International Journal of Bilingualism current issue

The acquisition of L3 English negation by bilingual (Spanish/Basque) learners in an institutional setting

Perales, S., Garcia Mayo, M. d. P., Liceras, J. M. — 2009-05-21

In this article we study the acquisition of sentential negation in English by bilingual (Spanish/Basque) learners in an institutional setting. The learners were divided into three groups according to the age at which they had begun to learn English (four, eight and eleven years respectively). At the time the oral interviews were held, they had all received a similar amount of instruction. The analysis is carried out in terms of the presence/absence of functional categories, the use of cognitive (not UG-driven) strategies, and the transfer of the order of the functional projections NegP and TP. We conclude that placement of the negative marker appears to be independent of the realization of tense and agreement features.

Phonetic variability and the variable perception of L2 word stress by French Canadian listeners

Tremblay, A. — 2009-05-21

This study investigates development and individual attainment in the perception of word stress by French Canadian second language (L2) learners of English at three proficiency levels (intermediate, low-advanced, high-advanced). It aims to determine whether a perceptual or a processing deficit is responsible for their so-called stress `deafness' (e.g., Dupoux et al., 1997, 2001, 2008). Seventy-five French Canadian L2 learners of English and 31 native English speakers completed an AXB perception task in English where contrast type (stress, segmental) and phonetic variability (with, without) were manipulated, but where processing demands were relatively low. The results indicate that the L2 learners had more difficulty perceiving English stress in the presence than in the absence of phonetic variability. Yet, their perception of stress in the phonetically variable condition was above chance and improved as the number of trials increased. Although the three proficiency groups did not perform significantly differently on the experiment, the L2 learners' self-reported per cent daily use of English was found to be a significant predictor of their successful perception of phonetically variable stress. Given these findings, it is argued that French listeners' reported lack of success in the perception of word stress is unlikely to stem from a perceptual deficit.

Gender in Russian--English code-switching

Chirsheva, G. — 2009-05-21

English code-switched nouns in Russian clauses are assigned gender according to two competing strategies — semantic analogy and form. The purpose of this article is to analyze how gender assignment is realized in Russian/English bilingual contexts. The data are represented by spontaneous speech of native Russian speakers, both adults and children, in the USA and Russia. Supporting data are obtained from a form, which asked respondents to add gender suffixes to Russian adjectives, determiners and verbs that agree with English nouns. Gender as part of Russian speakers' linguistic competence must be assigned even to nouns from a non-gender language, but this is done in a specific way: the prevailing strategy is to assign masculine as a default gender for the nouns ending in a consonant. Gender assignment system in bilingual Russian/English contexts presents a restricted version, with the phonological criterion being more significant than semantic analogy. The process of allotting code-switched nouns and borrowings to genders in Russian appears to have different degrees of vacillation.

Code-switching in bilingual children with specific language impairment

Gutierrez-Clellen, V. F., Simon-Cereijido, G., Erickson Leone, A. — 2009-05-21

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) exhibit limited grammatical skills compared to their peers with typical language. These difficulties may be revealed when alternating their two languages (i.e., code-switching) within sentences. Fifty-eight Spanish—English speaking children with and without SLI produced narratives using wordless picture books and conversational samples. The results indicated no significant differences in the proportion of utterances with code-switching (CS) across age groups or contexts of elicitation. There were significant effects for language dominance, language of testing, and a significant dominance by language of testing interaction. The English-dominant children demonstrated more CS when tested in their non-dominant language (Spanish) compared to the Spanish-dominant children tested in their weaker English. The children with SLI did not display more CS or more instances of atypical CS patterns compared to their typical peers. The findings indicate that children with SLI are capable of using grammatical CS, in spite of their language difficulties. In addition, the analyses suggest that CS is sensitive to sociolinguistic variables such as when the home language is not socially supported in the larger sociocultural context. In these cases, children may refrain from switching to the home language, even if that is their dominant language.

Knowledge of A/A'-dependencies on subject extraction with two types of infinitives in non-native Portuguese adult bilingualism

Rothman, J. — 2009-05-21

Within generative L2 acquisition research there is a longstanding debate as to what underlies observable differences in L1/L2 knowledge/ performance. On the one hand, Full Accessibility approaches maintain that target L2 syntactic representations (new functional categories and features) are acquirable (e.g., Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996). Conversely, Partial Accessibility approaches claim that L2 variability and/or optionality, even at advanced levels, obtains as a result of inevitable deficits in L2 narrow syntax and is conditioned upon a maturational failure in adulthood to acquire (some) new functional features (e.g., Beck, 1998; Hawkins & Chan, 1997; Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007). The present study tests the predictions of these two sets of approaches with advanced English learners of L2 Brazilian Portuguese (n = 21) in the domain of inflected infinitives. These advanced L2 learners reliably differentiate syntactically between finite verbs, uninflected and inflected infinitives, which, as argued, only supports Full Accessibility approaches. Moreover, we will discuss how testing the domain of inflected infinitives is especially interesting in light of recent proposals that Brazilian Portuguese colloquial dialects no longer actively instantiate them (Lightfoot, 1991; Pires, 2002, 2006; Pires & Rothman, 2009; Rothman, 2007).

Errata

2009-05-21