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Syntactic development in early foreign language learning: Effects of L1 transfer, input, and individual factors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2019

Holger Hopp ,
Anja Steinlen ,
Christina Schelletter  and
Thorsten Piske
Holger Hopp*
Affiliation:
Technische Universität Braunschweig
Anja Steinlen
Affiliation:
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Christina Schelletter
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
Thorsten Piske
Affiliation:
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: h.hopp@tu-braunschweig.de
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Abstract

This study explores parallels and differences in the comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses between early foreign-language (FL) learners and monolingual children. We test for (a) effects of syntactic first-language (L1) transfer, (b) the impact of input on syntactic development, and (c) the impact of individual differences on early FL syntactic development. We compare the results to findings in child second language (L2) naturalistic acquisition and adult FL acquisition. Following work on adult FL acquisition, we carried out a picture-based interpretation task with 243 child FL learners in fourth grade at different regular, partial, and high-immersion schools in Germany plus 68 monolingual English children aged 5 to 8 years as controls. The child FL learners display a strong subject-first preference but do not appear to use the L1 syntax in comprehension. Input differences across different schools affect overall accuracy, with students at high-immersion FL schools catching up to monolingual performance within 4 years of learning. Finally, phonological awareness is implicated in both early FL learning and naturalistic child L2 development. These findings suggest that early FL development resembles child L2 acquisition in speed and effects of individual factors, yet is different from adult FL acquisition due to the absence of L1 transfer effects.

Keywords

child foreign-language acquisitionindividual differencesmorphosyntaxtransfer
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 40 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 1241 - 1267
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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