The development of determiners in the context of French–English bilingualism: a study of cross-linguistic influence

Abstract

This paper reports the preliminary results of a study examining the role of structural overlap, language exposure, and language use on cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in bilingual first language acquisition. We focus on the longitudinal development of determiners in a corpus of two French–English children between the ages of 2;4 and 3;7. The results display bi-directional CLI in the rate of development, i.e., accelerated development in English and a minor delay in French. Unidirectional CLI from English to French was instead observed in the significantly higher rate of ungrammatical determiner omissions in plural and generic contexts than in singular specific contexts in French. These findings suggest that other language-internal mechanisms may be at play. They also lend support to the role of expressive abilities on the magnitude of this phenomenon.

Uyghur–Chinese Adult Bilinguals’ Construal of Voluntary Motion Events

“…And given the absence of CLI in 10-year-old bilinguals and in the adult bilinguals, it is clear that there was no increase of CLI, as the co-activation account conceptualized within crosslinguistic priming would predict (cf. Bernolet and Hartsuiker, 2018 ; Hervé and Serratrice, 2018 ; Van Gompel and Arai, 2018 ; Bosch and Unsworth, 2020 ). Rather, our findings are consistent with the structural overlap hypothesis in that once the target systems are fully established, they operate relatively independently from each other.…”

“…Note that Nicoladis (2006) speculation that recent exposure may induce CLI is compatible with findings from crosslinguistic priming research that bilinguals can even be primed to produce ungrammatical ( Hsin et al, 2013 ) or discourse-pragmatically sub-optimal constructions ( Hervé et al, 2016 ). Indeed, this new understanding of CLI as reconceptualized within the framework of crosslinguistic priming has gained support in some recent developmental studies (e.g., Hervé and Serratrice, 2018 ; Engemann, 2021 ).…”

Morpho-Syntactic Abilities of Unbalanced Bilingual Children: A Closer Look at the Weaker Language

“…Alternatively, the Deviance Hypothesis was supported by findings indicating that grammars of unbalanced bilinguals in their Weaker Language differ qualitatively from the monolingual baseline grammars (e.g., Yip and Matthews, 2000 ; Argyri and Sorace, 2007 ; Ringblom, 2012 ; Janssen, 2016 ; Meir et al, 2017 ). Previous studies have brought convincing evidence that the two linguistic systems of a bilingual person are susceptible to bi-directional cross-linguistic influence: influence from HL onto SL and from SL onto HL (e.g., Ge et al, 2017 ; Hervé and Serratrice, 2017 ; Meir et al, 2017 ). This study has focused on different bilingual outcomes rather than comparing bilingual performance to a monolingual “golden standard.”…”

Referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A study of informativeness and definiteness

“…Previous research confirms that bilinguals are less accurate than their monolingual peers are in the marking of definiteness (e.g., Hervé & Serratrice, 2018;Kupisch, 2007;Kupisch & Bernardini, 2007;Serratrice & De Cat, 2020); strengthening this language-specific aspect of referential use. Specifically, lower accuracy on definiteness marking has been linked to the effects of cross-linguistic influences, i.e., the influence of a second language that does not have an article system (e.g., Chondrogianni, Marinis, Edwards & Blom, 2015;Schwartz & Rovner, 2015;Zdorenko & Paradis, 2012).…”