Do bilingual children lag behind? A study of morphological encoding using ERPs
- The current study investigates how bilingual children encode and produce morphologically complex words. We employed a silent-production-plus-delayed-vocalization paradigm in which event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during silent encoding of inflected words which were subsequently cued to be overtly produced. The bilingual children's spoken responses and their ERPs were compared to previous datasets from monolingual children on the same task. We found an enhanced negativity for regular relative to irregular forms during silent production in both bilingual children's languages, replicating the ERP effect previously obtained from monolingual children. Nevertheless, the bilingual children produced more morphological errors (viz. over-regularizations) than monolingual children. We conclude that mechanisms of morphological encoding (as measured by ERPs) are parallel for bilingual and monolingual children, and that the increased over-regularization rates are due to their reduced exposure to each of the two languagesThe current study investigates how bilingual children encode and produce morphologically complex words. We employed a silent-production-plus-delayed-vocalization paradigm in which event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during silent encoding of inflected words which were subsequently cued to be overtly produced. The bilingual children's spoken responses and their ERPs were compared to previous datasets from monolingual children on the same task. We found an enhanced negativity for regular relative to irregular forms during silent production in both bilingual children's languages, replicating the ERP effect previously obtained from monolingual children. Nevertheless, the bilingual children produced more morphological errors (viz. over-regularizations) than monolingual children. We conclude that mechanisms of morphological encoding (as measured by ERPs) are parallel for bilingual and monolingual children, and that the increased over-regularization rates are due to their reduced exposure to each of the two languages (relative to monolingual children).…
Author details: | Harald ClahsenORCiDGND, Anna JessenORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000919000321 |
ISSN: | 0305-0009 |
ISSN: | 1469-7602 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31287034 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of child language |
Publisher: | Cambridge Univ. Press |
Place of publishing: | New York |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2019 |
Publication year: | 2019 |
Release date: | 2020/11/18 |
Tag: | bilingualism; event-related brain potentials; morphology |
Volume: | 46 |
Issue: | 5 |
Number of pages: | 25 |
First page: | 955 |
Last Page: | 979 |
Funding institution: | Alexander-von-Humboldt-ProfessorshipAlexander von Humboldt Foundation |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
External remark: | Zweitveröffentlichung in der Schriftenreihe Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe ; 682 |