Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-dk7s8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-30T07:22:44.266Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cross-linguistic influence in French–English bilingual children's possessive constructions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2011

ELENA NICOLADIS
ELENA NICOLADIS*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
*
Address for Correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, P2-17 Biological Sciences Building, Edmonton AB, T6G 2E9, Canada elenan@ualberta.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to test the predictions of a speech production model of cross-linguistic influence in French–English bilingual children. A speech production model predicts bidirectional influence (i.e., bilinguals’ greater use of periphrastic constructions like the hat of the dog relative to monolinguals in English and reversed possessive constructions like *chien chapeau to refer to a dog's hat). In contrast, other explanations predict unidirectional influence from French to English. Possessive constructions were elicited from preschool French–English bilingual children as well as preschool French and English monolinguals within the same age range. The results showed bidirectional influence, consistent with a speech production model.

Keywords

simultaneous bilingual acquisitioncross-linguistic influencespeech production

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 320 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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 study received funding from a Discovery Grant to Elena Nicoladis from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Thanks to all the children who participated in this study, along with their parents and their daycare directors and educators. Rolande Cormier helped locate the French monolinguals. Mélody Cesar and Richard Landry helped with testing the children.

References

Argyri, E., & Sorace, A. (2007). Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 79–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, J. A. (2002). Error patterns and transfer in Spanish−English bilingual phonological development. In Skarabela, B. et al. (eds.), Boston University Conference on Language Development 26 Proceedings, pp. 60–71. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Bernardini, P. (2003). Child and adult acquisition of word order in the Italian DP. In Müller, N. (ed.), (In)vulnerable domains in multilingualism, pp. 41–81. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernardini, P., & Schlyter, S. (2004). Growing syntactic structure and code-mixing in the weaker language: The ivy hypothesis. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 49–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, L. (1970). Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brulard, I., & Carr, P. (2003). French−English bilingual acquisition of phonology: One production system or two? International Journal of Bilingualism, 7, 177–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1985). The acquisition of Romance. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. I: The data, pp. 687–782. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cubelli, R., Lotto, L., Paolieri, D., Girelli, M., & Job, R. (2005). Grammatical gender is selected in bare noun production: Evidence from the picture–word interference paradigm. Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 42–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, A. M. B. (1992). Bilingual lexical representation: A closer look at conceptual representations. In Frost, R. & Katz, L. (eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning, pp. 389–412. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deutsch, W., & Budwig, N. (1983). Form and function in the development of possessives. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 22, 36–42.Google Scholar
de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A. (1985). The acquisition of English. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. I: The data, 27–140. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Döpke, S. (1998). Competing language structures: The acquisition of verb placement by bilingual German–English children. Journal of Child Language, 25, 555–584.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, L. M. (1997). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, third edition. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Dunn, L. M., Thériault-Whalen, C. M., & Dunn, L. M. (1993). Échelle de vocabulaire en image Peabody. Toronto: Psycan.Google Scholar
Ferreira, V. S., & Dell, G. S. (2000). Effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production. Cognitive Psychology, 40, 296–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E., & Paradis, J. (1995). Language differentiation in early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 22, 611–631.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Golinkoff, R. M., & Markessini, J. (1980). ‘Mommy sock’: The child's understanding of possession as expressed in two-noun phrases. Journal of Child Language, 7, 119–135.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grosjean, F. (2001). The bilingual's language modes. In Nicol, J. L. (ed.), One mind, two languages: Bilingual language processing, pp. 1–20. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hacohen, A., & Schaeffer, J. (2007). Subject realization in early Hebrew/English bilingual acquisition: The role of crosslinguistic influence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 333–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hakuta, K. & Cancino, H. (1977). Trends in second language acquisition research. Harvard Educational Review, 47, 294–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulk, A. (1997). The acquisition of French object pronouns by a Dutch/French bilingual child. In Sorace, A., Heycock, C. & Shillcock, R. (eds.), Language acquisition: Knowledge, representation and processing: Proceedings of the GALA 1997 Conference on Language Acquisition, pp. 521–526. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.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
