Experiential Measures Can Be Used as a Proxy for Language Dominance in Bilingual Language Acquisition Research

Abstract

Language dominance is a multidimensional construct comprising several distinct yet interrelated components, including language proficiency, exposure and use. The exact relation between these components remains unclear. Several studies have observed a (non-linear) relationship between bilingual children’s amount of exposure and absolute proficiency in each language, but our understanding of the relationship between language exposure and use and relative proficiency is limited. To address this question, we examined whether experiential-based measures of language dominance, operationalised here in the narrow sense of relative language proficiency, can provide an efficient alternative to the more labor-intensive performance-based measures often used in the literature. In earlier work, Unsworth (a) examined the relationship between relative proficiency and language exposure and use in a group of English–Dutch bilingual preschool children residing in the Netherlands. This study expands these findings by examining Dutch–English preschool children of the same age residing in the United Kingdom in order to cover the full dominance continuum. Participants were 35 simultaneous bilingual children (2;0–5;0) exposed to English and Dutch, 20 resident in the Netherlands and 15 in the United Kingdom. Relative amount of language exposure and use were estimated using a parental questionnaire. To obtain performance-based measures of language proficiency, children’s spontaneous speech was recorded during a half-hour play session in each language. The transcribed data were used to derive MLU (words), average length of the longest five utterances, the number of different verb and noun types. Single word vocabulary comprehension was assessed using standardized tests in both languages. Following Yip and Matthews (2006), relative proficiency was operationalised using differentials. In line with Unsworth (2016a), English-dominant children typically had less than approx. 35% exposure to Dutch and used Dutch less than approximately 30% of the time. Curve-fitting analyses revealed that non-linear models best fit the data. Logistic regression analyses showed that both exposure and use were good predictors of dominance group membership assigned using the same approach as Unsworth (2016a), that is, using SDs. Dominance groups derived independently using cluster analyses overlapped with the groups derived using SDs, confirming that relative amount of exposure and use can be used as a proxy for language dominance.

What Machine Learning Can Tell Us About the Role of Language Dominance in the Diagnostic Accuracy of German LITMUS Non-word and Sentence Repetition Tasks

“…Bedore et al (2012), Unsworth (2016) as well as Unsworth et al (2018) found that relative amount of exposure and use reliably predicted dominance group membership as determined by proficiency measures, confirming that relative amount of use and exposure can be used as a proxy for language dominance in bilingual children. For the purposes of the present study and building upon the findings of Bedore et al (2012), Unsworth (2016), and Unsworth et al (2018), we use experiential-based measures to establish language dominance for our participants and calculate this based on the information obtained by the PaBiQ as outlined in “The LITMUS-Questionnaire for Parents of Bilingual Children”.…”

“…A number of methods have been put forward for measuring and operationalizing language dominance in bilingual children. These measures fall into two categories: performance-based measures and experiential-based measures (Unsworth, 2016; Unsworth et al, 2018). Estimates of language dominance obtained by performance-based measures are based on quantitative differences in proficiency measurements between the two languages of a bilingual.…”

Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children

“…This may be because the English-dominant Greek HL children in our study may avoid using these low frequency non-canonical structures and resort to canonical and unambiguous SVO sentences, as they enter the English mainstream school system and become more dominant in English. Provided that input is a good proxy for dominance (Unsworth, Chondrogianni, & Skarabela, 2018), the HL children in our sample were more dominant in Greek in early childhood than when we tested them at school age. For production, the opportunity to use the language on a daily basis gives rise to better case production, confirming previous findings in the bilingual literature that degree of current language use positively affects production skills (Bohman, Bedore, Peña, Mendez-Perez, & Gillam, 2010).…”

Testing the validity of the Cross-Linguistic Lexical Task as a measure of language proficiency in bilingual children

“…The extent to which bilingual children are proficient in both of their languages has also been used as a predictor for the extent of cognitive advantages compared to monolingual children (e.g., Blom, Küntay, Messer, Verhagen & Leseman, 2014). Conversely, researchers have tried to explain children's (relative) language proficiency across development by looking at child-internal factors, such as age of acquisition, and child-external variables, such as amount of exposure (e.g., Bedore, Peña, Griffin & Hixon, 2016;Bedore, Peña, Summers, Boerger, Resendiz, Greene, Bohman & Gillam, 2012;Chondrogianni & Marinis, 2011;Hoff, Core, Place, Rumiche, Señor & Parra, 2012;Unsworth, Chondrogianni & Skarabela, 2018).…”