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Language choice in bimodal bilingual development
Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree o...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4202712/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25368591 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01163 |
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author | Lillo-Martin, Diane de Quadros, Ronice M. Chen Pichler, Deborah Fieldsteel, Zoe |
author_facet | Lillo-Martin, Diane de Quadros, Ronice M. Chen Pichler, Deborah Fieldsteel, Zoe |
author_sort | Lillo-Martin, Diane |
collection | PubMed |
description | Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children. Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending—expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously—an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children's language choices. This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult. Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant community language. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4202712 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42027122014-11-03 Language choice in bimodal bilingual development Lillo-Martin, Diane de Quadros, Ronice M. Chen Pichler, Deborah Fieldsteel, Zoe Front Psychol Psychology Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children. Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending—expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously—an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children's language choices. This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult. Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant community language. Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC4202712/ /pubmed/25368591 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01163 Text en Copyright © 2014 Lillo-Martin, de Quadros, Chen Pichler and Fieldsteel. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Lillo-Martin, Diane de Quadros, Ronice M. Chen Pichler, Deborah Fieldsteel, Zoe Language choice in bimodal bilingual development |
title | Language choice in bimodal bilingual development |
title_full | Language choice in bimodal bilingual development |
title_fullStr | Language choice in bimodal bilingual development |
title_full_unstemmed | Language choice in bimodal bilingual development |
title_short | Language choice in bimodal bilingual development |
title_sort | language choice in bimodal bilingual development |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4202712/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25368591 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01163 |
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