Bilingual Language Acquisition

This paper considers the potential benefits and challenges of implementing CLIL (content and language integrated learning) for young learners in light of the existing research. We highlight the relative lack of attention that has so far been directed towards CLIL in pre-secondary levels, but suggest particular avenues that might be suitable for CLIL implementation with young learners at different stages. Nevertheless, there is a great need for targeted teacher training, both for in-service and pre-service teachers, since prior research also reveals the pitfalls of trying to implement CLIL when an educational system is insufficiently prepared for the changes of focus and attitude that it implies (and, indeed, demands). Yet an increasingly globalized, knowledge-driven society increasingly implies the need to prepare today's young learners -- tomorrow's problem-solvers -- to communicative competence in multiple languages to make more effective and collaborative use of content in addressing increasingly complex challenges. Though much remains to be done with regards in terms of preparing individuals and systems for successful CLIL implementation, though the potential rewards for the effort are very great.

This chapter addresses the need for comparable measures of lexical knowledge in both languages of a bilingual child. Typically, tools designed to identify SLI do not take into account if a child is bilingual and how this might affect raw test scores, often leading to misdiagnosis. Both vocabulary size and processing speed can be confounding variables when diagnosticians attempt to disentangle bilingualism from SLI at the lexical level.  Lexical abilities can also be used as a baseline assessment of bilingual dominance/proficiency. Hence the need for such tools as we describe here.
Delayed and impaired lexical abilities are among the earliest indicators of SLI (Leonard, 1998). Children with SLI show a delay in lexical development both in terms of the overall number of words and in reaching lexical milestones (i.e. first 50, 100, 200 words, Leonard & Deevy, 2004). They also display relatively weak semantic categories (McGregor et al., 2002). Bilingual children often have smaller lexicons in both of their languages (Bialystok et al., 2010) when compared to monolinguals. However, the number of words in the two languages of a bilingual child added together may not be different from those measured by monolingual norms (Marchman et al., 2009). The processing load in lexical tasks as measured by reaction time is claimed to be higher in bilinguals than in monolinguals (Bialystok et al., 2008, Chen, 1990; Dijkstra, 2003; Kohnert & Bates, 2002). At the same time, children with SLI experience reduced processing capabilities in comparison with typically developing children (Lahey et al., 2001; Lahey & Edwards, 1996; Montgomery, 2002).
Lexical abilities are potentially an early identification measure of bilingual SLI (Gatt et al., 2008), although they should not be used as the only diagnostic variable for this purpose (Gray et al., 1999; Spaulding et al., 2013). The assessment of processing speed and accuracy in lexical tasks may enhance the identification process (Pérez et al., 2013).
The Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLTs) designed within COST Action IS0804 were conceived to provide a fully comparable assessment for vocabulary and lexical processing in 34 different languages. We present the innovative method of the CLTs´ construction: a multilingual parallel task construction procedure which enables an objective test of vocabulary and processing skills in any pair of languages included in the process.
The CLTs target comprehension and production of nouns and verbs. The response accuracy measured in the CLTs indicates the level of receptive and expressive vocabulary size. Measuring reaction time (i.e. comprehension and naming speed) provides insight into the processing demands of passive and active knowledge across the two word classes. Picture choice and picture naming were chosen as being tasks least involving other types of linguistic or conceptual skills.
Currently, the CLTs have been prepared for 21 of the 34 languages and are available for use by researchers. Their use in diagnostics will be warranted as soon as norming studies addressing specific populations of mono- and bilingual children  have been completed.

The current study investigated performance on morpho-syntax in Russian–Hebrew sequential bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) in both languages (L1 Russian and L2 Hebrew) using sentence repetition (SRep) tasks with a fundamental aim to disentangle the language abilities of bilingual children with typical language development (biTLD) from that of bilingual children with SLI (biSLI). Four groups of children participated (N=85) in the study: 45 L1 Russian–L2 Hebrew sequential bilinguals (30 biTLD and 15 biSLI), 20 monolingual Russian-speaking children and 20 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children. The SRep tasks in Russian and in Hebrew were based on LITMUS-SRep developed within COST Action IS0804 and contained 56 sentences of different length and complexity. The bilingual–monolingual comparisons yielded differences only in L1 Russian, where the monolingual Russian-speaking children outperformed bilingual children with typical language
development (TLD) in their first language. In L2 Hebrew, no significant differences emerged between monolingual speakers of Hebrew and bilinguals.
Comparisons of bilingual children with and without SLI showed that both the quantity and the quality of errors differentiate the two bilingual groups. In both languages (L1 and L2), bilingual children with TLD outperformed their peers with SLI. Bilingual children with SLI produced specific error patterns like those previously reported for monolingual children with SLI, i.e. omission of coordinators and subordinators, omission of prepositions, and simplification of wh-questions and relative clauses. These error patterns are unique to children with SLI and cannot be attributed to L1–L2 influence, while the errors of children in the biTLD group can be traced to cross-linguistic influence (mostly L2 influence on L1).

Fulltext here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328913223_Semilingualism_The_life_and_afterlife_of_a_sociolinguistic_idea


For half a century or more, semilingualism has been a controversial – much debated and much derided – idea. The present paper engages with some facets of this history. It traces the formation and early circulation in its context of origin: Sweden's nascent fields of bilingualism research and minority education. The paper analyzes semilingualism as a 'traveling idea', which has moved through networks of actors over an extended period of time. In Sweden from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, semilingualism was a key theme a range of discursive exchanges. It circulated in scholarly discussions about bilingualism and linguistic competence, and surged as a central theme in political debates on minority education, immigration and language policy. It likewise recurred in the media, and in various articulations of public opinion. In the course these travels, the idea of semilingualism became more and more implicated in the processes of revising Sweden's policies on linguistic minorities. By the 1970s, as the paper argues, the idea had begun to function as a 'policy-driver', which aided the 1977 nationwide introduction of the school subject of mother tongue instruction (MTI) for minority students. While most linguists have come to dismiss semilingualism as a scientifically flawed concept, the idea of semilingualism, as the paper shows, had nevertheless a decisive impact in policy making. This impact is still visible the inclusion of MTI in Sweden's national curriculum. This societal impact of this sociolinguistic idea, as well as the lasting consequences thereof, points to the importance of a reflexive sociolinguistics, which takes interest in the life and afterlife of the ideas it produces. The paper contributes to this endeavor.

Past research has shown that young monolingual children exhibit language-based social biases: they prefer native language to foreign language speakers. The current research investigated how children’s language preferences are influenced by their own bilingualism and by a speaker’s bilingualism. Monolingual and bilingual four- to six-year-olds heard pairs of adults (a monolingual and a bilingual, or two monolinguals) and chose the person with whom they wanted to be friends. Whether they were from a largely monolingual or a largely bilingual community, monolingual children preferred monolingual to bilingual speakers, and native language to foreign language speakers. In contrast, bilingual children showed similar affiliation with monolingual and bilingual speakers, as well as for monolingual speakers using their dominant versus non-dominant language. Exploratory analyses showed that individual bilinguals displayed idiosyncratic patterns of preference. These results reveal that language-based preferences emerge from a complex interaction of factors, including preference for in-group members, avoidance of out-group members, and characteristics of the child as they relate to the status of the languages within the community. Moreover, these results have implications for bilingual children’s social acceptance by their peers.

Spatial relations in Sranan are expressed through a broad range of constructions. Some of these reflect the influence of the Dutch superstrate, others clearly reflect the influence of the substrate languages of Sranan. These “Niger-Congo” structures are markedly different from equivalent “Indo-European” ones. Pattern relexification is  held responsible for  the wholesale carry-over of substrate semantics plus morpho-syntactic specifications into Sranan locative constructions. The synchronic variation in Sranan is partially explained by the equally broad variety of constructions found within and across the African languages and language families that participated in the creation of Sranan. However, much of the apparent diversity is superficial in nature, for it chiefly concerns constituent order. In contrast, morphosyntactic features like the nature of dependency, as well as the semantic structure of spatial descriptions remain highly similar in Sranan and the substrates.