Bilingualism in Infancy Flashcards
Languages in Canada
- For people who reported an immigrant mother tongue rose
from 2011 to 2016 -an increase of 13.3%. - In 2016, 2.4% of Canadians reported > one mother tongue,
compared with 1.9% of Canadians in 2011. - In 2016, 19.4% of Canadians and in 2021 25% of Canadians reported speaking more than one language at home, up from
2011 (17.5%). - In 2016, 7 in 10 people with a mother tongue other than English or French spoke one of these languages at home
Retention Rate of Heritage Language
- punjabi still retaing
- the least european languagues
Language Diversity in Vancouver
top 10 ‘Other’ Languages Vancouverites Speak
Most Often at Home
* chinese
* punjabi
* tagalog
What does it mean to be bilingual?
- Gradient of definitions:
– Ability to speak without accent in two
languages
– Ability to communicate in two languages
– Ability to understand two languages
What is a bilingual infant?
Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA): The learning of two languages simultaneously from birth (also called crib bilinguals, or simultaneous bilinguals)
- Usually consider minimum 25% exposure to each language
- Multitude of sources
- Dominant language: Language of higher proficiency
Bilingual Language Development is
Unique
- Two sets of sounds
- Two sets of words
- Two grammars
- Two sets of cultural
norms –>** Biculturalism**
Bilingual and Monolingual
Development are Similar
-
Similar milestones as monolinguals:
– Babbling
– First word
– First two-word utterances - Both groups have same goal: to become communicators
Are bilinguals confused?
Speaking the Right Language
- Genesee, Boivin & Nicoladis
1996 - 1 and 2-year old French- English bilingual infants
- Videotaped while interacting with monolingual strangers
- Infants changed their language depending on the language of the stranger
- However, infants still used words from the other language
Why do young bilinguals mix their
languages?
-
Bilingual infants sometimes produce utterances with words from both languages(why?)
– They don’t know the right word in the other language
– The people around them mix the languages - Children’s amount of mixing is a function of the mixing of their families and communities
Are bilinguals confused?
Two sets of Sounds
-
Monolingual babies:
Discriminate sounds from the world’s languages at 4-6-months - By 10-12 months, only discriminate sounds from their native language
- Bilingual babies: Discriminate sounds from the world’s languages at 4-6 months
- By 10-12 months, discriminate sounds from BOTH of their native languages
Keeping their languages separate:
Visual Language Discrimination
*(Weikum, Vouloumanos, Soto-Faraco,
Navarro, Sebastian-Galles, & Werker,
Science, 2007)
study:
can babies discriminate languague just by looking at face
-habituate babies with people own mother-toung speaking their languague (with no sound) , changed to a new sentence with different languague or control (speaking again the same sentece with the same langue
result:
* Monlinguals at 4 & 6 saw discrimination , but not 8-months
- only Bilinguals 8 months saw descrimination
bilingual kids continued to descriminate at a later age(?)
they pay more attetion to languague that monologs didnt
How early does bilingualism start:
Bilingual from birth?
english monolinguals: mothers spoke only english during pregnancy
tagalog billinguals: mothers spoke english and tagalog regularly during pregnancy (30%-70%)
Tested on language discrimination and preference
Testing learning:
Language preference (results)
- strong suck vs weak one
- alternaded languague (english vs tagalog)
result= monolingual show a preference for english more then tagalog - sucked more in english
bilingual was a mixed results, didnt show a preference pf one over the other - sometimes sucked more in eglish sometime tagalog (can they tell the difference between tagalog or english)
….. are they really bilingual?
- Two languages? Or
language confusion? - Broad similarity
gradient…. - < prenatal exposure to
each language than
monolingual has to
one - Can they
discriminate?