Codeswitching and Interference in SPPL 199 Interpretation and Translation Bilingual Aspects of Co... more Codeswitching and Interference in SPPL 199 Interpretation and Translation Bilingual Aspects of Computation and Cursing Methodological Perspectives on the Investigation of Bilingualism Chapter Summary 6 Acquisition, Attrition, and Language Disturbances in Bilingualism 238 Acquisition in Bilingualism Investigating Bilingual Loss and Attrition Bilingualism and Language Disturbances A Concluding Statement References 279 Author Index 306 Subject Index 312 Preface ix language choices are presumed to be possible at every stage of production from intention to articulation. Shaped like a ladder and closely interrelated, the SPPL Model creates a structure through which is possible to map out the way four processing engines interact with structure through every stage of bilingual speech production. The four mechanisms that drive the flow of information in the SPPL Model are: imitation, variation, integration, and control. Chapters 3 and 4 try to methodically track the interrelationship between structure and process in bilingual speech production, illustrating each stage with concrete examples. The SPPL Model inherits much from its sociopragmatic origins and bases. Chapters 3 and 4 try to spell out in detail how this heritage is enriched by integrating psycholinguistic approaches. Other key elements that differentiate this model from others are the genre component that discriminates between conversations and scripts, and the centrality of the notion of intentions. As one follows the model, another assertion emerges, an assertion that stretches beyond the strict boundaries of bilingual research: that bilingual lemmas are not universal, invariant representations of lexical knowledge. Chapter 5 returns to the phenomena that are central to bilingual processing: codeswitching, fluency/interference, and translation. SPPL and its processing mechanisms are used to account for: (a) sociopragmatic and psycholinguistic differences in these three bilingual phenomena; (b) the import of identity, contextual, and discourse functions in sociopragmatic CS; (c) directionality and triggering in psycholinguistic CS; and (d) differences among fluency, automaticity, and completeness in bilingual processing. This chapter shows how sociopragmatic codeswitching is distinguished from structural-psycholinguistic codeswitching in terms of intentionality and directionality. Sociopragmatic CS is goal-driven and motivated by external, contextual factors. Structural-psycholinguistic CS stems from individual linguistic and mental factors: in particular, lexicalization differences between two languages and disturbances in word retrieval. Sociopragmatic factors easily prompt CS to both LI and L2, while word finding and fluency are more likely to lead the bilingual to the safe haven of the preferred or primary language. Interference, when CS does not work perfectly, is a useful starting point for a discussion about fluency, automaticity, and completeness in bilingual processing. The remaining topics in Chapter 5, translation and interpretation, counting and computing, and cursing, are treated more selectively. The study of simultaneous interpretation will find more relevance in the sociopragmatics of SPPL-in particular the respective identities of the speaker and interpreter, context, and genre-while written translation will benefit more from its psycholinguistic aspects for formulation and articulation in examining questions about lexical gaps, fuzzy categories, and word retrieval. The chapter ends by
The current study examined within- and cross-language connectivity in four priming conditions: re... more The current study examined within- and cross-language connectivity in four priming conditions: repetition, translation, within-language semantic and cross-language semantic priming. Unbalanced Hebrew–English bilinguals (N = 89) completed a lexical decision task in one of the four conditions in both languages. Priming effects were significantly larger from L1 to L2 for translation priming and marginally so for cross-language semantic priming. Priming effects were comparable for L1 and L2 in repetition and within-language semantic priming. These results support the notion that L1 words are more effective primes but also that L2 targets benefit more from priming. This pattern of results suggests that the lower frequency of use of L2 lexical items in unbalanced bilinguals contributes to asymmetrical cross-language priming via lower resting-level activation of targets and not only via less efficient lexical activation of primes, as highlighted by the BIA+ model.
The present study investigated bilingual language control among preschool children in a sentence ... more The present study investigated bilingual language control among preschool children in a sentence repetition task containing unilingual stimuli and codeswitched stimuli within prepositional phrases (PPs). Cross-language errors, that is, codeswitches that were not part of the stimulus sentences, were taken as evidence of difficulties in language control. Specifically, we investigated cross-language errors as a function of stimulus sentence type (codeswitched or unilingual), CS site within the PP, directionality (English or Hebrew stimulus sentences), and group status (children with typical language development (TLD), and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)). We also examined cross-language errors in terms of word class and locus in the sentence. The participants were 65 English (home language)–Hebrew (societal language) bilinguals with TLD and 13 with DLD, ages 5;5–6;10 (M = 5;11). Stimulus sentences contained five codeswitch conditions within prepositional phrases, fo...
