Older age of onset in child L2 acquisition can be facilitative: evidence from the acquisition of English passives by Spanish nativesRothman, J., Long, D., Iverson, M., Judy, T., Lingwall, A. and Chakravarty, T. (2016) Older age of onset in child L2 acquisition can be facilitative: evidence from the acquisition of English passives by Spanish natives. Journal of Child Language, 43 (3). pp. 662-686. ISSN 0305-0009
It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing. To link to this item DOI: 10.1017/S0305000915000549 Abstract/SummaryWe report a longitudinal comprehension study of (long) passive constructions in two native-Spanish child groups differing by age of initial exposure to L2 English (young group: 3;0-4;0 years; older group: 6;0-7;0 years); where amount of input, L2 exposure environment, and socio-economic status are controlled. Data from a forced-choice task show that both groups comprehend active sentences, not passives, initially (after 3.6 years of exposure). One year later, both groups improve, but only the older group reaches ceiling on both actives and passives. Two years from initial testing, the younger group catches up. Input alone cannot explain why the younger group takes 5 years to accomplish what the older group does in 4. We claim that some properties take longer to acquire at certain ages because language development is partially constrained by general cognitive and linguistic development (e.g. de Villiers, 2007; Long & Rothman, 2014; Paradis, 2008, 2010, 2011; Tsimpli, 2014).
Download Statistics DownloadsDownloads per month over past year Altmetric Deposit Details University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record |
Lists
Lists
