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Bilingual acquisition of reference: The role of language experience, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2021

Jacopo Torregrossa ,
Maria Andreou ,
Christiane Bongartz  and
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
Jacopo Torregrossa*
Affiliation:
Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Maria Andreou
Affiliation:
University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Christiane Bongartz
Affiliation:
University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England
*
Address for correspondence: Jacopo Torregrossa, E-mail: Torregrossa@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de
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Abstract

The present study aims to understand which factors contribute to different patterns of use of referring expressions by bilingual children, by considering the triangulation between language experience and proficiency, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects. We analyze reference use in Greek in the context of a narrative elicitation task as performed by 125 children of different language combinations, including Greek–Albanian, Greek–English and Greek–German. We calculate, for each child, an index of language experience that combines a proficiency measure with background questionnaire information. After identifying the occurrences of underinformative (underspecified) and overinformative (overspecified) referring expressions in the production of each child, we investigate to what extent each pattern of reference use is affected by language experience, cross-linguistic effects and executive functions. The study aims to shed some new light on the nature of overspecification and underspecification in bilingual reference production and, more in general, to model variation in reference use among bilingual children.

Keywords

bilingual reference productionlanguage dominanceexecutive functionscross-linguistic effectsover- and underspecification
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , August 2021 , pp. 694 - 706
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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