Bilingualism

benefits of bilingualism

others have bilingualism thrust upon them later in life”
(Bialystok,

Craik, Green & Gollan, 2009).

2 languages?
Can speak and understand 2 languages?
From birth?
Equal mastery?

person who can speak two languages with native-like fluency, this

‘gold standard’ is often unreasonable and unattainable. Bilingualism exists on a continuum, where a speaker has varying levels of linguistic proficiency in a first language and a second language. 

L2

L1

L1

L2

L1

L2

L2

L1

L2

L1

L2

L1

languages
Family history
Formal education in L2 (bilingual schools)
L2 as a foreign

language at school
Temporary residence
Political / historical reasons

their families
Still have a dominant language
Majority/minority language?
Research is contradictory:
“1 month

old – already sequential”
“only at 3 years old does a child become sequential, not simultaneous”

phonological system for all human languages almost from birth (/pa/

vs. /ba/) (Eimas, Sequeland, Jusczyk & Vigorito, 1971).
If the contrast is not heard in the environment (/l/ vs. /r/ in Japanese) the ability begins to decline at about 6 m.o. (Werker & Tees, 1984)
Develop a full phonological system at 14 m.o. (same as monolinguals)

how many languages are spoken in the environment (Pearson, Fernandez

& Oller, 1993) and whether they are both verbal or one of them is signed (Pettito et al., 2001)
The RATE and the STRATEGIES of VA are different
E.g. the mutual exclusivity constraint is weaker in bilinguals and even weaker in multilinguals (Byers- Heinlein & Werker, 2009).

similar (appx. 50 w), but bilinguals know significantly fewer words

in each on the 2 languages
Difficulties?
Do childish sounds count as words if they have consistent meaning? / do we count proper names in both languages? / cognates?
3-10 y.o.: bilinguals have smaller receptive vocab in (L2-Eng) associated with their homes than monolinguals (L1-Eng) (as opposed to “school” vocab) (Bialystok, Luk , Peets & Yang, 2010)

monolinguals (Pearson et al., 1993)
Linguistic knowledge for bilingual children is

divided between 2 languages, therefore the richness of the representational system is different from that of a monolingual speaker. Similarities in developing cognitive abilities keep the process of language acquisition on a common time course

development has been interpreted in general terms as evidence of

a unitary language system with undifferentiated phonological, lexical and syntactic subsystems’ (Genesee, 1989, p.165)

The evidence for this includes isolated examples of language mixing in utterances addressed to the child's German-speaking mother (Volterra & Taeschner, 1978)

first stages (Volterra & Taeschner, 1978)
Language mixing regardless of the

context
Bilingual early language is significantly different from monolingual early language
Slower development as languages are not separate from the beginning

show translation equivalents at early stages

Pearson, Fernandez & Oller (1995)
30%

of bilingual toddlers’ vocabularies = language equivalents
Why only 30%?

Because children do not duplicate every experience in 2 languages at the same time

bebe ne boit pas le lait
English: The baby is not

drinking the milk

No stage of mixing the rules

to establish that, all things being equal, bilingual children use

items from both languages indiscriminately in all contexts of communication. In other words, there should be no differential distribution of items from the two languages as a function of the predominant language being used in different contexts. (p.165)

use at the moment is incomplete and does not include

the grammatical device needed to express certain meanings
the grammatical device required to express the intended meaning is available in the language currently in use, but it is more complex than the corresponding device in the other language system and its use strains the child's current ability.

two languages differentially as a function of context.
if the

differentiated-language systems hypothesis were true, one would expect to find more frequent use of items from the weaker language in contexts where that language is being used than in contexts where the stronger language is being used, even though items from the stronger language might predominate in both contexts.

prior to the emergence of functional categories
They were observed

with each parent separately and both together, on separate occasions.
Results indicate that while these children did code mix, they were clearly able to differentiate between their two languages.

Why only 5?

contexts that strongly bias towards only one of them (Kroll

& de Groot, 1997; Grainger, 1993; Guttentag, Haith, Goodman & Hauch, 1984)

Press when you see the green square

Press when you see the red square

the red square
congruent case
Press when you see the green square
Press

when you see the red square

incongruent case

the red square
When the case is incongruent, a person tends

to think longer -> the Simon effect

the red square
The Simon effect is larger monolinguals
Because bilinguals have

an advantage in inhibitory control (true for children and adults)

retrieval (related to frequency)
To be better understood
occurs when a speaker

alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation.

Intra-utterance

Inter-utterance

Do you code-switch?

language
Simultaneous bilinguals go through the same stages at approximately the

same age as monolinguals
Bilingual children seem to have 2 language systems
Code-switching is expected
Bilinguals tend to have smaller vocab in one given language than monolinguals even though in total their vocab is bigger

minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10, 89–129. doi: 10.1177/1529100610387084.
Bialystok,

E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S. (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism (Cambridge, England), 13(4), 525–531. doi:10.1017/S1366728909990423
Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J. F. (2009). Monolingual, bilingual, trilingual: Infants’ language experience influences the development of a word learning heuristic. Developmental Science, 12 (5), 815–823.
Eimas, P. D., Siqueland, E. R., Jusczyk, P., & Vigorito, J. (1971). Speech perception in infants. Science, 171(3968), p. 303-306.
Pearson BZ, Fernández SC, Oller DK. (1993). Lexical development in bilingual infants and toddlers: Comparison to monolingual norms. Language Learning, 43:93–120.
Petitto LA, Katerelos M, Levy B, Gauna K, Tétrault K, Ferraro V. (2001). Bilingual signed and spoken language acquisition from birth: Implications for mechanisms underlying bilingual language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 28:1–44.
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life, Infant Behavior and Development, 49-63.