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Abstract Cross-linguistic interactions are the hallmark of bilingual development. Theoretical perspectives highlight the key role ofcross-linguistic distancesandlanguage structurein literacy development. Despite the strong theoretical assumptions, the impact of such bilingualism factors in heritage-language speakers remains elusive given high variability in children's heritage-language experiences. A longitudinal inquiry of heritage-language learners of structurally distinct languages – Spanish–English and Chinese–English bilinguals (N= 181,Mage= 7.57, measured 1.5 years apart) aimed to fill this gap. Spanish–English bilinguals showed stronger associations between morphological awareness skills across their two languages, across time, likely reflecting cross-linguistic similarities in vocabulary and lexical morphology between Spanish and English. Chinese–English bilinguals, however, showed stronger associations between morphological and word reading skills in English, likely reflecting the critical role of morphology in spoken and written Chinese word structure. The findings inform theories of literacy by uncovering the mechanisms by which bilingualism factors influence child literacy development.
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Amodal phonology
Does knowledge of language transfer spontaneously across language modalities? For example, do English speakers, who have had no command of a sign language, spontaneously project grammatical constraints from English to linguistic signs? Here, we address this question by examining the constraints on doubling. We first demonstrate that doubling (e.g., panana, generally, ABB) is amenable to two conflicting parses (identity vs. reduplication), depending on the level of analysis (phonology vs. morphology). We next show that speakers with no command of a sign language spontaneously project these two parses to novel ABB signs in American Sign language. Moreover, the chosen parse (for signs) is constrained by the morphology of spoken language. Hebrew speakers can project the morphological parse when doubling indicates diminution, but English speakers only do so when doubling indicates plurality, in line with the distinct morphological properties of their spoken languages. These observations suggest that doubling in speech and signs is constrained by a common set of linguistic principles that are algebraic, amodal and abstract.
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- PAR ID:
- 10192839
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of linguistics
- ISSN:
- 1469-7742
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226720000298
