Growing Up Bilingual

Outline Genesee (1989) –Different approaches to explaining bilingual mixing in children. Au & Glusman (1990) –Mutual exclusivity and bilingualism.

Genesee (1989) Early Bilingual Development: One Language or Two? The case of bilingual mixing: –Definitions –The unitary system explanation of mixing –Alternative explanations

What is language mixing? Interactions between the child’s two languages. Can be phonological, lexical, phrasal, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. Widespread phenomenon in bilingual development. More frequent in early stages. Different from code switching.

Unitary Language System (ULS): The Child is Confused! Language mixing as evidence of an undifferentiated phonological, lexical, and syntactic systems. Swain (1977): Common Storage Model Volterra & Taeschner (1978): 3-Stage Model ?

Insufficient Evidence? To support the ULS hypothesis, we must show that bilingual children use elements from both languages in all linguistic contexts. The previous data does not allow for such an analysis. –E.g., Volterra & Taeschner report data only in one context, with the German-speaking mother.

Alternative Explanations Mixing occurs because of a lack of specific words in one language (similar to overextensions). Mixing occurs because of an extremely restricted use of specific words in one language (similar to underextensions). Mixing occurs because of structural linguistic factors (e.g., one language is simpler)

Alternative Explanations Child mixing is modelled on mixed input. –Mixing from caregivers –Mixing in the community (e.g., Spanglish or Franglais) Some studies suggest that more mixing in the home leads to more mixing by the child (e.g., Goodz, 1989).

jouet toy Differentiated-Language Systems Evidence of perceptual discrimination between languages in infancy. Re-examination of language samples suggest that children use their languages differentially. Language-specific word-order is used correctly by French- German bilingual children

How can we tease apart the different hypotheses? Collect data on the functional separation of the languages (i.e., language use). Data must be collected in different linguistic contexts. Detailed information on input must be obtained. Collect data from the one-word stage and beyond.

Au and Glusman (1990) Mutual Exclusivity and Bilingualism Definitions Basic method used in the studies Findings and conclusions

Mutual Exclusivity Classical problem of induction in word learning. Mutual exclusivity, a word-learning bias: –Words pick out mutually exclusive categories (each object has a single label). Classic study by Markman & Watchel (1988).

Mutual Exclusivity Must be Overcome The child must learn that different words can pick out categories from different levels of a hierarchy (e.g., poodle, dog, animal). Bilingual children must learn that different words from different languages can refer to the same category (e.g., dog, chien).

General Procedure Stimulus: –4 animals (e.g., 2 seals and 2 lemurs) with unusual features (to ensure that they were novel). Expter 1 taught a novel label (e.g., mido). Expter 2 asked for a referent for another label (e.g., theri). Expter 2 asked whether the first object could be a theri and why.

Procedure: Variations Children were asked to pick out animals out of a set of animals and non-animals. –Then the original procedure was used. Children were asked to pick out dogs out of a set of dogs and other animals. –Then 4 dogs were used (e.g., 2 mutts and 2 beagles).

Procedure: Variations The novel terms used were from Spanish and English and the participants were bilingual. –Original procedure was used. Novel words from one language only and with bilingual participants. –Original procedure was used. Novels words from different languages, but with monolingual participants. –Original procedure was used.

Findings Adults and 4-year-old children follow the mutual exclusivity bias when learning novel nouns when there is no evidence contradicting mutual exclusivity. 4-year-olds follow the bias when 2 words are within the same hierarchical level, but not when the words are from different levels (superordinate/basic/subordinate).

Findings Bilingual adults and 4-year-olds can override the bias across languages. Monolingual 4-year-olds can also override the bias across languages.