Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-lm65w Total loading time: 0.006 Render date: 2025-07-24T01:43:42.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parental language mixing: Its measurement and the relation of mixed input to young bilingual children's vocabulary size*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2012

KRISTA BYERS-HEINLEIN
KRISTA BYERS-HEINLEIN*
Affiliation:
Concordia University
*
Address for correspondence: Concordia University, Department of Psychology, 7141 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec, H4B 1R6, Canadak.byers@concordia.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Is parental language mixing related to vocabulary acquisition in bilingual infants and children? Bilingual parents (who spoke English and another language; n = 181) completed the Language Mixing Scale questionnaire, a new self-report measure that assesses how frequently parents use words from two different languages in the same sentence, such as borrowing words from another language or code switching between two languages in the same sentence. Concurrently, English vocabulary size was measured in the bilingual children of these parents. Most parents reported regular language mixing in interactions with their child. Increased rates of parental language mixing were associated with significantly smaller comprehension vocabularies in 1.5-year-old bilingual infants, and marginally smaller production vocabularies in 2-year-old bilingual children. Exposure to language mixing might obscure cues that facilitate young bilingual children's separation of their languages and could hinder the functioning of learning mechanisms that support the early growth of their vocabularies.

Keywords

bilingualisminfant developmentparentingcode-switchingvocabulary sizelanguage development

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 32 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

This work was funded by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Data were collected during doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia, with advising from Janet F. Werker. Thank you to Ferran Pons and Janet F. Werker for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Special thanks to all of the members of the Infant Studies Centre at the University of British Columbia and the Concordia Infant Research Laboratory for their support.

