Most studies on bilingual language development focus on children’s second language (L2). Here, we investigated first language (L1) development of Polish-English early migrant bilinguals in four domains: vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing, and discourse. We first compared Polish language skills between bilinguals and their Polish non-migrant monolingual peers, and then investigated the influence of the cumulative exposure to L1 and L2 on bilinguals’ performance. We then examined whether high exposure to L1 could possibly minimize the gap between monolinguals and bilinguals. We analyzed data from 233 typically developing children (88 bilingual and 145 monolingual) aged 4;0 to 7;5 (years;months) on six language measures in Polish: receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary, receptive grammar, productive grammar (sentence repetition), phonological processing (non-word repetition), and discourse abilities (narration). Information about language exposure was obtained via parental questionnaires. For each language task, we analyzed the data from the subsample of bilinguals who had completed all the tasks in question and from monolinguals matched one-on-one to the bilingual group on age, SES (measured by years of mother’s education), gender, non-verbal IQ, and short-term memory. The bilingual children scored lower than monolinguals in all language domains, except discourse. The group differences were more pronounced on the productive tasks (vocabulary, grammar, and phonological processing) and moderate on the receptive tasks (vocabulary and grammar). L1 exposure correlated positively with the vocabulary size and phonological processing. Grammar scores were not related to the levels of L1 exposure, but were predicted by general cognitive abilities. L2 exposure negatively influenced productive grammar in L1, suggesting possible L2 transfer effects on L1 grammatical performance. Children’s narrative skills benefitted from exposure to two languages: both L1 and L2 exposure influenced story structure scores in L1. Importantly, we did not find any evidence (in any of the tasks in which the gap was present) that the performance gap between monolinguals and bilinguals could be fully closed with high amounts of L1 input.

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Some second language (L2) acquisition researchers have suggested that learners should be made aware of cross‐linguistic similarity for them to benefit from cognateness. To test this assumption, we ran two longitudinal classroom quasi‐experiments with Polish learners of English. We chose 30 Polish‐English cognates, 30 false cognates, and 30 non‐cognates matched on L2 frequency and concreteness and embedded them in exercises typical of English language teaching textbooks. Participants learned the words with their teachers in their classes at school. We manipulated the experimental group's awareness of orthographic cross‐linguistic similarity in awareness‐raising workshops. The results revealed that the participants had a higher chance of knowing cognates than other word types before the study. However, they acquired cognates embedded in exercises at the same rate as other word types. Also, the awareness‐raising manipulation, regardless of its intensity, had no additional effect on their acquisition of cognates and false cognates, indicating that awareness of cognateness did not boost learning cognates.

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This study investigates relationships between acquisition of exhaustivity in single and multiple wh-questions, mastery of semantic and pragmatic aspects of quantifier comprehension and general skills in receptive grammar. The participants of the study were twenty five Polish monolingual typically developing children aged 4;02-6;02, who were administered a set of tasks including Exhaustive Wh-Questions Task (Schulz 2015), The Test for Reception of Grammar, version 2 (Bishop 2003) and Comprehension of Quantification Task (Katsos et al. 2011). The selection of the tasks was motivated by the major linguistic accounts of exhaustivity (cf. Schulz & Roeper 2011). We found significant predictive relationships between single exhaustive wh-questions and both semantics of quantifiers and receptive grammar. In contrast, the scores in the multiple wh-questions were predicted only by age, showing their delayed acquisition with respect to single wh-questions. However, this agerelated difference was not accounted for by any of the linguistic variables tested. Crucially, the analyses revealed no relationships between the mastery of pragmatics of quantification Downloaded by [University of Massachusetts, Amherst] at 21:50 04 June 2016A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t (involving scalar implicature) and exhaustivity in wh-questions, suggesting that the two are not driven by a common pragmatic mechanism.