Bilingualism

What is the definition of bilingualism?

Bloomfield (1953): Full fluency in two language

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Grosjean (1989) definition

Function in each language according to given needs, research usually has a less restrictive definition so they can use more people, there are some countries where there is a lack of monolinguals e.g. holland

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What is the critical period of bilingualism?

In the area of language learning, children seem to have a clear advantage over adults

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What is the critical period hypothesis (Lenneberg, 1969)?

Language acquisition must occur before the onset of puberty in order to for language to develop fully

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Curtiss, 1977

Linguistic deprivation e.g. feral children (Curtiss, 1977)

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What is the development for hemispheric lateralisation?

There is no specialisation of the left hemisphere for language

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Songbirds (Demers, 1988)

Within the first 15 days birds can produce the same songs as their parents

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But?

Children can acquire some language outside the critical period (Harley, 2008) so need a less restrictive version = sensitive period hypothesis, confined to complex aspecs of syntactic processing?

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Difficult to what?

Acquire if you learn language later in life

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What is the exercise hypothesis?

Early in life, humans have a superior capacity for acquiring languages. If the capacity is not exercised during this time, it will disappear or decline with maturation.

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If the capacity is exercised what would happen?

Further language abilities will remain intact throughout life

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What are the consequences for second language learning?

Second language learning equivalent in children and adults (if this is exercised in children)

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2?

Children are better at acquiring a second language than adults (maturation)

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Johnson and Newport (1989)

Korean and Chinese immigrants compared to english monolingual controls on grammatical judgement task which tests metalinguistic knowledge about english language. Had to judge whether the sentence is grammatically correct or incorrect

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What are the results?

Native speakers got nearly 100% correct. when the age of arrival (AoA) was between 3 and 7 the performance was almost similar to natives and this ability decreases with age - negative correlation

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Split data: Between arriving before and after puberty. What did they find?

Before puberty, there is a negative correlation between AoA and test performance and after puberty there is no correlation

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What is the conclusions?

Clear relation between age of acquisition and ultimate performance in the grammar of a second language

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What is the subject who arrived in the US before the age of 7 reached native performance on the test?

After 7 years there is a linear decline in performance. After puberty performance did not decline (no age effects past maturation)

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What did the results support?

The maturational accounts of age effects

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Similar findings have been found?

Oyama (1978) and Patkowski (1980) before the age of 15 they had a high level of performance and after 15 this ability was random.

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Birdsong and Molis (2001)

Johnson and Newport (1989) have been accepted and have been highly influential (used that evidence to make conclusions about L2 acquisition,eg. long (1990)

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What did later studies find out about?

Post maturational age effects, for example, Bird song (1992) found effects after puberty which would not be explained by the maturation study

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Bialystok and Hatuka (1994)

re-analysed the data. They moved the cut-off point of early- and late-arriving groups to 20 years. Late learners showed then a significant correlation with age of arrival

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Bialystok and Miller (1999)

Found effects of modality (presented in auditory modality, whereas before it was just written), which is not predicted by maturation accounts of L2 acquisition constraints

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Birdsong and Molis (2001) replication of Johnson and Newport (1989) task

Immigrants from Spanish speaking countries did grammatical judgement tasks

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Results

identical correlation as Johnson & Newport between AoA and scores • However, subjects with AoA >= 17: correlation is significant. Several late arrivals had native-like attainment

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If you arrive before the end of puberty you were able to?

perform like a native, but there is no decline. The decline is found after puberty, However, only one aspect of language was tested

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However?

Only one aspect of language was tested

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Is it possible to become a native L2 speaker?

• People who have spoken a second language for years but they still may have an accent from their first language – is it possible to get rid of this accent?

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Scovel (1988)

there is a critical period for the acquisition of the pronunciation of a second language. Learners of L2 will never be able to pass themselves off as native speakers

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However, there might be 'super exceptional' foreign language learners who are not what?

bound by critical period constraints. although there is evidence against this

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Bongert et al (1997)

First study was conducted with highly proficient Dutch-English bilinguals and english controls

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Recorded what?

speech samples; samples rated for accent by native British English speakers

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What could judges not?