References

Barron-Hauwaert, S. (2004). Language strategies for bilingual families: The one-parent–one-language approach. North York, ON: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentahila, A., & Davies, E. (1994). Two languages, three varieties: Codeswitching patterns of bilingual children. In Extra, G. & Verhoeven, L. (eds.), The cross-linguistic study of bilingual development, pp. 113–128. New York: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Bosch, L., & Ramon-Casas, M. (2011). Variability in vowel production by bilingual speakers: Can input properties hinder the early stabilization of contrastive categories? Journal of Phonetics, 39, 514–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). Native-language recognition abilities in 4-month-old infants from monolingual and bilingual environments. Cognition, 65 (1), 33–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2001). Evidence of early language discrimination abilities in infants from bilingual environments. Infancy, 2 (1), 29–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2003). Simultaneous bilingualism and the perception of a language-specific vowel contrast in the first year of life. Language and Speech, 46 (2–3), 217–243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Byers-Heinlein, K., Burns, T. F., & Werker, J. F. (2010). The roots of bilingualism in newborns. Psychological Science, 21, 343–348.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curtin, S. A., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J. F. (2011). Bilingual beginnings as a lens for theory development: PRIMIR in focus. Journal of Phonetics, 39 (4), 492–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dale, P. S. (1991). The validity of parent report measure of vocabulary and syntax at 24 months. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 565–571.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dale, P. S., Bates, E., Reznick, J. S., & Morriset, C. (1989). The validity of parent report instrument of child language at 20 months. Journal of Child Language, 16, 239–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
David, A., & Wei, L. (2008). Individual differences in the lexical development of French–English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11 (5), 598–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Houwer, A. (2007). Parental language input patterns and children's bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 411–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döpke, S. (1998). Can the principle of ‘one person – one language’ be disregarded as unrealistically elitist? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 21 (1), 41–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fennell, C. T., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2011, June). Sentential context improves bilingual infants’ use of phonetic detail in novel words. Poster presented at the 8th International Symposium on Bilingualism, Oslo, Norway.Google Scholar
Fennell, C. T., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Using speech sounds to guide word learning: The case of bilingual infants. Child Development, 78 (5), 1510–1525.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fenson, L., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D., Dale, P. S., & Bates, E. (2007). MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) (2nd edn.). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.Google Scholar
Fernald, A. (2006). When infants hear two languages: Interpreting research on early speech perception by bilingual children. In McCardle, P. & Hoff, E. (eds.), Childhood bilingualism: Research on infancy through school age, pp. 19–29. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, V. C. M., & Thomas, E. M. (2009). Bilingual first-language development: Dominant language takeover, threatened minority language take-up. Bilingualism: Language and Cogntiion, 12 (2), 213–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genesee, F., Boivin, I., & Nicoladis, E. (1996). Talking with strangers: A study of bilingual children's communicative competence. Applied Psycholinguistics, 17, 427–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodz, N. S. (1989). Parental language mixing in bilingual families. Infant Mental Health Journal, 10, 25–44.3.0.CO;2-R>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graf Estes, K., Evans, J. L., Alibali, M. W., & Saffran, J. R. (2007). Can infants map meanings to newly segmented words? Psychological Science, 1 (3), 254–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosjean, F. (2001). The bilingual's language modes. In Nicol, J. L. (ed.), One mind, two languages: Bilingual language processing, pp. 1–22. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
de Gruijter, D. N. M., & van der Kamp, L. J. T. (2008). Statistical test theory for the behavioral sciences. London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.Google Scholar
Heredia, R. R., & Altarriba, J. (2001). Bilingual language mixing: Why do bilinguals code-switch? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10 (5), 164–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26 (1), 55–88.CrossRefGoogle 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.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Houston-Price, C., Mather, E., & Sakkalou, E. (2007). Discrepancy between parental reports of receptive vocabulary and infants’ behavior in a preferential looking task. Journal of Child Language, 24, 701–724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27 (2), 236–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Junker, D. A., & Stockman, I. J. (2002). Expressive vocabulary of German–English bilingual toddlers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 11 (4), 381–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinzler, K. D., Corriveau, K. H., & Harris, P. L. (2011). Children's selective trust in native-accented speakers. Developmental Science, 14 (1), 106–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kovács, Á. M., & Mehler, J. (2009a). Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 6556–6560.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kovács, Á. M., & Mehler, J. (2009b). Flexible learning of multiple speech structures in bilingual infants. Science, 325, 611–612.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lanza, E. (1997). Language mixing in infant bilingualism: A sociolinguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacSwan, J. (2005). Précis of a minimalist approach to intrasentential code switching. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 17 (1), 55–92.Google Scholar
Marchman, V. A., Fernald, A., & Hurtado, N. (2010). How vocabulary size in two languages relates to efficiency in spoken word recognition by young Spanish–English bilinguals. Journal of Child Language, 37 (4), 817–840.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marchman, V. A., & Martínez-Sussman, C. (2002). Concurrent validity of caregiver/parent report measures of language for children who are learning both English and Spanish. Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 45 (5), 983–997.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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 (1), 229–243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maye, J., Werker, J. F., & Gerken, L. (2002). Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination. Cognition, 82, B101–B111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mehler, J., Dupoux, E., Nazzi, T., & Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (1996). Coping with linguistic diversity: The infant's viewpoint. In Morgan, J. L. & Demuth, K. (eds.). Signal to syntax: Bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early acquisition, pp. 101–116. Matwah, NF: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P. W., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J., & Amiel-Tison, C. (1988). A precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition, 29, 143–178.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mintz, T. H. (2003). Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child directed speech. Cognition, 90 (1), 91–117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Myers-Scotton, C. (1992). Comparing codeswitching and borrowing. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 13 (1–2), 19–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers-Scotton, C. (1993). Social motivation for codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nazzi, T., Jusczyk, P. W., & Johnson, E. K. (2000). Language discrimination by English-learning 5-month-olds: Effects of rhythm and familiarity. Journal of Memory and Language, 43 (1), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E., & Genesee, F. (1996). A longitudinal study of pragmatic differentiation in young bilingual children. Language Learning, 46 (3), 439–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E., & Secco, G. (2000). The role of a child's productive vocabulary in the language choice of a bilingual family. First Language, 20, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z. (1998). Assessing lexical development in bilingual babies and toddlers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 2 (3), 347–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S., Lewedeg, V., & Oller, D. K. (1997). The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18 (1), 41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S., & Oller, D. K. (1993). Lexical development in bilingual infants and toddlers: Comparison to monolingual norms. Language Learning, 43 (1), 93–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Place, S., & Hoff, E. (2011). Properties of dual language exposure that influence two-year-olds’ bilingual proficiency. Child Development, 82 (6), 1834–1849.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S. (1980). “Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en Español”: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18 (7/8), 581–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramus, F., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (1999). Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition, 73 (3), 265–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodriguez-Fornells, A., Krämer, U. M., Lorenzo-Seva, U., Festman, J., & Münte, T. F. (2012). Self-assessment of individual differences in language switching. Frontiers in Psychology, 2 (388). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00388.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Romaine, S. (1995). Bilingualism (2nd edn.). Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ronjat, J. (1913). Le développement du langage observe chez un enfant bilingue. Ms., http://www.archive.org/details/ledveloppement00ronjuoft (accessed April 19, 2012).Google Scholar
Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274 (5294), 1926–1928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Bosch, L. (2002). Building phonotactic knowledge in bilinguals: Role of early exposure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 28 (4), 974–989.Google ScholarPubMed
Sebastián-Gallés, N., Bosch, L., & Pons, F. (2008). Early bilingualism. In Haith, M. & Benson, J. (eds.), Encyclopedia of infant and early childhood development, pp. 172–182. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sundara, M., & Scutellaro, A. (2011). Rhythmic distance between languages affects the development of speech perception in bilingual infants. Journal of Phonetics, 39 (4), 505–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statistics Canada. (2001). Detailed language spoken at home, frequency of language spoken at home, and sex for population, for Canada, provinces, territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations, 2001 census – 20% sample data. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 95F0335XCB2001004.Google Scholar
Tare, M., & Gelman, S. A. (2011). Bilingual parents’ modeling of pragmatic language use in multiparty interactions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32 (4), 761–780.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thordardottir, E. (2011). The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15 (4), 426–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weikum, W. M., Vouloumanos, A., Navarra, J., Soto-Faraco, S., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Werker, J. F. (2007). Visual language discrimination in infancy. Science, 316, 1159–1159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werker, J. F., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2008). Bilingualism in infancy: First steps in perception and comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 144–151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werker, J. F., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Fennell, C. T. (2009). Bilingual beginnings to learning words. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, 3649–3663.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werker, J. F., & Yeung, H. H. (2005). Infant speech perception bootstraps word learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (11), 519–527.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed