in New York City. The data come from 36 participants, 18 from each of two generational cohorts. Carried out within the variationist-sociolinguistic research paradigm, we test grammatical mood against eight variables, four external (generation, region, speaker sex, language skill) and four internal (grammatical tense, clause type, lexical identity, negation). Statistical findings reveal that generation significantly conditions subjunctive use (the first generation has a significantly higher rate of use of subjunctive forms than does the second generation); English skill conditions first-generation subjunctive use (those with ‘good or excellent’ English skills have a higher subjunctive rate than those with ‘fair or poor’ English skills); clause type conditions both generations’ subjunctive use (impersonal constructions yield a higher subjunctive rate than personal constructions); lexical identity and negation in the matrix clause both condition first-generation use of mood (gustar ‘to like’ favors the indicative; importar ‘to be important’ and ser + impersonal expression ‘to be’ both favor the subjunctive). Generational differences are thus observed with respect to both social and linguistic conditioning factors.