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Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic awareness*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

LUDOVICA SERRATRICE ,
ANTONELLA SORACE ,
FRANCESCA FILIACI  and
MICHELA BALDO
LUDOVICA SERRATRICE*
Affiliation:
The University of Manchester
ANTONELLA SORACE
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
FRANCESCA FILIACI
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
MICHELA BALDO
Affiliation:
The University of Manchester
*
Address for correspondence: Ludovica Serratrice, The University of Manchester, School of Psychological Sciences, HCD, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UKSerratrice@manchester.ac.uk
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Abstract

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 English–Italian and Spanish–Italian 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 English–Italian 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 English–Italian bilinguals were significantly less accurate than both the monolinguals and the Spanish–Italian 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 239 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (grant number R000230782 to the first two authors). We are extremely grateful to all the participants for their time. Special thanks are due to the children's parents and to the staff at the International School of Milan, the American School of Milan, the Bilingual School in Monza, the Italian School in Barcelona, Bruntsfield Primary in Edinburgh, “Giovanni Pascoli” and “Pilastro” primary schools in Este. Their enthusiastic cooperation has been invaluable for the completion of this project.

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