Hulk, A. C. J., & van der Linden, E. (1996). Language mixing in a French–Dutch bilingual child. In Kellerman, E., Weltens, B. & Borgaerts, T. (eds.), Eurosla 6: A selection of papers, pp. 89–103. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Johnson, K., Bateman, S., Moore, D., Roeper, T., & de Villiers, J. (1996). On the acquisition of word order nominals. In Stringfellow, A., Cahana-Amitay, D., Hughes, E. & Zukowski, A. (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 397–406. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Köppe, R., & Meisel, J. (1995). Code-switching in bilingual first language acquistion. In Milroy, L. & Muysken, P. (eds.), One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching, pp. 276–301. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Michael, E., Tokowicz, N., & Dufour, R. (2002). The development of lexical fluency in a second language. Second Language Research, 18, 137–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kvaal, J. T., Shipstead-Cox, N., Nevitt, S. G., Hodson, B. W., & Launer, P. B. (1988). The acquisition of 10 Spanish morphemes by Spanish-speaking children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 19, 384–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meisel, J. (2001). The simultaneous acquisition of two first languages: Early differentiation and subsequent development of grammars. In Cenoz, J. & Genesee, F. (eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition, pp. 11–42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. (2004). The bilingual child. In Bhatia, T. K. & Ritchie, W. C. (eds.), The handbook of bilingualism, pp. 91–113. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Miller, N. A., & Kroll, J. F. (2002). Stroop effects in bilingual translation. Memory and Cognition, 30, 614–628.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Müller, N. (1998). Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 151–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, N., & Hulk, A. (2001). Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (1999). “Where is my brush-teeth?” Acquisition of compound nouns in a bilingual child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2, 245–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2002). What's the difference between “toilet paper” and “paper toilet”? French–English bilingual children's crosslinguistic transfer in compound nouns. Journal of Child Language, 29, 843–863.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nicoladis, E. (2003). Cross-linguistic transfer in deverbal compounds of preschool bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 17–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2006). Cross-linguistic transfer in adjective–noun strings by preschool bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 15–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicoladis, E., & Genesee, F. (1997). Language development in preschool bilingual children, Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, 21, 258–270.Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Rose, A., & Foursha-Stevenson, C. (2010). Thinking for speaking and cross-linguistic transfer in preschool bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13, 345–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2001). Do bilingual two-year-olds have separate phonological systems? International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 19–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quay, S. (1995). The bilingual lexicon: Implications for studies of language choice. Journal of Child Language, 22, 369–387.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schlyter, S. (1993). The weaker language in bilingual Swedish−French children. In Hyltenstam, K. & Viberg, Å. (eds.), Progression and regression in language: Sociocultural, neuropsychological, and linguistic perspectives, pp. 289–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schlyter, S. (2001). Pragmatic rules, C-domain, and language dominance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 40–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2007). Cross-linguistic influence in the interpretation of anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns in English−Italian bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 225–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., & Paoli, S. (2004). Cross-linguistic influence at the syntax–pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in Italian–English bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 183–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skarabela, B., & Serratrice, L. (2009). “The doctor's mother” or “the mother of the doctor”? Syntactic priming of possessive noun phrases in English preschoolers. Online Supplement of the Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development [www.bu.edu/linguistics/BUCLD/supp33.html].Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1998). One child's early talk about possession. In Newman, J. (ed.), The linguistics of giving, pp. 349–373. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2000). The item-based nature of children's early syntactic development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 156–163.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van der Linden, E., & Blok-Boas, A. (2005). Exploring possession in simultaneous bilingualism: Dutch/French and Dutch/Italian. EUROSLA Yearbook, 5, 103–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2000). Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese–English bilingual child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3, 193–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2007). The bilingual child: Early development and language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwanziger, E. E., Allen, S. A., & Genesee, F. (2005). Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual acquisition: Subject omission in learners of Inuktitut and English. Journal of Child Language, 32, 893–909.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed