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Measuring metasyntactic ability among heritage language children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2011

DAPHNÉE SIMARD ,
VÉRONIQUE FORTIER  and
DENIS FOUCAMBERT
DAPHNÉE SIMARD*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
VÉRONIQUE FORTIER
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
DENIS FOUCAMBERT
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
*
Address for correspondence: Daphnée Simard, Département de linguistique, Université du Québec à Montréal, C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre Ville, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3P8Canadasimard.daphnee@uqam.ca
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Abstract

Metasyntactic Ability (MSA) refers to the conscious reflection about syntactic aspects of language and the deliberate control of these aspects (Gombert, 1992). It appears from previous studies that heritage-language learners tend to demonstrate lower MSA than their monolingual counterparts (Lesaux & Siegel, 2003). In the present study, we verified whether the same results would be obtained among Portuguese heritage children living in a French-speaking environment when their MSA is measured using two different tasks. The participants were 22 Portuguese heritage children and 22 French monolingual elementary school children (mean age = 10.9 years). Five measurement instruments were used: a reading comprehension task; a language proficiency task; two metasyntactic tasks: a replication task in which the children had to identify and reproduce an error, and a repetition task, in which they had to repeat sentences containing syntactic errors; and a sociodemographic questionnaire. The results showed that when reading comprehension and language proficiency were controlled for, no effect of language background could be observed. However, reading comprehension and language proficiency differently influenced performances on MSA tasks.

Keywords

metasyntactic abilitymeasureheritage language children
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 19 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. A special thanks goes to Karina Da Silva Da Rocha, our research assistant, who helped us during various phases of the project. We also wish to thank the students who took part in the study.

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