The study explores the effect of language dominance on microstructure, macrostructure, and Intern... more The study explores the effect of language dominance on microstructure, macrostructure, and Internal State Terms (ISTs) in narratives of Russian-Hebrew bilingual children and examines within-language and cross-language associations between narrative elements in two dominance groups. Narratives were collected from 38 Russian-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;5–6;7 using the LITMUS-MAIN retelling procedures. The children were divided into L1-dominant (N = 19) and L2-dominant (N = 19) bilinguals based on performance on proficiency tests in L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew. The narratives were coded for microstructure measures: number of different words (NDW), total number of tokens (TNT), number of C-units (CUs), and Mean Length of C-unit (MLCU); and for macrostructure measures: Story Structure and Story Complexity. Ratios of IST tokens and types were calculated per C-unit. Children produced significantly higher NDW, TNT, and MLCU in L2/Hebrew than in L1/Russian. Scores on macrostructure measure...
This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and mon... more This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical language development (TLD), aiming to shed light on the relative contribution of morpho-syntactic, discourse-pragmatic, and semantic constraints. Narratives were collected from 51 children using a storytelling procedure ( MAIN – Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). Participants were 18 bilingual Russian-Hebrew preschool children (8 with DLD), 17 monolingual Russian speakers (9 with DLD), and 16 monolingual Hebrew speakers (5 with DLD) aged 5;6–6;7. Referential expressions were coded for form (noun phrase [NP] or pronoun) and character function (Introduction or Maintenance). Analyses addressed the effects of proficiency group (TLD/DLD), language group (bilingual/monolingual), and language (Russian/Hebrew) on inadequate pronoun use and definiteness. Results demonstrated that children in all groups intro...
The current study investigated performance on morpho-syntax in Russian–Hebrew sequential bilingua... more The current study investigated performance on morpho-syntax in Russian–Hebrew sequential bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) in both languages (L1 Russian and L2 Hebrew) using sentence repetition (SRep) tasks with a fundamental aim to disentangle the language abilities of bilingual children with typical language development (biTLD) from those of bilingual children with SLI (biSLI). Four groups of children participated ( N=85) in the study: 45 L1 Russian–L2 Hebrew sequential bilinguals (30 biTLD and 15 biSLI), 20 monolingual Russian-speaking children and 20 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children. The SRep tasks in Russian and in Hebrew were based on Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) SRep developed within COST Action IS0804 titled “Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment”. The tasks in Russian and in Hebrew contained 56 sentences of different length and complexi...
Bilingual language development is different from monolingual language development. The lack of ap... more Bilingual language development is different from monolingual language development. The lack of appropriate assessment tools geared to the bilingual population has led to inaccurate over-diagnosis of bilingual children with typical language development (TLD) as children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and under-diagnosis of bilingual children with DLD. The present paper addresses this challenge by focusing on Hebrew as a second language (L2) of bilingual preschool children whose first language (L1) is either English or Russian, taking into consideration both chronological age (CA) and age of onset of bilingualism (AOB). This study aimed to generate bilingual standards for a monolingual screening test, Goralnik Screening Test for Hebrewby arriving at appropriate bilingual typical development cut-off points. A total of 443 bilingual Hebrew speaking children (397 with TLD and 46 with DLD), ages 61-78 months (M = 70; SD = 4), 199 with L1 English and 244 with L1 Russian, took part in the study. The results demonstrate low diagnostic accuracy when a monolingual test with monolingual norms is used for bilingual children, in contrast with increased diagnostic accuracy when bilingual standards are used for bilingual children. The paper concludes by showing the importance of bilingual standards when assessing clinical populations with varying ages of acquisition, and in particular, for those who were exposed to their second language after the age of four.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2021
Israel’s population includes over a million Russian-speaking immigrants and more than 300,000 nat... more Israel’s population includes over a million Russian-speaking immigrants and more than 300,000 native English speakers. These groups differ in social integration and in the status of their heritage ...
Aims and Research Questions: Codeswitching (CS) was investigated among English-Hebrew bilingual p... more Aims and Research Questions: Codeswitching (CS) was investigated among English-Hebrew bilingual preschool children in a sentence repetition task focusing on switching at different points in prepositional phrases (PPs). We asked the extent to which sentence repetition accuracy differed (1) as a function of the switch site in the PP and (2) as a function of directionality, English-to-Hebrew versus Hebrew-to-English CS. Design/Methodology: English/first language (L1)-Hebrew/second language (L2), sequential bilingual children ( N = 65), ages 5;5–6;5, participated. Thirty-six English and 36 Hebrew stimulus sentences were matched for semantic content and syntax. English stimulus sentences contained switches to Hebrew; Hebrew stimuli contained switches to English. Six ‘switch’ conditions were examined: a single codeswitched noun (N), a determiner–noun switch (DET+N), a codeswitched preposition (P), a preposition–determiner switch (P+DET), a switch of the entire PP (P+DET+N), and a no-switc...
