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Well, who’s a pretty bilingual then?

Well, who’s a pretty bilingual then?. Jeanine Treffers -Daller Linguistics Society UWE 4 th February 2011. Treasure Island (RL Stevenson 1883).

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Well, who’s a pretty bilingual then?

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  1. Well, who’s a pretty bilingual then? Jeanine Treffers-Daller Linguistics Society UWE 4th February 2011

  2. Treasure Island (RL Stevenson 1883) • CUT-THROAT COLIN: Arrrhh! I had a pet parrot once!SKINT (With a parrot on his shoulder): Oh, really?CUT-THROAT COLIN: Arr! it used to lay square eggs!SKINT: Amazin'! Did it ever speak?CUT-THROAT COLIN: Oh, arrh, - what it usually said were - 'Ouch!'Parrot treats this remark with silent contempt.POOP DECK PETE: (To Captain Skint) Does your parrot bite?SKINT: Oh, no, my parrot definitely doesn't bite!POOP DECK PETE: Oh, good, (to parrot) Who's a pretty little Polly then? Polly want a cracker? (Reaches out to tickle parrot patronizingly under the chin. The parrot gives him a fierce nip on the fingers)POOP DECK PETE: (Sucking damaged fingers and leaping about in pain) I thought you said your parrot didn't bite!SKINT: It doesn't--but that's not my parrot.

  3. How about this? • Can dogs be bilingual…??

  4. Anybody here with a bilingual dog? • Our mestizo Jack Russel/Chihuahua is tri-lingual: Mom speaks to him in Spanish, I speak to him in Spanglish, Dad & my other siblings speak to him in English, and the maids speak to him in Tagalog. • We successfully trained our dog to be bilingual by using both commands at the same time during training. He then associated both commands with the task at hand, so we could use either one. But he was a pretty smart dog, too (toytown • My Jacks are quadrilingual. They know English, German, Sign and Woof. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZj17wFFw8

  5. Overview • What is a bilingual? • Why bother? • Taking a short cut: The Quick Gradient Bilingual Dominance Scale (Dunn and Fox Tree 2009) Let’s try that out! • Semantic and Verbal Fluency tests (Thurstone & Thurstone, 1943) • Let’s try that out! • Conclusion

  6. Bilingualism – Definitions 1 • “In the extreme case of foreign language learning, the speaker becomes so proficient as to be indistinguishable from the native speakers round him … In the cases where there is perfect foreign-language learning is not accompanied by loss of the native language, it results in bilingualism, (the) native-like control of two languages” (Bloomfield 1933: 55-56)

  7. Bilingualism – Definitions 2 • “ A true bilingual is someone who is taken to be one of themselves by the members of two different linguistic communities, at roughly the same social and cultural level” (Thiery 1978: 146) • “ Bilingualism .. may be of all degrees of accomplishment, but it is understood here to begin at the point where the speaker of one language can produce complete, meaningful utterances in the other language…” (Haugen 1969: 6-7)

  8. Bilingualism – Definitions 3 • “The practice of alternately using two languages will be called BILINGUALISM, and the persons involved, BILINGUAL” (Weinreich 1968: 1) • Which definition would you prefer? Why?

  9. Multicompetence (Cook 1991) • Competence – performance (Chomsky 1965) • Bilinguals are speaker-hearers in their own right. • A bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person (Grosjean 1989)

  10. Why bother? • Studies in the linguistics, psycholinguistics, language development and neurolinguistics of bilingualism have often developed conflicting results. • Some of the difficulties encountered could have been avoided if more attention had been paid to methodological and conceptual issues. • (Grosjean1998: 240)

  11. Conflicting results • Lexical access: selective or non-selective? • Are lexica language-dependent or language-independent? • Do code-switches take time to produce or perceive?

  12. Individual differences between bilinguals • Complementarity principle • Rarely equally fluent in all skills in all languages • Stability – changes over time • Language behaviour depends on interlocutor (monolingual/bilingual) • These factors affect performance on tasks • Participant characteristics differ from study to study.

  13. Language dominance tests • Self-ratings • Questionnaires • Vocabulary tests • Judgements of expert • Name pictures in both languages • Fluency, speed, automaticity • Reading speed • Duration of repetition of sentences in two languages • Ability to translate • Mlu • Vocabulary richness • Accent ratings

  14. Dunn and Fox Tree (2009) • Quick Gradient Bilingual Dominance Scale Questions about language biography and language preferences. • Percent of language use for both lgs • Age of acquisition and age of comfort of using both languages • Restructuring – loss of fluency/accent • Let’s try that out!

  15. Self-rating scale Please indicate how well you know each of your languages 0 = no knowledge at all 10 = perfect knowledge Language 1 = (please fill in the name of the language)

  16. Student 08034885 Dunn and Fox Tree’s (2009) dominance scale + self-rating

  17. Sofia Maravelaki’s data

  18. Averages for self-ratings

  19. Correlations (QBD and self-ratings) * Significant at p<.05; ** p <.01 Do the QBD and the self-rating scales measure the same thing??

  20. Phonemic and semantic fluency (Thurstone and Thurstone 1943) • (1) phonemic fluency words beginning with a particular letter • (2) category or semantic fluency (words corresponding to a specific semantic category) • Used in clinical contexts • So far not used to measure bilingual dominance • Let’s try that out!

  21. issues • Differences in L1 and L2? • Semantic clustering • Content words/function words

  22. Sophia’s data

  23. Rosselli (2002) Statistically significant differences only in animal category between bilinguals and monolingual English speakers.

  24. Conclusions (Rosselli 2002) • Crosslinguistic similarities in oral verbal fluency scores in Spanish-English bilinguals and English and Spanish monolinguals. • These similarities were observed for both the phonological and semantic conditions of the test. • The number of semantic associations was also similar in English and Spanish monolinguals. • Question: could this be a good alternative to Dunn and Fox Tree’s (2009) questionnaire?

  25. Thank you! • Also on behalf of Pretty Polly! Can I have a cracker??

  26. sources • Chomsky, Noam. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. • Cook, V.J. (1991), 'The poverty-of-the-stimulus argument and multi-competence', Second Language Research, 7, 2, 103-117, 1991 • Dunn, A.L. and J.E.Fox Tree (2009) A quick, gradient Bilingual Dominance Scale. Bilingualism, Language and Cognition 12(3), 273-290 • Flege, J.E. Mackay, I.R.A and PISKE , T.(2002). Assessing bilingual dominance. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, pp 567-598 • Gerken, K. C. (1978). Language dominance: A comparison of measures: Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 9(3),187-195. • Grosjean, F. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36, 3-15. • Rosselli, M. and A. Ardila (2002). A cross-linguistic comparison of verbal fluency tests. Intern. J. Neuroscience, 112:759–7 76, 2002

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