The present study investigates the link between immigration, multilingualism, acculturation and p... more The present study investigates the link between immigration, multilingualism, acculturation and personality profiles (as measured by the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire) of 193 residents in Israel. Participants born in Israel tended to score higher on Emotional Stability than those born abroad. Participants with one immigrant parent (but not two) scored higher on Cultural Empathy, Open-mindedness and Social Initiative. Participants who had become dominant in Hebrew as a foreign language scored lower on Emotional Stability than Hebrew L1-dominant participants. The number of languages known by participants was not linked to their personality profile. A high level of use of various languages was linked to significantly higher scores on Cultural Empathy and Open-mindedness. Gender and age were also linked to personality profiles. Advanced knowledge of more languages and frequent use of more languages were linked to higher levels of Social Initiative and Open-mindedness, while ad...
Bedtime stories are among the most popular discourse activities between parents and their childre... more Bedtime stories are among the most popular discourse activities between parents and their children. Research shows linguistic differences between mothers and fathers telling a story. These differences are often in the amount of talk, kind of information provided, speech-acts performed, questions asked, and (non) supportive interactional style. The present study analyzes discourse characteristics in narratives of high-middle class educated Modern Hebrew-speaking mothers and fathers. Parents were recorded while telling their children the “Frog Story†– a wordless picture book relating the story of a boy and a dog in search of a lost frog. This picture book has proven to be an efficient and reliable tool in narrative development research. Our gender analysis focuses on both content and structure of the stories. From the content point of view, there were differences related to informative knowledge and affective characteristics. From the linguistic point of view, we found register differences related to the choice of a more normative and literary language as opposed to colloquial and informal language. Style differences were found to be gender-directed not only according to parents, but also to child-addressee. Parents’ narratives differed when directed to boys or girls, and a stereotyped view was clearly underlying this behavior. The findings show that parents have different expectations from boys or girls accommodating their storytelling, linguistically or emotionally to their children.
ABSTRACT Multilingual literate landscapes are ubiquitous input for children in many places in the... more ABSTRACT Multilingual literate landscapes are ubiquitous input for children in many places in the world. This type of input (albeit visual only) may propel literacy awareness, integration and cognitive assimilation of different writing and notational systems even before schooling. This study explores quantitatively and qualitatively the ways in which young multilingual children understand and interpret the principles underlying different writing systems. The focus is to compare how bilingual and monolingual children judge ‘readable and non-readable’ representations which are alphabetic or non-alphabetic (single, other or mixed); and whether readable strings comply with a qualitative and quantitative condition assigned to the string of signs presented. There are similarities as well as differences in the distinction as ‘readable’ between alphabetic and non-alphabetic notations among bilingual Ethiopian children and monolingual non-Ethiopian children who are pre-readers. Both groups regard as ‘readable’ sequences that contain varied and multiple combinations of alphabetic signs. There are revealing differences between the groups as to the quantity of signs in the sequence and whether it comes from a single, familiar or mixed alphabet. The Ethiopian bilingual children are more inclined to regard different alphabetic systems—whether they combine signs from within a single alphabet or from multiple alphabets—and tend to ‘detect’ them as ‘readable’ more so than non-Ethiopian monolinguals.
... trilingual switches provide evidence to review issues pertaining to trilingual acquisition, c... more ... trilingual switches provide evidence to review issues pertaining to trilingual acquisition, competence ... They propose the term 'coining' for a lexical item borrowed from French and ... and pragmatic analysis, manipulating other sociolinguistic variables such as identity, power, ethnicity ...
D’you know what, ‘te’ is a letter in German and it’s a word in Spanish. That’s funny. Luis (6 yea... more D’you know what, ‘te’ is a letter in German and it’s a word in Spanish. That’s funny. Luis (6 years, incipient trilingual) Introduction We have argued earlier that individual multilingualism is a very diverse phenomenon. Adults and children have different ways of becoming multilingual and developing multilingual competence. At the same time, multilingual language use – which, on the one hand is the outcome of multilingual competence and on the other is the driving force that refines this competence – is determined by a range of factors relating to why, where, how, about what and with whom one is communicating. We have thus concluded that different types of multilinguals and various ways of developing or acquiring multilingualism provide a range of ways to define and classify multilingual individuals. Such a classification is a rather complex task because multilingualism is dynamic – and not only at its inception, since it changes across the multilinguals’ lifespan depending on linguistic needs and opportunities within social and personal contexts. In the previous chapter we laid out the general issue of who is regarded as multilingual, how children become trilingual, the different research perspectives taken in particular studies concerning the development of trilingualism in infancy, and how formal education can generate trilingualism. Unlike the general concepts and ideas underlying Chapter 5, in this chapter we delve into more specific matters concerning the question: how do trilinguals do it (acquire and use three languages)? How can we explain it? What is the evidence we have? Knowledge of the processing and use of languages in trilinguals provides a window to understanding language processing in general and the limits of cognitive capacities where language load is concerned. The multilingual’s lifelong use of different languages and the pattern of mixing or switching between these can be taken as illustrative evidence to distinguish the various types of language behaviour and linguistic competence that are different from monolingual output.
