Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:10:40.621Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The effect of childhood multilingualism and bilectalism on implicature understanding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2017

KYRIAKOS ANTONIOU  and
NAPOLEON KATSOS
KYRIAKOS ANTONIOU*
Affiliation:
Université libre de Bruxelles and University of Cambridge
NAPOLEON KATSOS
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Kyriakos Antoniou, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge, Storey's Way, Cambridge CB30DG, UK. E-mail: ka353@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study compares the performance of multilingual children speaking Cypriot Greek, Standard Modern Greek, and English (and sometimes an additional language), bilectal children speakers of Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek, and Standard Modern Greek-speaking monolingual children on a task that measures the comprehension of different types of implicature. Despite lower scores in language ability in the target language, multilingual and bilectal children performed at rates comparable to the monolinguals with implicature. Regression analyses indicated a positive correlation between implicature, language proficiency, and age (but not executive control), albeit language ability did not affect implicature within multilinguals. We suggest an interpretation according to which multilingual, bilectal, and monolingual children maintain a comparable level of implicature understanding, but they do so by relying on different resources. Finally, a principal component analysis on different implicature types revealed a single factor of implicature performance. This outcome has implications for pragmatic theory.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , July 2017 , pp. 787 - 833
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adesope, O. O., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2010). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the cognitive correlates of bilingualism. Review of Educational Research, 80, 207–245.Google Scholar
Akhtar, N., & Menjivar, J. A. (2012). Cognitive and linguistic correlates of early exposure to more than one language. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 42, 41–78.Google Scholar
Antón, E., Duñabeitia, J. A., Estévez, A., Hernández, J. A., Castillo, A., Fuentes, L. J., & Carreiras, M. (2014). Is there a bilingual advantage in the ANT task? Evidence from children. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 398.Google Scholar
Antoniou, K., Grohmann, K., Kambanaros, M., & Katsos, N. (2016). The effect of childhood bilectalism and multilingualism on executive control. Cognition, 149, 18–30.Google Scholar
Arvaniti, A. (2010). Linguistic practices in Cyprus and the emergence of Cypriot Standard Greek. Mediterranean Language Review, 17, 15–45.Google Scholar
Auer, P. (2005). Europe's sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. In Delbecque, N., van der Auwera, J., & Geeraerts, D. (Eds.), Perspectives on variation: Sociolinguistic, historical, comparative (pp. 7–41). Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barac, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development, 83, 413–422.Google Scholar
Barac, R., Bialystok, E., Castro, D. C., & Sanchez, M. (2014). The cognitive development of young dual language learners: A critical review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Advance online publication. doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2013.08.004 Google Scholar
Bergen, L., & Grodner, D. J. (2012). Speaker knowledge influences the comprehension of pragmatic inferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 1450–1460.Google ScholarPubMed
Bernicot, J., Laval, V., & Chaminaud, S. (2007). Nonliteral language forms in children: In what order are they acquired in pragmatics and metapragmatics? Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 2115–2132.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., Green, D. W., & Gollan, T. H. (2009). Bilingual minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10, 89–129.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: Consequences for mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16, 240–250.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., & Feng, X. (2011). Language proficiency and its implications for monolingual and bilingual children. In Durgunoglu, A. Y. & Goldenberg, C. (Eds.), Language and literacy development in bilingual settings (pp. 121–138). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S. (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 525–531.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., Poarch, G., Luo, L., & Craik, F. I. (2014). Effects of bilingualism and aging on executive function and working memory. Psychology and Aging, 29, 696.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bialystok, E., & Senman, L. (2004). Executive processes in appearance-reality tasks: The role of inhibition of attention and symbolic representation. Child Development, 75, 562–579.Google Scholar
Blom, E., Küntay, A. C., Messer, M., Verhagen, J., & Leseman, P. (2014). The benefits of being bilingual: Working memory in bilingual Turkish-Dutch children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 128, 105–119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bott, L., Bailey, T. M., & Grodner, D. (2011). Distinguishing speed from accuracy in scalar implicatures. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 123–142.Google Scholar
Bott, L., & Noveck, I. A. (2004). Some utterances are underinformative: The onset and time course of scalar inferences. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 437–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breheny, R., Ferguson, H. J., & Katsos, N. (2013a). Investigating the timecourse of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28, 443–467.Google Scholar
