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Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2014 / Refer to the document

Language acquisition research frequently concerns itself with linguistic development and result of the acquisition process with respect to a first or subsequent language. For some, it seems tacitly assumed that a first language, once acquired, remains stable, regardless of exposure to and the acquisition of additional language(s) beyond the first one in childhood. Research on language attrition (language loss) questions the validity of this assumption and raises questions that will not only help in describing and explaining the nature of linguistic attrition, but also shed light on the mental (cognitive) representation of human language. The goal of this dissertation is to contribute to the general program of research that investigates possible domains of first language attrition and its cause(s). More specifically, I endeavor to test the predictions and theoretical tenability of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace and Filiaci 2006) as applied to language attrition (e.g. Tsimpli et al 2004). The Interface Hypothesis claims that certain linguistic properties, namely those at external interfaces such as the syntax/discourse interface, are especially vulnerable to optionality in language acquisition (see Sorace and Serratrice 2009). For attrition, it predicts that, upon sufficient exposure, linguistic properties that are dependent on interfaces between the linguistic computational system and external domains of cognition (such as pragmatics and discourse structure) are more vulnerable to erosion than those that lie internally to the linguistic system (e.g. syntax/semantic interface) or those that are purely syntactic in nature. Within this framework, attrition is hypothesized to either be due to direct interference from the L2 or due to linguistic processing deficits that are a byproduct of being bilingual. The comprehensive nature of this case study, which tests the L1 grammar of an adult native speaker of Spanish after 25 years of uninterrupted naturalistic exposure to Brazilian Portuguese across the different property types, not only allows for an examination of possible domains of attrition (e.g. external interfaces, internal interfaces, syntax) but also allows for teasing apart of the cause of attrition by combining both untimed and timed methodologies. Although the main focus of this dissertation is to test the limits and explanatory value of the Interface Hypothesis, the data will also be examined in light of other theories such as Paradis' (2004) Activation Threshold Hypothesis and Jakobson's (1940) Regression Hypothesis to determine the extent to which various theories might best explain the data to be obtained.

While it has been recognized that L2 word learning is facilitated for cognates (De Groot & Keijzer 2000), approaches to cognate acquisition have focused on the similarity of L1- L2 forms, overlooking regular patterns in differences between items. For example, English phone [dʒ] regularly corresponds to the Spanish phone [x]: agent [eɪdʒɛnt]- agente [axente], voyage [vɔɪədʒ]- viaje [bjaxe]. The current studies test whether L1 English, L2 Spanish learners acquire and utilize regular cognate sound correspondences. Experiment 1 compared accuracy for cognate forms that include or do not include regular correspondences. Subjects learned the English names of 20 monsters. Afterward, they saw each monster's image and heard its name in English, then recalled and produced the monster's (cognate) name in Spanish. Results revealed higher accuracy for items containing regular cognate correspondences. Subjects with higher proficiency showed greater differences in accuracy between regular and irregular items. In Experiment 2, subjects heard a novel word in either English or Spanish and invented a plausible cognate in the other language. Their modifications to the word forms were analyzed. Analyses revealed that subjects’ modifications were not random, but rather demonstrated convergence on dominant modification strategies. Higher proficiency correlated with greater convergence on dominant strategies. Together, these results demonstrate that L1 English, L2 Spanish learners have knowledge of regular cognate correspondences and can utilize correspondences to learn or invent new cognate forms. Furthermore, because this knowledge is acquired gradually by the L2 learner, cognate processing is not consistent across proficiency levels or between individual learners.

The purpose of this study is to investigate family factors in relation to young Chinese immigrants' code-switching and language maintenance. Specific attention is given to children's code-switching behaviour and how parents respond and the effect of parental response upon children's language choice in any subsequent utterance. Attempts are also made to identify the family factors that might have an effect on making language choice. Data were collected monthly through naturalistic tape-recording of families' conversations for one calendar year. Recordings of every other month were transcribed and coded for analysis. A questionnaire was used with the children's parents to obtain general family background information as well as to compare the parents' language beliefs and their actual language behaviour in real life.Results indicated that within an average of 28.1 months of stay in New Zealand, the use of Mandarin Chinese, their ethnic language, was dramatically reduced. In typical family conversations, the parents were using Mandarin Chinese in only 75.6% of their conversational turns and that figure for the children was 65.1%. If the amount of mother tongue use at home is an indicator, then the speed of shift in these families investigated appears to be relatively fast. Few parents, however, felt that their children were using too much English or ever attempted to stop them doing this, despite the fact that all the parents claimed that they very much wanted their children to maintain the ethnic language and were fully aware of the importance of their role as the main input source of their ethnic language. This seems to suggest that the marketplace value of the mainstream language is overtaking the core value of their ethnic language.Results also showed that parental use of English caused a substantially increased use of English from their children. There tended to be an "upgrading" towards English in the children's language choice suggesting that code-switching could be a temporary stage for the children along the gradual process of language shift. On the other hand, the parents were also found using more English after their children's code-switching. One of the reasons for this might be that the parents want to improve their English and regard their children as an ideal person to practise English with.With regard to daily communication functions, results showed that children often resorted to English for daily speech acts indicating that language function replacement has occurred for many daily communicative functions resulting from a gradually reduced use of the ethnic language.Many family factors were found to be affecting language use in the families: the presence of grandparents and the decision to return to their birth country for residence in the future were clearly correlated with increased use of the ethnic language; the parents' level of English language, on the other hand, was found to be related to the amount of English used, though with exceptions.These results strongly suggest that English is taking over the family domains that used to belong to the ethnic language. Parents who want their children to maintain their ethnic language need to put daily effort into action. Without painstaking daily effort, language shift will and probably is happening no matter how strong their theoretical beliefs might be.

If an individual speaks more than one language, there are always at least two ways of verbalising any thought to be expressed. The bilingual speaker must then have a means of ensuring that their utterances are produced in the desired language. However, prominent models of speech production are based almost exclusively on monolingual considerations and require substantial modification to account for bilingual production. A particularly important feature to be explained is the way bilinguals control the language of speech production: for instance, preventing interference from the unintended language, and switching from one language to another. One recent model draws a parallel between bilinguals??? control of their linguistic system and the control of cognitive tasks more generally. The first two experiments reported in this thesis explore the validity of this model by comparing bilingual language switching with a monolingual switching task, as well as to the broader task-switching literature. Switch costs did not conform to the predictions of the task-set inhibition hypothesis in either experiment, as the ???paradoxical??? asymmetry of switch costs was not replicated and some conditions showed benefits, rather than costs, for switching between languages or tasks. Further experiments combined picture naming with negative priming and semantic competitor priming paradigms to examine the role of inhibitory and competitive processes in bilingual lexical selection. Each experiment was also conducted in a parallel monolingual version. Very little negative priming was evident when speaking the second language, but the effects of interlingual cognate status were pronounced. There were some indications of cross-language competition at the level of lexical selection: participants appeared unable to suppress the irrelevant language, even when doing so would make the task easier. Across all the experiments, there was no evidence for global inhibition of the language-not-in-use during speech production. Overall results were characterised by a remarkable flexibility in the mechanisms of bilingual control. A striking dissociation emerged between the patterns of results for cognate and non-cognate items, which was reflected throughout the series of experiments and implicates qualitative differences in the way these lexical items are represented and interconnected.

This study set out to investigate the connections between language retention and identity construction among young bilingual Spanish-speaking children from Latin American backgrounds living in urban communities in Sydney, It provides a critical examination of the complex articulation between languages, identity and education. The thesis proposes that there are significant cultural, social and political forces involved in language retention in childhood and that these forces mediate and shape identity construction in bilingual children. Much of the research literature on childhood bilingualism draws on dominant and established psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic theories of bilingualism and language learning. These theories do not fully explain the impact of broader sociological processes that impact on home language retention and identity construction in young children. Consequently, in early childhood and primary education, pedagogical understandings of bilingualism and language retention have focussed narrowly on learnability issues and cognitive development. Established theories of bilingualism have not fully articulated the intersections between language retention and identity construction in the early years of children’s lives, where the formation of identity is constantly negotiated, transformed and contested amidst a background of hegemonic English-speaking social fields such as in prior-to-school, school and other community settings. This thesis begins in Chapter One by providing an overview of the limitations of these psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic theories in making connections between identity construction and language retention for children of particular immigrant minority groups. Chapter Two reviews the literature and research. There has been little research in Australia into how bilingual families and their children negotiate identity and language retention. The thesis explores the proposition that the dominance of English and discourses of monolingualism legitimise institutional and educational practices that position young bilingual children, families and educators into marginalised situations in everyday social relations. It is against this field that the research reported here investigated how such sociological factors represent a significant force in children’s lives by impacting on their retention of their home language. Chapter Three introduces the key theoretical concepts used in this study which draws on Bourdieu’s theory of social practice (1990, 1991) and the theoretical resources of cultural studies informed, in particular, by concepts from Hall (1992, 1996) and Bhabha (1994, 1998). These conceptual tools enable the study to examine ways in which identity construction and bilingualism accumulate social, cultural and linguistic capital in selective cultural fields, and how these may hinder or promote the retention and learning of languages in children. Chapter Four overviewed the research methodology involved in this study. It incorporated quasi-ethnographic, case study and interpretative approaches using questionnaires, informal interviews, participant observations, field notes, children’s work and the collection of documentation. The research process began as a pilot study in which 5 adults and 3 children participated. Three interrelated phases followed. The participants in the study included 25 children and 29 family members, including grandparents and parents with different family structures from extended, blended, interethnic and interracial families. An additional 34 caregivers and teachers working in prior-to-school and school settings participated. The first phase involved 14 interviews of parents and grandparents. The second phase involved a case study of parents and their children attending an after-school Spanish Community Languages Program. I interviewed and surveyed 26 children, 13 parents, and 2 staff members. Finally, in the third phase, I surveyed 30 practitioners working with Spanish-speaking Latin American children in prior-to-school and school settings were. The investigation involved the documentation and analysis of young children’s bilingual experiences using Spanish and English in a range of social fields, such as family life, educational and community settings. As the children and their families are the focus of this study, the children’s views about growing up with two languages, and family perspectives and aspirations about living, working and raising children in multicultural/multilingual communities, form the basis of the investigation. Furthermore, the data analysis involved the examination of the evidence to ascertain how the power relations in educational and community settings shape and influence children’s negotiation of identity and the retention of Spanish. Likewise, data relating to caregiver and teacher attitudes towards bilingualism and language retention were also analysed. Chapter Five details the links between diaspora, hybridity and diversity apparent in the cultural histories and heterogeneous make-up of the families and their children. Analysis of the links between Spanish language retention and diversity show that diversity in families is a significant but not conclusive factor in what constituted success in language retention in young children. This analysis examines of the multiple ways in which the families and their children constructed their identities. The influences these constructions have on speaking Spanish were analysed to demonstrate the connections between language retention and identity construction. Chapter Seven draws on the children’s views, experiences and preferences for speaking Spanish to analyse how the linguistic habitus enables the accumulation of cultural and social capital in speaking Spanish across a variety of social fields. Finally, Chapter Eight provides an analysis of how teachers’ and caregivers’ attitudes towards bilingualism and language retention can impede or promote opportunities for children’s language retention. In particular, the evidence indicates that the lack of institutional and structural support for community languages had a direct impact on children’s interest in using Spanish in both mainstream and non mainstream educational settings. Four key findings emerged through the data analysis presented in the evidentiary chapters of this thesis. First, diaspora and hybridity highlighted the significance of the heterogeneity in Latin American families. Second, it was revealed that multiple constructions of identity mediated everyday lived experiences of being bilingual. Third, the linguistic habitus was significant in shaping children’s identity across different social and cultural fields. Fourth, teacher and caregiver attitudes and pedagogical practices towards bilingualism and language retention shaped children’s identity construction and opportunities for using Spanish. In conclusion, this study revealed that there is a strong connection between identity construction and language retention in young bilingual children. In particular, the study highlights the significance of multiplicity and hybridity in shaping identity which in turn forms dispositions that can enable the formation, reproduction and transformation of cultural and social capital. This study investigated the broader sociological factors associated with growing up bilingual and how these mediate and shape children����s understanding of themselves and their families, in terms of how they negotiate two (or more) linguistic codes. Hence, the study has contributed towards a reframing of understandings about bilingualism and language retention in childhood. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p>Flerspråkighet är inget modernt ord, det är ett faktum i vårt samhälle att vi lever i en mångkulturell miljö. Många barn kommer hit från andra länder och placeras in i vår svenska skola med kort varsel, där de förväntas anpassa sig efter alla främmande företeelser och kulturella skillnader som finns. Vi ville se hur man som pedagog utifrån detta planerade och genomförde undervisning som var anpassad till en mångkulturell skola. Därför valde vi att genomföra intervjuer med vissa pedagoger, som är de flerspråkiga barnens närmsta länk i skolan. Genom dem fick vi veta hur komplext pedagogernas arbete är, hur frustrerande det kan vara när språket blir till en barriär för kommunikationen. Hur viktigt det är att barnen får stöd i alla sina språk, för att det lägger grunden för deras framtid och förutsättningar. För att detta ska kunna förverkligas måste pedagoger förstå att deras inställning till flerspråkighet och mångkultur återspeglas i barnen, deras attityder formas utifrån det.</p>

<p>Syftet med detta examensarbete var att genom en fallstudie undersöka hur två olika skolor anpassar organisation och undervisning, utifrån andraspråkselevers särskilda behov. Forskningsbakgrunden lyfter fram för undersökningen centrala tankar inom andraspråksteorier, synen på språkundervisning genom tiderna samt organisationen av undervisningen idag. Syftet var att belysa skolors arbetssätt vad gäller under­visning av andraspråkselever och jämföra det med den forskningsbakgrund vi har tagit del av.     För att ta reda på detta använde vi oss av kvalitativa metoder. Inledningsvis genomfördes observationer av klassrums­undervisning, vilket följdes av intervjuer av berörda klasslärare samt enkätintervjuer med lärare i svenska som andraspråk.   Det vi kunde konstatera var att en grundläggande lärarutbildning, med fortsatt kompetens­utbildning i svenska som andraspråk, är en förutsättning för att skapa ett undervisningsklimat som gynnar elever med annat modersmål än svenska. Dessutom hade skolans policy för hur under­visningen bör bedrivas samt inställning till dessa elever avgörande betydelse.    Slutsatsen blev att ju mer medvetna lärarna är om andra­språkselevernas språk­utveckling och vilken förmåga de har att skapa ett gott interaktionistiskt lärande­klimat, desto bättre blir förutsättningarna för elever att tillägna sig ett andraspråk.</p>