Distinguish the high successful learners from native speakers

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Second Study: Pps

10 native British English speakers, 11 native Dutch speakers; highly successful learners of English (formal learning after the age of 12, late learning), 20 native Dutch speakers; differed widely in their English proficiency

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What was the research question?

• Is it possible for judges to separate highly successful Dutch learners from natives?

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Pps

• 13 judges (native British English speakers); 6 experienced judges (EFL teachers or phoneticians), 7 inexperienced judges

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What was measured?

Speech samples were judged (5 point scale) on foreign accent

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What did results show?

Some speakers were undistinguishable from native English speakers, these results do not support Scovel's (1988) claim (Impossible and rare)

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Issues?

What is foreign accent? What is the level of language accepted? There is also a lot of differences already in English so when is something considered to be a native accent

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What happens to your brain when you learn a second language?

Brain Plasticity

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Example: Pallier et al, 2003

Korean children adopted in France (age 3-8) No subsequent contact with Korean, French became their dominant language, became very proficient in French

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What did behavioural measures show?

No knowledge of Korean, had to identify whether sentences in different languages were Korean or not, performance didnt differ with french subjects for any of the material

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What brain imaging differences were found?

• No brain imaging differences between adoptees and French natives – brain areas that activate when they hear Korean is the same for French and Korean ppts

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What does it appear to have happened?

Lost their Korean ability as they learn French

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Large number of fMRI studies investigated what?

whether or not processing in L1 and L2 activates in the same brain regions

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However most studies found?

overlapping regions that respond to both the first and second language e.g., Briellmann et al. (2004); Chee et al. (2000); De Bleser et al. (2003) • Although some found distinct regions e.g. Chee at al. (2003), Dehaene et al. (1997), Kim et al. (1997

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What is the cortical representation of L1 and L2 - Role of AoA and language proficiency?

Overall conclusion is that the processing of L1 and L2 occurs in similar brain regions (e.g., Indefrey, 2006) – perhaps this means that these 2 languages can interact with each other

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However, factors such as the AoA, language proficiency, language expsoure determine what?

Whether brain region differences between L1 and L2 are found (Sakia, 2005)

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However what does fMRI?

Have poor spatial resolution and as a consequence, the issue of overlapping language regions is not fully resolved (Van Heuvan and Dijskstra, 2010) - need better resolution

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However, although languages?

Could be separated at the neuronal level, at higher levels of brain organisation languages could still be overlapping (Hernandez et al, 2005)

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Furthermore what?

Two separately localised languages could still interact, while overlapping language regions might still be functionally separated.

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Individuals who speak a second language have been shown?

To have increased density of grey matter in the left inferior parietal cortex, a change that is more pronounced in early bilinguals and those with greater proficiency in the second language (Mechelli et al, 2004)

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This region has been shown to responsive to what?

vocabulary acquisition in monolinguals and bilinguals as well as producing enlargements in slightly different areas depending on the two languages of the bilingual (Green, Crinion and Price, 2007)

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What is the evidence from neuroimaging studies support what claim?

frontal regions are activated when bilinguals are switching or selecting languages (Price et al., 1999).

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This constant conflict both compromises what?

Lexical access because each selection is more effortful and enhances executive control through its continusous involvement in language production

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The architecture underlying the processes affected by bilingualism is likely to be based on?

Networks or connections

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Abultalebi and Green (2007) model describes?

evidence for a series of connections between prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal region, and basal ganglia, all of which are implicated in language production for bilinguals

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What is the extensiveness of these networks?

linguistic and non-linguistic processing are controlled by networks of activation means that experiences like bilingualism affect the entire network.

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What is allowed?

The impact of the experience to be felt broadly over a wide range of processes including non verbal ones

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Bilingualism

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