Breheny, R., Ferguson, H. J., & Katsos, N. (2013b). Taking the epistemic step: Toward a model of on-line access to conversational implicatures. Cognition, 126, 423–440.Google Scholar
Breheny, R., Katsos, N., & Williams, J. (2006). Are generalised scalar implicatures generated by default? An on-line investigation into the role of context in generating pragmatic inferences. Cognition, 100, 434–463.Google Scholar
Carlson, S. M. (2003). Executive function in context: Development, measurement, theory, and experience. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 68, 138–151.Google Scholar
Carlson, S. M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. Developmental Science, 11, 282–298.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G. (2004). Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena, and the syntax/pragmatics interface. In Belletti, A. (Ed.), Structures and beyond (pp. 39–103). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G. (2006). Broaden your views: Implicatures of domain widening and the “logicality” of language. Linguistic Inquiry, 37, 535–590.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G., Fox, D., & Spector, B. (2011). The grammatical view of scalar implicatures and the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. In Portner, P., Maienborn, C., & von Heusinger, K. (Eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioural sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Currie, C., Molcho, M., Boyce, W., Holstein, B., Torsheim, T., & Richter, M. (2008). Researching health inequalities in adolescents: The development of the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) family affluence scale. Social Science and Medicine, 66, 1429–1436.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Abreu, P. M. E., Cruz-Santos, A., Tourinho, C. J., Martin, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingualism enriches the poor enhanced cognitive control in low-income minority children. Psychological Science, 23, 1364–1371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Degen, J., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2015). Availability of alternatives and the processing of scalar implicatures: A visual world eye-tracking study. Cognitive Science. Advance online publication.Google Scholar
de Neys, W., & Schaeken, W. (2007). When people are more logical under cognitive load: Dual task impact on scalar implicature. Experimental Psychology, 54, 128–133.Google Scholar
Dieussaert, K., Verkerk, S., Gillard, E., & Schaeken, W. (2011). Some effort for some: Further evidence that scalar implicatures are effortful. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 2352–2367.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duñabeitia, J. A., Hernández, J. A., Antón, E., Macizo, P., Estévez, A., Fuentes, L. J., & Carreiras, M. (2014). The inhibitory advantage in bilingual children revisited: Myth or reality? Experimental Psychology, 61, 234.Google Scholar
Dunn, L., & Dunn, D. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191.Google Scholar
Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using SPSS (4th ed.). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Field, A. P., & Gillett, R. (2010). How to do a meta-analysis. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 63, 665–694.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., Thomas, E. M., Kennedy, I., Prys, C., Young, N., Guasch, N. V., & Jones, L. (2014). Does language dominance affect cognitive performance in bilinguals? Lifespan evidence from preschoolers through older adults on card sorting, Simon, and metalinguistic tasks. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 11. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00011 Google Scholar
Genesee, F., Tucker, G. R., & Lambert, W. E. (1975). Communication skills of bilingual children. Child Development, 46, 1010–1014.Google Scholar
Geurts, B. (2010). Quantity implicatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J. (2013). Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 515–530.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 3, pp. 225–242). New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grodner, D., Klein, N., Carbary, K., & Tanenhaus, M. (2010). “Some,” and possibly all, scalar inferences are not delayed: Evidence for immediate pragmatic enrichment. Cognition, 116, 42–55.Google Scholar
Grodner, D., & Sedivy, J. (2005). The effect of speaker-specific information on pragmatic inferences. In Pearlmutter, N. & Gibson, E. (Eds.), The processing and acquisition of reference. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Grohmann, K. K., Panagiotidis, P., & Tsiplakou, S. (2006). Properties of wh-question formation in Cypriot Greek. In Janse, M., Joseph, B. D., & Ralli, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (pp. 83–98). Patras: University of Patras.Google Scholar
Guasti, T. M., Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Foppolo, F., Gualmini, A., & Meroni, L. (2005). Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 667–696.Google Scholar
Hedges, L. V., & Vevea, J. L. (1998). Fixed- and random-effects models in meta-analysis. Psychological Methods, 3, 486–504.Google Scholar
Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M., & Parra, M. (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39, 1–27.Google Scholar
Huang, Y. T., & Snedeker, J. (2009a). On-line interpretation of scalar quantifiers: Insight into the semantics-pragmatics interface. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 376–415.Google Scholar
