TY - JOUR
T1 - Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic awareness
AU - Serratrice, Ludovica
AU - Sorace, Antonella
AU - Filiaci, Francesca
AU - Baldo, Michela
PY - 2009/4
Y1 - 2009/4
N2 - A number of recent studies have argued that bilingual children's language comprehension and production may be affected by cross-linguistic influence. The overall aim of this study was to investigate whether the ability to judge the grammaticality of a construction in one language is affected by knowledge of the corresponding construction in the other language. We investigated how EnglishItalian and SpanishItalian bilingual children and monolingual peers judged the grammaticality of plural NPs in specific and generic contexts in English and in Italian. We also explored whether language of the community, age, and the typological relatedness of the bilinguals two languages significantly affected their performance. While performance in English was overall poor, no significant differences existed between the EnglishItalian bilinguals and the monolinguals. In contrast, we found that knowledge of English affected the bilinguals ability to discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in Italian. The EnglishItalian bilinguals were significantly less accurate than both the monolinguals and the SpanishItalian bilinguals in a task where they simply had to rely on the local definite article cue to reject ungrammatical bare plurals in generic contexts. Language of the community and age also played a significant role in children's accuracy. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.
AB - A number of recent studies have argued that bilingual children's language comprehension and production may be affected by cross-linguistic influence. The overall aim of this study was to investigate whether the ability to judge the grammaticality of a construction in one language is affected by knowledge of the corresponding construction in the other language. We investigated how EnglishItalian and SpanishItalian bilingual children and monolingual peers judged the grammaticality of plural NPs in specific and generic contexts in English and in Italian. We also explored whether language of the community, age, and the typological relatedness of the bilinguals two languages significantly affected their performance. While performance in English was overall poor, no significant differences existed between the EnglishItalian bilinguals and the monolinguals. In contrast, we found that knowledge of English affected the bilinguals ability to discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in Italian. The EnglishItalian bilinguals were significantly less accurate than both the monolinguals and the SpanishItalian bilinguals in a task where they simply had to rely on the local definite article cue to reject ungrammatical bare plurals in generic contexts. Language of the community and age also played a significant role in children's accuracy. © 2009 Cambridge University Press.
U2 - 10.1017/S1366728909004027
DO - 10.1017/S1366728909004027
M3 - Article
VL - 12
SP - 239
EP - 257
JO - Bilingualism : Language and Cognition
JF - Bilingualism : Language and Cognition
SN - 1366-7289
IS - 2
ER -