Can cognitive abilities and vocabulary help bilingual children understand implicit interpretations?
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Date
2024-03
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Abstract
Work on monolingual child Spanish implicature generation (Grinstead et al. 2022a) has shown that scalar implicatures associated with the quantifier algunos ¨some, but not all” (e.g., Gutiérrez-Rexach 2001, 2010; Martí 2008) are significantly predicted with unique variance explained by measures of lexicon, inhibition, and syntax. Further work showed that monolingual child implicature generators can be identified with 88% accuracy and non-generators with 100% accuracy, solely based on their lexical abilities (Grinstead et al. 2022b). What do we predict for Spanish-English bilinguals with the same constructions? Work with bilingual Spanish-English speaking children showed that bilingual children struggle to generate implicatures in Spanish with algunos (Syrett et al. 2016). Here we ask how the relationship between algunos implicatures, lexicon, and inhibition plays out in bilingual children. Specifically, the debate around the Bilingual Advantage (Bialystok E., 2011; Bialystok, E. & Feng, X., 2009; Santillán J., Khurana, A., 2018; Kroll et al., 2012) suggests that bilingual children may have smaller single-language lexicons than monolingual children, but greater inhibitory abilities. Since both abilities have been shown to relate to implicature generation in monolingual children, what will be their relationship to implicature generation in bilingual children? Further, if we measure bilingual children’s lexicons across both languages, using an instrument such as the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT, Martin 2013), will we find associations between this total lexical measure and implicature generation? To answer these questions, 55 bilingual Spanish-English speaking children in the US (85.3 months [7;1], SD = 12.1) participated in our study. Children’s families completed the Alberta Language Environment Questionnaire 3 (Paradis 2011) to measure children’s home language environment and percentage of use of each language. To measure implicature generation with algunos, children completed a stop-motion Truth-Value Judgment Task (Crain&McKee 1985). Half the scenarios were consistent with the “some, but not all” implicature (3 of 4 agents performed an action), and the other half were inconsistent with the implicature (4 of 4 agents performed an action). To measure lexicon in Spanish only, children were given the Test de Vocabulario en Imágnes Peabody (TVIP, Dunn et al. 1986). To measure lexicon across Spanish and English, children were given the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (Martin 2013). To measure inhibition, children were given the Flanker Task (Eriksen & Eriksen 1974). Results showed that bilingual children as young as 5;2 could generate implicatures 100% of the time. Further, the Spanish-only lexical measure (TVIP) and implicature generation significantly correlated, but the combined English-Spanish lexical measure (EOWPVT) did not, nor did inhibition. In sum, a single-language measure of the Spanish lexicon (TVIP) is significantly associated with implicature generation (Grinstead et al. 2022b), but inhibition is not. The hypothesis that a measure of lexicon encompassing both English and Spanish (EOWPVT) might also significantly associate with implicature generation is not supported by our results. We discuss the status of the Quantity Scale in bilingual lexicons and its possible relationship to the Bilingual Advantage phenomena.
Description
Humanities: 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research
Forum)
Keywords
language acquisition, bilingualism, multilingualism, pragmatics