Huang, Y. T., & Snedeker, J. (2009b). Semantic meaning and pragmatic interpretation in 5-year-olds: Evidence from real-time spoken language comprehension. Developmental Psychology, 45, 1723.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huitema, B. (2011). The analysis of covariance and alternatives: Statistical methods for experiments, quasi-experiments, and single-case studies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, J. (1991). Developmental versus language-based factors in metaphor interpretation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 470.Google Scholar
Kambanaros, M., Grohmann, K., Michaelides, M., & Theodorou, E. (2012). Comparing multilingual children with SLI to their bilectal peers: Evidence from object and action picture naming. International Journal of Multilingualism, 10, 60–81.Google Scholar
Karyolemou, M. (2006). Reproduction and innovation of communicative patterns in a former-“diglossic” community. In Muhr, R. (Ed.), Reproduction and innovation in language and communication in different language cultures [Reproduktionen und Innovationen in Sprache und Kommunikation verschiedener Sprachkulturen] (pp. 39–56). Vienna: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Katsos, N., Roqueta, C. A., Estevan, R. A. C., & Cummins, C. (2011). Are children with specific language impairment competent with the pragmatics and logic of quantification? Cognition, 119, 43–57.Google Scholar
Klein, R. M. (2015). Is there a benefit of bilingualism for executive functioning? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18, 29–31.Google Scholar
Kovács, Á. M. (2008). Early bilingualism enhances mechanisms of false-belief reasoning. Developmental Science, 12, 48–54.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Bialystok, E. (2013). Understanding the consequences of bilingualism for language processing and cognition. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 497–514.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. P., Gary, F. S., & Fennig, C. D. (Eds.). (2014). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (17th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. Retrieved from http://www.ethnologue.com Google Scholar
Lyovin, A. (1997). An introduction to the languages of the world. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin-Rhee, M. M., & Bialystok, E. (2008). The development of two types of inhibitory control in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism Language and Cognition, 11, 81.Google Scholar
Marty, P. P., & Chemla, E. (2013). Scalar implicatures: Working memory and a comparison with only. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 403.Google Scholar
Marzecova, A., Asanowicz, D., Krivá, L. U., & Wodniecka, Z. (2013). The effects of bilingualism on efficiency and lateralization of attentional networks. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 608–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, G. A., & Chapman, J. P. (2001). Misunderstanding analysis of covariance. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.Google Scholar
Newton, B. (1972). The generative interpretation of dialect: A study of modern Greek phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Palmer, A., & Marentette, P. (2007). The role of type and token frequency in using past tense morphemes correctly. Developmental Science, 10, 237–254.Google Scholar
Norbury, C. F. (2005). The relationship between theory of mind and metaphor: Evidence from children with language impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 383–399.Google Scholar
Noveck, I. A. (2001). When children are more logical than adults: Investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition, 78, 165–188.Google Scholar
O'Keefe, D. J. (2007). Brief report: Post hoc power, observed power, a priori power, retrospective power, prospective power, achieved power: Sorting out appropriate uses of statistical power analyses. Communication Methods and Measures, 1, 291–299.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (2002). Language and literacy in bilingual children. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Oller, D. K., Pearson, B. Z., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (2007). Profile effects in early bilingual language and literacy. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 191–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paap, K. R. (2014). The role of componential analysis, categorical hypothesising, replicability and confirmation bias in testing for bilingual advantages in executive functioning. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 242–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paap, K. R., Johnson, H. A., & Sawi, O. (2014). Are bilingual advantages dependent upon specific tasks or specific bilingual experiences? Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 615–639.Google Scholar
Paap, K. R., Johnson, H. A., & Sawi, O. (2015). Bilingual advantages in executive functioning either do not exist or are restricted to very specific and undetermined circumstances. Cortex. Advance online publication.Google Scholar
Paap, K. R., & Sawi, O. (2014). Bilingual advantages in executive functioning: Problems in convergent validity, discriminant validity, and the identification of the theoretical constructs. Frontiers in Psychology: Language Sciences, 5, 962.Google Scholar
Panizza, D., Chierchia, G., & Clifton, C. J. (2009). On the role of entailing patterns in the interpretation and processing of numerals and scalar quantifiers. Journal of Memory and Language, 61, 503–518.Google Scholar