Codeswitching and Interference in SPPL 199 Interpretation and Translation Bilingual Aspects of Co... more Codeswitching and Interference in SPPL 199 Interpretation and Translation Bilingual Aspects of Computation and Cursing Methodological Perspectives on the Investigation of Bilingualism Chapter Summary 6 Acquisition, Attrition, and Language Disturbances in Bilingualism 238 Acquisition in Bilingualism Investigating Bilingual Loss and Attrition Bilingualism and Language Disturbances A Concluding Statement References 279 Author Index 306 Subject Index 312 Preface ix language choices are presumed to be possible at every stage of production from intention to articulation. Shaped like a ladder and closely interrelated, the SPPL Model creates a structure through which is possible to map out the way four processing engines interact with structure through every stage of bilingual speech production. The four mechanisms that drive the flow of information in the SPPL Model are: imitation, variation, integration, and control. Chapters 3 and 4 try to methodically track the interrelationship between structure and process in bilingual speech production, illustrating each stage with concrete examples. The SPPL Model inherits much from its sociopragmatic origins and bases. Chapters 3 and 4 try to spell out in detail how this heritage is enriched by integrating psycholinguistic approaches. Other key elements that differentiate this model from others are the genre component that discriminates between conversations and scripts, and the centrality of the notion of intentions. As one follows the model, another assertion emerges, an assertion that stretches beyond the strict boundaries of bilingual research: that bilingual lemmas are not universal, invariant representations of lexical knowledge. Chapter 5 returns to the phenomena that are central to bilingual processing: codeswitching, fluency/interference, and translation. SPPL and its processing mechanisms are used to account for: (a) sociopragmatic and psycholinguistic differences in these three bilingual phenomena; (b) the import of identity, contextual, and discourse functions in sociopragmatic CS; (c) directionality and triggering in psycholinguistic CS; and (d) differences among fluency, automaticity, and completeness in bilingual processing. This chapter shows how sociopragmatic codeswitching is distinguished from structural-psycholinguistic codeswitching in terms of intentionality and directionality. Sociopragmatic CS is goal-driven and motivated by external, contextual factors. Structural-psycholinguistic CS stems from individual linguistic and mental factors: in particular, lexicalization differences between two languages and disturbances in word retrieval. Sociopragmatic factors easily prompt CS to both LI and L2, while word finding and fluency are more likely to lead the bilingual to the safe haven of the preferred or primary language. Interference, when CS does not work perfectly, is a useful starting point for a discussion about fluency, automaticity, and completeness in bilingual processing. The remaining topics in Chapter 5, translation and interpretation, counting and computing, and cursing, are treated more selectively. The study of simultaneous interpretation will find more relevance in the sociopragmatics of SPPL-in particular the respective identities of the speaker and interpreter, context, and genre-while written translation will benefit more from its psycholinguistic aspects for formulation and articulation in examining questions about lexical gaps, fuzzy categories, and word retrieval. The chapter ends by
The current study examined within- and cross-language connectivity in four priming conditions: re... more The current study examined within- and cross-language connectivity in four priming conditions: repetition, translation, within-language semantic and cross-language semantic priming. Unbalanced Hebrew–English bilinguals (N = 89) completed a lexical decision task in one of the four conditions in both languages. Priming effects were significantly larger from L1 to L2 for translation priming and marginally so for cross-language semantic priming. Priming effects were comparable for L1 and L2 in repetition and within-language semantic priming. These results support the notion that L1 words are more effective primes but also that L2 targets benefit more from priming. This pattern of results suggests that the lower frequency of use of L2 lexical items in unbalanced bilinguals contributes to asymmetrical cross-language priming via lower resting-level activation of targets and not only via less efficient lexical activation of primes, as highlighted by the BIA+ model.
The present study investigated bilingual language control among preschool children in a sentence ... more The present study investigated bilingual language control among preschool children in a sentence repetition task containing unilingual stimuli and codeswitched stimuli within prepositional phrases (PPs). Cross-language errors, that is, codeswitches that were not part of the stimulus sentences, were taken as evidence of difficulties in language control. Specifically, we investigated cross-language errors as a function of stimulus sentence type (codeswitched or unilingual), CS site within the PP, directionality (English or Hebrew stimulus sentences), and group status (children with typical language development (TLD), and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)). We also examined cross-language errors in terms of word class and locus in the sentence. The participants were 65 English (home language)–Hebrew (societal language) bilinguals with TLD and 13 with DLD, ages 5;5–6;10 (M = 5;11). Stimulus sentences contained five codeswitch conditions within prepositional phrases, fo...