The present study investigates the link between immigration, multilingualism, acculturation and p... more The present study investigates the link between immigration, multilingualism, acculturation and personality profiles (as measured by the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire) of 193 residents in Israel. Participants born in Israel tended to score higher on Emotional Stability than those born abroad. Participants with one immigrant parent (but not two) scored higher on Cultural Empathy, Open-mindedness and Social Initiative. Participants who had become dominant in Hebrew as a foreign language scored lower on Emotional Stability than Hebrew L1-dominant participants. The number of languages known by participants was not linked to their personality profile. A high level of use of various languages was linked to significantly higher scores on Cultural Empathy and Open-mindedness. Gender and age were also linked to personality profiles. Advanced knowledge of more languages and frequent use of more languages were linked to higher levels of Social Initiative and Open-mindedness, while ad...
Bedtime stories are among the most popular discourse activities between parents and their childre... more Bedtime stories are among the most popular discourse activities between parents and their children. Research shows linguistic differences between mothers and fathers telling a story. These differences are often in the amount of talk, kind of information provided, speech-acts performed, questions asked, and (non) supportive interactional style. The present study analyzes discourse characteristics in narratives of high-middle class educated Modern Hebrew-speaking mothers and fathers. Parents were recorded while telling their children the “Frog Story†– a wordless picture book relating the story of a boy and a dog in search of a lost frog. This picture book has proven to be an efficient and reliable tool in narrative development research. Our gender analysis focuses on both content and structure of the stories. From the content point of view, there were differences related to informative knowledge and affective characteristics. From the linguistic point of view, we found register differences related to the choice of a more normative and literary language as opposed to colloquial and informal language. Style differences were found to be gender-directed not only according to parents, but also to child-addressee. Parents’ narratives differed when directed to boys or girls, and a stereotyped view was clearly underlying this behavior. The findings show that parents have different expectations from boys or girls accommodating their storytelling, linguistically or emotionally to their children.
ABSTRACT Multilingual literate landscapes are ubiquitous input for children in many places in the... more ABSTRACT Multilingual literate landscapes are ubiquitous input for children in many places in the world. This type of input (albeit visual only) may propel literacy awareness, integration and cognitive assimilation of different writing and notational systems even before schooling. This study explores quantitatively and qualitatively the ways in which young multilingual children understand and interpret the principles underlying different writing systems. The focus is to compare how bilingual and monolingual children judge ‘readable and non-readable’ representations which are alphabetic or non-alphabetic (single, other or mixed); and whether readable strings comply with a qualitative and quantitative condition assigned to the string of signs presented. There are similarities as well as differences in the distinction as ‘readable’ between alphabetic and non-alphabetic notations among bilingual Ethiopian children and monolingual non-Ethiopian children who are pre-readers. Both groups regard as ‘readable’ sequences that contain varied and multiple combinations of alphabetic signs. There are revealing differences between the groups as to the quantity of signs in the sequence and whether it comes from a single, familiar or mixed alphabet. The Ethiopian bilingual children are more inclined to regard different alphabetic systems—whether they combine signs from within a single alphabet or from multiple alphabets—and tend to ‘detect’ them as ‘readable’ more so than non-Ethiopian monolinguals.
... trilingual switches provide evidence to review issues pertaining to trilingual acquisition, c... more ... trilingual switches provide evidence to review issues pertaining to trilingual acquisition, competence ... They propose the term 'coining' for a lexical item borrowed from French and ... and pragmatic analysis, manipulating other sociolinguistic variables such as identity, power, ethnicity ...
D’you know what, ‘te’ is a letter in German and it’s a word in Spanish. That’s funny. Luis (6 yea... more D’you know what, ‘te’ is a letter in German and it’s a word in Spanish. That’s funny. Luis (6 years, incipient trilingual) Introduction We have argued earlier that individual multilingualism is a very diverse phenomenon. Adults and children have different ways of becoming multilingual and developing multilingual competence. At the same time, multilingual language use – which, on the one hand is the outcome of multilingual competence and on the other is the driving force that refines this competence – is determined by a range of factors relating to why, where, how, about what and with whom one is communicating. We have thus concluded that different types of multilinguals and various ways of developing or acquiring multilingualism provide a range of ways to define and classify multilingual individuals. Such a classification is a rather complex task because multilingualism is dynamic – and not only at its inception, since it changes across the multilinguals’ lifespan depending on linguistic needs and opportunities within social and personal contexts. In the previous chapter we laid out the general issue of who is regarded as multilingual, how children become trilingual, the different research perspectives taken in particular studies concerning the development of trilingualism in infancy, and how formal education can generate trilingualism. Unlike the general concepts and ideas underlying Chapter 5, in this chapter we delve into more specific matters concerning the question: how do trilinguals do it (acquire and use three languages)? How can we explain it? What is the evidence we have? Knowledge of the processing and use of languages in trilinguals provides a window to understanding language processing in general and the limits of cognitive capacities where language load is concerned. The multilingual’s lifelong use of different languages and the pattern of mixing or switching between these can be taken as illustrative evidence to distinguish the various types of language behaviour and linguistic competence that are different from monolingual output.
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