Comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in sequential bilingual children: do they pattern similarly to L1 children, L2 adults, or children with specific language impairment?

Marinis, T. and Chondrogianni, V. (2011) Comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in sequential bilingual children: do they pattern similarly to L1 children, L2 adults, or children with specific language impairment? Journal of Neurolinguistics, 24 (2). pp. 202-212. ISSN 0911-6044 doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.02.009

Abstract/Summary

This paper investigates how sequential bilingual (L2) Turkish-English children comprehend English reflexives and pronouns and tests whether they pattern similarly to monolingual (L1) children, L2 adults, or children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Thirty nine 6- to 9-year-old L2 children with an age of onset of 30-48 months and exposure to English of 30-72 months and 33 L1 age-matched control children completed the Advanced Syntactic Test of Pronominal Reference-Revised (van der Lely, 1997). The L2 children’s performance was compared to L2 adults from Demirci (2001) and children with SLI from van der Lely & Stollwerck (1997). The L2 children’s performance in the comprehension of reflexives was almost identical to their age-matched controls, and differed from L2 adults and children with SLI. In the comprehension of pronouns, L2 children showed an asymmetry between referential and quantificational NPs, a pattern attested in younger L1 children and children with SLI. Our study provides evidence that the development of comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in these children resembles monolingual L1 acquisition and not adult L2 acquisition or acquisition of children with SLI.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/17254
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.02.009
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences
Uncontrolled Keywords	Reflexives; Pronouns; L2 children; L2 adults; L1 children; Specific language impairment
Publisher	Elsevier
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item