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Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in bilingual children
Marina Vasilyeva1, Heidi Waterfall, Perla B Gámez
1Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA. vasilyev@bc.edu
Journal of Child Language
|December 17, 2009
Summary
Bilingual children show syntactic priming from Spanish to English, but not vice versa. This suggests their language systems are integrated yet asymmetrical, impacting cross-linguistic influence in syntax.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Developmental Linguistics
- Bilingualism Research
Background:
- Cross-linguistic priming methodology has been used with adults to study bilingual syntactic representations.
- Previous studies explored the nature of syntactic representations in bilingual adults.
Purpose of the Study:
- To extend cross-linguistic priming methodology to bilingual children.
- To investigate the relationship between the syntactic structures of bilingual children's two languages.
- To examine cross-linguistic syntactic priming in children, specifically focusing on passive sentence structures.
Main Methods:
- Utilized cross-linguistic priming methodology.
- Bilingual children were exposed to passive sentences in one language (Spanish or English).
- Measured the subsequent production of passive structures in the other language by the children.
Main Results:
- Evidence of syntactic priming was found from Spanish to English.
- Exposure to Spanish passive sentences increased children's production of English passive sentences.
- No significant priming effect was observed from English to Spanish.
Conclusions:
- Bilingual children demonstrate integrated syntactic representations across their languages.
- The relationship between the syntactic structures of bilingual children's two languages is asymmetrical.
- Language dominance or input frequency may influence the directionality of syntactic priming.
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