Papafragou, A., & Musolino, J. (2003). Scalar implicatures: Experiments at the semantics-pragmatics interface. Cognition, 86, 253–282.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2010). Bilingual children's acquisition of English verb morphology: Effects of language exposure, structure complexity, and task type. Language Learning, 60, 651–680.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2011). Individual differences in child English second language acquisition: Comparing child-internal and child-external factors. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1, 213–237.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., Emmerzael, K., & Duncan, T. S. (2010). Assessment of English language learners: Using parent report on first language development. Journal of Communication Disorders, 43, 474–497.Google Scholar
Pouscoulous, N., Noveck, I., Politzer, G., & Bastide, A. (2007). A developmental investigation of processing costs in implicature production. Language Acquisition, 14, 347–376.Google Scholar
Reichardt, C. S. (1979). The statistical analysis of data from non-equivalent group designs. In Cook, T. & Campbell, D. (Eds.), Quasi-experimentation: Design and analysis issues for field settings (pp. 147–205). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. (1995). Word Finding Vocabulary Test. (4th ed.). Oxon: Winslow.Google Scholar
Rowe, C., & Grohmann, K. K. (2013). Discrete bilectalism: Towards co-overt prestige and diglossic shift in Cyprus. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2013, 119–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rundblad, G., & Annaz, D. (2010). Development of metaphor and metonymy comprehension: Receptive vocabulary and conceptual knowledge. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 28, 547–563.Google Scholar
Rushton, J. P., Brainerd, C. J., & Pressley, M. (1983). Behavioral development and construct validity: The principle of aggregation. Psychological Bulletin, 94, 18.Google Scholar
Siegal, M., Iozzi, L., & Surian, L. (2009). Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children. Cognition, 110, 115–122.Google Scholar
Siegal, M., Matsuo, A., Pond, C., & Otsu, Y. (2007). Bilingualism and cognitive development: Evidence from scalar implicatures. In Otsu, Y. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (pp. 265–280). Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.Google Scholar
Siegal, M., & Surian, L. (2007). Conversational understanding in young children. In Hoff, E. & Shatz, M. (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of language development (pp. 304–323). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Siegal, M., Surian, L., Matsuo, A., Geraci, A., Iozzi, L., Okumura, Y., & Itakura, S. (2010). Bilingualism accentuates children's conversational understanding. PLOS ONE, 5, e9004.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. (Original work published 1986)Google Scholar
Sun, S., Pan, W., & Wang, L. L. (2011). Rethinking observed power. Methodology, 7, 81–87.Google Scholar
Tao, L., Marzecová, A., Taft, M., Asanowicz, D., & Wodniecka, Z. (2011). The efficiency of attentional networks in early and late bilinguals: The role of age of acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 123.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, M. (1997). The discourse functions of diminutives in the speech of Cypriot Greeks and Mainland Greeks (Unpublished master's dissertation, University of Cambridge).Google Scholar
Terkourafi, M. (2005). Understanding the present through the past: Processes of koineisation in Cyprus. Diachronica, 22, 309–372.Google Scholar
Theodorou, E., Kambanaros, M., & Grohmann, K. K. (2013). Specific language impairment in Cypriot Greek: Diagnostic issues. Linguistic Variation, 13, 217–236.Google Scholar
Thordardottir, E. (2011). The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 426–445.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, J. M. Jr., Bailey, T. M., & Bott, L. (2013). Possibly all of that and then some: Scalar implicatures are understood in two steps. Journal of Memory and Language, 69, 18–35.Google Scholar
Valian, V. (2015). Bilingualism and cognition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18, 3–24.Google Scholar
Vogindroukas, I., Protopapas, A., & Sideridis, G. (2009). Test of Expressive Vocabulary [in Greek]. Chania: Glafki.Google Scholar
Vosniadou, S. (1987). Children and metaphors. Child Development, 58, 870–885.Google Scholar
Waggoner, J. E., & Palermo, D. S. (1989). Betty is a bouncing bubble: Children's comprehension of emotion-descriptive metaphors. Developmental Psychology, 25,152.Google Scholar
Waggoner, J. E., Palermo, D. S., & Kirsh, S. J. (1997). Bouncing bubbles can pop: Contextual sensitivity in children's metaphor comprehension. Metaphor and Symbol, 12, 217–229.Google Scholar
Wechsler, D. (1999). Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI). San Antonio, TX: Pearson Assessment.Google Scholar
Winner, E. (1997). The point of words: Children's understanding of metaphor and irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Winner, E., Levy, J., Kaplan, J., & Rosenblatt, E. (1988). Children's understanding of nonliteral language. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 22, 51–63.Google Scholar
Yow, W. Q., & Markman, E. M. (2011a). Bilingualism and children's use of paralinguistic cues to interpret emotion in speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 562–569.Google Scholar
Yow, W. Q., & Markman, E. M. (2011b). Young bilingual children's heightened sensitivity to referential cues. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12, 12–31.Google Scholar
Zinbarg, R. E., Suzuki, S., Uliaszek, A. A., & Lewis, A. R. (2010). Biased parameter estimates and inflated Type I error rates in analysis of covariance (and analysis of partial variance) arising from unreliability: Alternatives and remedial strategies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 119, 307–319.Google Scholar