Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T06:52:22.316Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bilingual children's production of regular and irregular past tense morphology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2014

JUDITH RISPENS  and
ELISE DE BREE
JUDITH RISPENS*
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
ELISE DE BREE
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
*
Address for correspondence: Judith Rispens, University of Amsterdam, Department of General Linguistics, Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Amsterdam, the NetherlandsJ.E.Rispens@uva.nl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examined the production of the Dutch past tense in Dutch–Hebrew bilingual children and investigated the effect of type of past tense allomorph (de versus te) and token frequency on productions of the past tense. Seven-year-old bilingual children (n=11) were compared with monolingual children: age-matched (n=30) and younger vocabulary-matched (n=21). Accuracy of regular and novel past tense was similar for the bilingual and monolingual groups, but the former group was worse on irregular past tense than the age-matched monolingual peers. All three groups showed effects of type frequency: te past tenses were more accurate than de. The difference between the bilingual and monolingual children surfaces in the extent of the effect: for the bilingual children it was most pronounced in verbs with low token frequency and novel verbs. Results are interpreted as stemming from a learning strategy or from phonological transfer from the Hebrew morphosyntactic system.

Keywords

bilingualismpast tense morphologymorphophonologyDutch
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 18 , Special Issue 2: L3 Acquisition: A Focus on Cognitive Approaches , April 2015 , pp. 290 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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.)

Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank Marlize Visser for her help with the data collection of the Dutch–Hebrew children, and all children for their participation. We are grateful for the comments of three anonymous reviewers on an earlier draft of this paper.

References

Adriaans, F. (2006). PhonotacTools (Test version) [computer program]. Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Armon-Lotem, S. (2014). Between L2 and SLI: Inflections and prepositions in the Hebrew of bilingual children with TLD and monolingual children with SLI. Journal of Child Language, 41, 3–33.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & Van Rijn, H. (1993). The CELEX Lexical Database [CD-ROM]. Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Blom, E. (2010). Effects of input on the early grammatical development of bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism, 14, 422–446.Google Scholar
Blom, E., & Paradis, J. (2013). Past tense production by English second language learners with and without language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56, 281–294.Google Scholar
Blom, E., Paradis, J., & Sorenson Duncan, T. (2012). Effects of input properties, vocabulary size and L1 on the development of third person singular -s in child L2 English. Language Learning, 62, 965–994.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (2007). Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (2008). Usage-based grammar and second language acquisition. In Robinson, P. & Ellis, N. (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition, pp. 216–236. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
De Houwer, A. (2007). Parental language input patterns and children's bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 411–424.Google Scholar
Duursma, E., Romero-Contreras, S., Szuber, A., Proctor, C. P., Snow, C. E., August, D., Calderón, M., & Carlo, M. S. (2007). Learning to read in a low status language: Factors contributing to bilingual fifth graders’ reading achievement in English and Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 171–190.Google Scholar
Fennell, C. T., Byers‐Heinlein, B., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Using speech sounds to guide word learning: The case of bilingual infants. Child Development, 78, 1510–1525.Google Scholar
Foursha-Stevenson, C., & Nicoladis, E. (2011). Early emergence of syntactic awareness and cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children's judgments. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 521–534.Google Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M. (2007). Miami and North Wales, so far and yet so near: Constructivist account of morphosyntactic development in bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10, 224–247.Google Scholar
Goad, H., White, L., & Steele, J. (2003). Missing surface inflection in L2 acquisition: Defective syntax or L1-constrained prosodic structure. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 48, 243–263.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, C., & Bremmer, R. H. (1983). Voiced fricatives in Dutch: Sources and present-day usage. North-Western European Language Evolution, 2, 55–71.Google Scholar
Gutierrez-Clellen, V. F., Simon-Cereijido, G., & Wagner, C. (2008). Bilingual children with language impairment: A comparison with monolinguals and second language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 3–19.Google Scholar
Hulk, A., & Müller, N. (2000). Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3, 227–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kupisch, T. (2007). Determiners in bilingual German–Italian children: What they tell us about the relation between language influence and language dominance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 57–78.Google Scholar
Leseman, P. P. M. (2000). Bilingual vocabulary development of Turkish–Dutch preschoolers. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 21, 93–112.Google Scholar
Leseman, P. P. M., & Van den Boom, D. C. (1999). Effects of quantity and quality of home proximal processes on Dutch, Surinamese–Dutch, and Turkish–Dutch preschoolers’ cognitive development. Infant and Child Development, 8, 19–38.Google Scholar
Mattock, K., Polka, L., Rvachew, S., & Krehm, M. (2010). The first steps in word learning are easier when the shoes fit: Comparing monolingual and bilingual infants. Developmental Science, 13, 229–243.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
Nicoladis, E., & Paradis, J. (2012). Acquiring regular and irregular past tense morphemes in English and French: Evidence from bilingual children. Language Learning, 62, 170–197.Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Song, J., & Marentette, P. (2012). Do young bilinguals acquire past tense morphology like monolinguals, only later? Evidence from French–English and Chinese–English bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 457–479.Google Scholar
Oostdijk, N. (2000). The Spoken Dutch Corpus: Overview and first evaluation. In Gravilidou, M., Carayannis, G., Markantonatou, S., Piperidis, S., & Stainhaouer, G. (eds.), LREC-2000: Second International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (vol. II), 887–894.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E., Crago, M., & Genesee, F. (2010). Bilingual children's acquisition of the past tense: A usage-based approach. Journal of Child Language, 38, 554–578.Google Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C., Lewedeg, V., & Oller, D. K. (1997). The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18, 41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2009). Bilingualism as a window into the language faculty: The acquisition of objects in French-speaking children in bilingual and monolingual contexts. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 1–16.Google Scholar
Rispens, J. E., & Baker, A. (2012). Nonword repetition: The relative contributions of phonological short-term memory and phonological representations in children with language and reading impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55, 683–694.Google Scholar
Rispens, J. E., & de Bree, E. (2014). Past tense productivity in Dutch children with SLI: The role of phonology and frequency. Journal of Child Language, 41, 200–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rispens, J. E., & Woensdregt, M. (2013). Processing past tense allomorphs: An ERP investigation. Presented at the 11th symposium of Psycholinguistics (SCOPE), 22 March, Tenerife.Google Scholar
Schlichting, L. (2005). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III-NL. Amsterdam: Harcourt Test Publisher.Google Scholar
Schwarzwald, O. (2001). Modern Hebrew. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Tabak, W., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (2005). Lexical statistics and lexical processing: Semantic density, information complexity, sex, and irregularity in Dutch. In Kepser, S. & Reis, M. (eds.), Linguistic evidence – empirical, theoretical, and computational perspectives, pp. 529–555. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Tessier, A. M., Sorenson Duncan, T., & Paradis, J. (2013). Developmental trends and L1 effects in early L2 learners’ onset cluster production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 1–19.Google Scholar
Thordadottir, E. (2011). The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 426–445.Google Scholar
Thordardottir, E., Rothenberg, A., Rivard, M., & Naves, R. (2006). Bilingual assessment: Can overall proficiency be estimated from separate measurements of two languages? Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders, 4, 1–21.Google Scholar
Uccelli, P., & Páez, M. (2007). Narrative and vocabulary development of bilingual children from kindergarten to first grade: Developmental changes and associations among English and Spanish skills. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 38, 225–236.Google Scholar
Unsworth, S. (2013). Assessing age of onset effects in (early) child L2 acquisition. Language Acquisition, 20, 74–92.Google Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2007). The bilingual child: Early development and language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar