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theses

Cross-linguistically, monolingual children produce target-like inflected verb forms in their speech much earlier than they are able to reliably distinguish between singular and plural subject-verb agreement morphology in comprehension (i.e. Johnson et al., 2005; Perez-Leroux, 2005). In second language (L2) and heritage speaker populations, Spanish agreement morphology has been shown to be prone to residual optionality, even at advanced levels (i.e. Montrul, 2004; Jacobson, 2012). Thus, this dissertation explores how English and Spanish subject-verb agreement morphology develops in different types of bilingual children who attend dual language schools and examines how age of acquisition (AoA) and varying learning contexts modulate this timeline, thereby contributing to our understanding of the acquisition process and, in particular, the access and retrieval of functional features.

In this study, 200 participants aged 3 to 7 took part in three experimental tasks to assess their comprehension, production and judgments of subject-verb agreement. These included a fill in the blanks task, a picture matching task and a forced choice task. The participants were divided into five groups: 42 heritage learners; 35 L2 learners with AoA of Spanish of 3; 46 L2 learners with AoA of Spanish of 5; 40 English monolinguals; 39 monolingually-raised Spanish dominant children. The findings indicate that children’s performance is modulated by AoA, but not necessarily context of acquisition. In English, bilingual children in dual language programs develop at the same rate as monolingual peers in production and, furthermore, bootstrapping effects were found in the comprehension of the early bilingual children (heritage and L2ers with AoA of 3). In Spanish, bilinguals’ comprehension develops at the same rate as Spanish dominant children. Their accuracy in production, however, does not reach ceiling in this age range, while Spanish dominant children reach ceiling before age 4. Amount of language output and use was found to be a greater predictor of productive accuracy than amount of input for heritage speakers. Additionally, heritage and Spanish dominant children distinguish commands from declaratives before they can distinguish third person singular from third person plural morphology, suggesting that syntax is indeed acquired before morphology.

These results have implications for theories of bilingualism, bilingual education and dual language programs. First, functional features appear to be available from the very start of language learning for all children, though each group followed a different path of acquisition. Secondly, educators working with bilingual children should be aware that greater opportunities for speaking, both at home and at school, lead to stronger abilities and higher accuracy. Additionally, the bootstrapping effects found in the English comprehension of the early bilingual children provides evidence that a child’s two languages can support each other and that learning in one language can provide a strong foundation for learning in the other.

ETD_10827

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-pz6k-5124

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.