A cross-linguistic and bilingual evaluation of the interdependence between lexical and grammatical domains

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine within and across language relationships between lexical and grammatical domains by focusing on measures of lexical diversity and grammatical complexity in Spanish and English. One hundred and ninety-six preschool and school-aged Latino children with different levels of English and Spanish proficiencies and different language abilities produced narratives in Spanish, English, or both. Analyses revealed strong associations between lexical (number of different words and number of different verbs) and grammatical measures (mean length of utterances in words and use of ditransitive predicates), supporting the domain interdependence hypothesis within a language. Cross-linguistic comparisons indicate a greater diversity of verbs and ditransitive predicates in Spanish compared to English for this population. In the language samples of children who produced narratives in the two languages, there was no relationship between the two domains across languages. The lack of cross-language correlations may be related to other variables influencing lexical and semantic development in bilingual learners. Methodological issues to be considered in future studies with bilingual speakers are discussed.

Language sample measures and language ability in Spanish-English bilingual kindergarteners

“…The bilingual children with LI also produced semantically related errors but were more likely present non-responses. Along the same lines, a comparison of NDW in the narrative samples of kindergarten age bilinguals showed that children with LI used less diverse vocabularies in each of their languages relative to their typically developing peers (73.8 vs. 80.6 in English and 68.1 vs. 79.6 in Spanish) (Simón-Cereijido & Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2009). These findings indicate that NDW may be sensitive to language development and language ability in bilingual children as has been observed in other languages (e.g., English and Cantonese) (Hewitt, et al, 2005; Klee, et al, 2004).…”

“…Both Muñoz et al (2003) and Miller et al (2006) documented statistically significant growth in MLU over the early school years. MLU in both languages of bilingual children with LI is lower than that of their typically developing peers (5.5 vs. 6.23 in English and 5.2 vs. 5.8 in Spanish) (Simón-Cereijido & Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2009). These data, in combination with data showing that MLU increases in this time period for bilingual children, suggest that MLU may contribute to our ability to differentiate children with low language ability in both Spanish and English.…”

“…For example, Paradis, Crago, Genesee and Rice (2003) found that the errors produced by groups of bilingual French-English learning children were similar in type and rate to those of their monolingual peers with SLI in French and English. Bilingual Spanish-English speaking children with LI can be differentiated from their peers on the basis of the same types of errors produced by monolingual English and Spanish children with LI (Gutiérrez-Clellen, Restrepo, & Simón-Cereijido, 2006; Gutiérrez-Clellen & Simón-Cereijido, 2007; Gutiérrez-Clellen, Simón-Cereijido, & Wagner, 2008; Simón-Cereijido & Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2009). These findings suggest that measures of grammaticality should contribute to our ability to distinguish between of differing language learning abilities.…”

Linguistic and metalinguistic outcomes of intense immersion education: how bilingual?

“…Most studies investigating developing grammatical knowledge in bilingual children have compared progress in the two languages as a means of determining their degree of interdependence (Paradis & Genesee, 1996). Most of these studies have shown that grammatical development proceeds independently in each language and is largely tied to vocabulary acquisition in that language (Conboy & Thal, 2006; Marchman, Martínez-Sussmann, & Dale, 2004; Simon-Cereijido & Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2009), but some report interference across languages for specific structures (Austin, 2007). However, studies that have compared the development of grammatical knowledge in bilingual children to that of monolingual children acquiring one of the languages have typically shown delays in the bilingual group (Marinis & Chondrogianni, 2010; Müller & Hulk, 2001; Paradis, 2010).…”

Language Sample Length Effects on Various Lexical Diversity Measures: An Analysis of Spanish Language Samples from Children

“…The goal has been to identify a measure of lexical diversity that is effective, yet minutely affected by language sample length. Studies have been conducted in various languages including English (Owen & Leonard, 2002;Heilmann, Nockerts & Miller, 2010;McCarthy & Jarvis, 2010;Kover et al, 2012;Fergadiotis, Wright & Green, 2015), Cantonese (Klee et al, 2004;Wong et al, 2010), Chinese-English bilinguals (Ooi & Wong, 2012) and Spanish-English bilinguals (Simon-Cereijido & Gutierrez-Clellen, 2009;Bedore et al, 2010). Unfortunately, not all of these studies used the same measure of lexical diversity indices or sample demographic.…”