Cross-language synonyms in the lexicons of bilingual infants: one language or two?

Abstract

This study tests the widely-cited claim from Volterra & Taeschner (1978), which is reinforced by Clark's Principle Of Contrast (1987), that young simultaneous bilingual children reject cross-language synonyms in their earliest lexicons. The rejection of translation equivalents is taken by Volterra & Taeschner as support for the idea that the bilingual child possesses a single-language system which includes elements from both languages. We examine first the accuracy of the empirical claim and then its adequacy as support for the argument that bilingual children do not have independent lexical systems in each language. The vocabularies of 27 developing bilinguals were recorded at varying intervals between ages 0;8 and 2;6, using the MacArthur GDI, a standardized parent report form in English and Spanish. The two single-language vocabularies of each bilingual child were compared to determine how many pairs of translation equivalents (TEs) were reported for each child at different stages of development. TEs were observed for all children but one, with an average of 30% of all words coded in the two languages, both at early stages (in vocabularies of 2–12 words) and later (up to 500 words). Thus, Volterra & Taeschner's empirical claim was not upheld. Further, the number of TEs in the bilinguals' two lexicons was shown to be similar to the number of lexical items which co-occurred in the monolingual lexicons of two different children, as observed in 34 random pairings for between-child comparisons. It remains to be shown, therefore, that the bilinguals' lexicons are not composed of two independent systems at a very early age. Furthermore, the results appear to rule out the operation of a strong principle of contrast across languages in early bilingualism.

Conceptual Scoring and Classification Accuracy of Vocabulary Testing in Bilingual Children

“…In younger children, Pearson, Fernández, and Oller (1995) compared parent reports on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al, 1994) and its Spanish adaptation, the MacArthur Inventario de Desarollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (JacksonMaldonado & Bates, 1988), and found that, among SpanishEnglish bilingual children between the ages of 0;8 (years; months) and 2;6, 70% of their vocabulary was language specific and did not overlap with their other language. These findings are comparable to studies of older bilingual children.…”

Narrative and Vocabulary Development of Bilingual Children From Kindergarten to First Grade: Developmental Changes and Associations Among English and Spanish Skills

“…As Pearson, Fernández, and Oller (1995) documented, when considering the "total conceptual vocabulary," that is, the words a child knows in one and/or the other language, bilingual children's skills may equal or exceed that of monolinguals. In some cases, however, that will not be the case, and children might be at a serious disadvantage in one or both languages.…”

Bilingual beginnings to learning words

“…Until very recently, the bulk of the research addressing this question was either observational or correlational in nature. On the basis of such studies, there was general agreement that bilingual and monolingual children pass critical milestones in language acquisition at approximately the same age (Pearson & Fernández 1994;De Houwer 1995;Oller et al 1997;Petitto et al 2001), and that same-aged bilingual and monolingual children have relatively equal sized vocabularies when the vocabularies of both languages is taken into account (Pearson & Fernández 1994;Pearson et al 1995;Petitto et al 2001;Paradis & Nicoladis 2008). Indeed, some reports of early comprehension have found that bilinguals have larger overall vocabularies than same-aged monolingual peers (De Houwer et al 2008).…”