Tres indicadores de exposición a la lengua y su efecto en la adquisición del léxico de una lengua minoritaria / Three indicators of language exposure and their effect on the acquisition of vocabulary in a minority language

Este estudio analiza la sensibilidad de los cuestionarios CDI breves para medir el efecto del grado de exposición a la lengua en el tamaño del léxico de niños bilingües en euskera o lengua vasca. Además, compara la capacidad predictiva de tres factores asociados a la cantidad de exposición a la lengua: el input relativo, el perfil lingüístico de los padres y la lengua de comunicación interparental. Los datos de 2.098 niños bilingües (8-49 meses) obtenidos con las versiones breves del CDI vasco (CDI-1vb, CDI-2vb y CDI-3 v) evidenciaron: a) la sensibilidad de los tres instrumentos para medir el efecto del grado de exposición en el léxico expresivo infantil; b) un efecto muy similar de los tres factores analizados, y c) un aumento gradual del tamaño del efecto, con la edad, que evoluciona desde la ausencia de efecto durante el primer año (8 a 15 meses), a un efecto pequeño durante el año siguiente (16-29 meses), para convertirse en grande entre los dos años y medio y los cuatro años (30-49 meses). Los resultados apuntan al perfil lingüístico de los padres y a la lengua de comunicación interparental como indicadores tan apropiados como el input, o incluso más, para medir la cantidad de exposición a la lengua de niños en edad preescolar, por lo que se recomienda la inclusión de estos dos factores en la evaluación del desarrollo léxico temprano bilingüe, muy especialmente, en el caso de lenguas minoritarias.(AU)

The current study analyses short Basque CDI questionnaires’ accuracy to measure the effect of the amount of exposure to the language on bilingual children's vocabulary size. Additionally, it compares the predictive ability of three variables related to the amount of exposure: relative input, language of parental communication and parents’ linguistic profile. Data of 2098 children (8–49 months) obtained with the short versions of the Basque CDI (CDI-1vb, CDI-2vb and CDI-3v) revealed (a) these three instruments’ sensibility to measure the effect of language exposure on children's expressive vocabulary, (b) a very similar effect size for the three variables, and (c) an increase in effect size with age: no effect at the age of 8–15 months, small at 16–29 months and large at the age of 30–49 months. Data suggests that parents’ linguistic profile and language of inter-parental communication are indicators equally suitable of preschool children's exposure to the language, or even more so, than input, and leads the authors to claim the inclusion of those factors in the assessment of young children's lexical development, especially in minority languages.(AU)

Length of Utterance, in Morphemes or in Words?: MLU3-w, a Reliable Measure of Language Development in Early Basque.

The mean length of utterace (MLU), which was proposed by Brown (1973) as a better index for language development in children than age, has been regularly reported in case studies as well as in cross-sectional studies on early spontaneous language production. Despite the reliability of MLU as a measure of (morpho-)syntactic development having been called into question, its extensive use in language acquisition studies highlights its utility not only for intra- and inter-individual comparison in monolingual language acquisition, but also for cross-linguistic assessment and comparison of bilinguals' early language development (Müller, 1993; Yip and Matthews, 2006; Meisel, 2011). An additional issue concerns whether MLU should be measured in words (MLU-w) or morphemes (MLU-m), the latter option being the most difficult to gauge, since new challenges have arisen regarding how to count zero morphemes, suppletive and fused morphemes. The different criteria have consequences, especially when comparing development in languages with diverging morphological complexity. A variant of MLU, the MLU3, which is calculated out of the three longest sentences produced (MLU3-w and MLU3-m), is included among the subscales of expressive language development in CDI parental reports (Fenson et al., 1993, 2007). The aim of the study is to investigate the consistency and utility of MLU3-w and MLU3-m as a measure for (morpho-)syntactic development in Basque, an agglutinative language. To that end, cross-sectional data were obtained using either the Basque CDI-2 instrument (16- to 30-month-olds) or the Basque CDI-3 (30- to 50-month-olds). The results of analyzing reports on over 1,200 children show three main findings. First, MLU3-w and MLU3-m can report equally well on very young children's development. Second, the strong correlations found between MLU3 and expressive vocabulary in the Basque CDI-2 and CDI-3 instruments, as well as between MLU3 and both nominal and verbal morphology scales, confirm the consistency not only of MLU3 but also of the two Basque CDI instruments. Finally, both MLU3-w and MLU3-m subscales appear sensitive to input after age 2, which emphasizes their utility for identifying developmental patterns in Basque bilinguals.

Cross-linguistic patterns in the acquisition of quantifiers.

Learners of most languages are faced with the task of acquiring words to talk about number and quantity. Much is known about the order of acquisition of number words as well as the cognitive and perceptual systems and cultural practices that shape it. Substantially less is known about the acquisition of quantifiers. Here, we consider the extent to which systems and practices that support number word acquisition can be applied to quantifier acquisition and conclude that the two domains are largely distinct in this respect. Consequently, we hypothesize that the acquisition of quantifiers is constrained by a set of factors related to each quantifier's specific meaning. We investigate competence with the expressions for "all," "none," "some," "some…not," and "most" in 31 languages, representing 11 language types, by testing 768 5-y-old children and 536 adults. We found a cross-linguistically similar order of acquisition of quantifiers, explicable in terms of four factors relating to their meaning and use. In addition, exploratory analyses reveal that language- and learner-specific factors, such as negative concord and gender, are significant predictors of variation.