The study explores the effect of language dominance on microstructure, macrostructure, and Intern... more The study explores the effect of language dominance on microstructure, macrostructure, and Internal State Terms (ISTs) in narratives of Russian-Hebrew bilingual children and examines within-language and cross-language associations between narrative elements in two dominance groups. Narratives were collected from 38 Russian-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;5–6;7 using the LITMUS-MAIN retelling procedures. The children were divided into L1-dominant (N = 19) and L2-dominant (N = 19) bilinguals based on performance on proficiency tests in L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew. The narratives were coded for microstructure measures: number of different words (NDW), total number of tokens (TNT), number of C-units (CUs), and Mean Length of C-unit (MLCU); and for macrostructure measures: Story Structure and Story Complexity. Ratios of IST tokens and types were calculated per C-unit. Children produced significantly higher NDW, TNT, and MLCU in L2/Hebrew than in L1/Russian. Scores on macrostructure measure...
This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and mon... more This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical language development (TLD), aiming to shed light on the relative contribution of morpho-syntactic, discourse-pragmatic, and semantic constraints. Narratives were collected from 51 children using a storytelling procedure ( MAIN – Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). Participants were 18 bilingual Russian-Hebrew preschool children (8 with DLD), 17 monolingual Russian speakers (9 with DLD), and 16 monolingual Hebrew speakers (5 with DLD) aged 5;6–6;7. Referential expressions were coded for form (noun phrase [NP] or pronoun) and character function (Introduction or Maintenance). Analyses addressed the effects of proficiency group (TLD/DLD), language group (bilingual/monolingual), and language (Russian/Hebrew) on inadequate pronoun use and definiteness. Results demonstrated that children in all groups intro...
The current study investigated performance on morpho-syntax in Russian–Hebrew sequential bilingua... more The current study investigated performance on morpho-syntax in Russian–Hebrew sequential bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) in both languages (L1 Russian and L2 Hebrew) using sentence repetition (SRep) tasks with a fundamental aim to disentangle the language abilities of bilingual children with typical language development (biTLD) from those of bilingual children with SLI (biSLI). Four groups of children participated ( N=85) in the study: 45 L1 Russian–L2 Hebrew sequential bilinguals (30 biTLD and 15 biSLI), 20 monolingual Russian-speaking children and 20 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children. The SRep tasks in Russian and in Hebrew were based on Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) SRep developed within COST Action IS0804 titled “Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment”. The tasks in Russian and in Hebrew contained 56 sentences of different length and complexi...
Bilingual language development is different from monolingual language development. The lack of ap... more Bilingual language development is different from monolingual language development. The lack of appropriate assessment tools geared to the bilingual population has led to inaccurate over-diagnosis of bilingual children with typical language development (TLD) as children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and under-diagnosis of bilingual children with DLD. The present paper addresses this challenge by focusing on Hebrew as a second language (L2) of bilingual preschool children whose first language (L1) is either English or Russian, taking into consideration both chronological age (CA) and age of onset of bilingualism (AOB). This study aimed to generate bilingual standards for a monolingual screening test, Goralnik Screening Test for Hebrewby arriving at appropriate bilingual typical development cut-off points. A total of 443 bilingual Hebrew speaking children (397 with TLD and 46 with DLD), ages 61-78 months (M = 70; SD = 4), 199 with L1 English and 244 with L1 Russian, took part in the study. The results demonstrate low diagnostic accuracy when a monolingual test with monolingual norms is used for bilingual children, in contrast with increased diagnostic accuracy when bilingual standards are used for bilingual children. The paper concludes by showing the importance of bilingual standards when assessing clinical populations with varying ages of acquisition, and in particular, for those who were exposed to their second language after the age of four.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2021
Israel’s population includes over a million Russian-speaking immigrants and more than 300,000 nat... more Israel’s population includes over a million Russian-speaking immigrants and more than 300,000 native English speakers. These groups differ in social integration and in the status of their heritage ...
Aims and Research Questions: Codeswitching (CS) was investigated among English-Hebrew bilingual p... more Aims and Research Questions: Codeswitching (CS) was investigated among English-Hebrew bilingual preschool children in a sentence repetition task focusing on switching at different points in prepositional phrases (PPs). We asked the extent to which sentence repetition accuracy differed (1) as a function of the switch site in the PP and (2) as a function of directionality, English-to-Hebrew versus Hebrew-to-English CS. Design/Methodology: English/first language (L1)-Hebrew/second language (L2), sequential bilingual children ( N = 65), ages 5;5–6;5, participated. Thirty-six English and 36 Hebrew stimulus sentences were matched for semantic content and syntax. English stimulus sentences contained switches to Hebrew; Hebrew stimuli contained switches to English. Six ‘switch’ conditions were examined: a single codeswitched noun (N), a determiner–noun switch (DET+N), a codeswitched preposition (P), a preposition–determiner switch (P+DET), a switch of the entire PP (P+DET+N), and a no-switc...
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