LING 350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Visual Cortex, Headphones, Handedness
Document Summary
A number of experimental studies focus specifically on the issue of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children (simultaneous or sequential). This means looking at the formal properties of language, rather than the intended meaning of an utterance. E. g. showing sensitivity to properties such as grammaticality, synonymy, rhyming, etc. , earlier than monolinguals. A secondary issue is whether their metalinguistic skills equal in both languages. 40 bilingual english-swedish children, aged 6 7, enrolled in a bilingual english/swedish program in sweden. Most of the children were simultaneous bilinguals, with at least one english-speaking parent (or they had previously lived for several years in an english- speaking country). Tasks: picture vocabulary task, used to separate the bilingual children into 2 groups: highly bilingual versus partially bilingual. (these groups differed on their swedish, not their english) They were all relatively highly proficient in english: sentence judgment and correction. Swedish and in english, the monolinguals only in swedish.
