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Keywords = child trilingualism

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26 pages, 1716 KiB  
Article
Cognate Facilitation in Child Third Language Learners in a Multilingual Setting
by Helen Engemann and Stefanie Radetzky
Languages 2024, 9(10), 310; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9100310 - 27 Sep 2024
Viewed by 1809
Abstract
Research has established cognate facilitation effects as a robust finding in bilingual adults and children. Recent studies suggest that cognate facilitation also occurs in highly proficient trilingual adults and can even accumulate across languages. The evidence for multilingual children is scarce and inconclusive. [...] Read more.
Research has established cognate facilitation effects as a robust finding in bilingual adults and children. Recent studies suggest that cognate facilitation also occurs in highly proficient trilingual adults and can even accumulate across languages. The evidence for multilingual children is scarce and inconclusive. This study examines whether and in which direction cognate effects arise in 35 ten-year-old unbalanced trilingual children, who, in addition to their L1 Italian, acquired L2 German and L3 English in a three-way immersion class in the multilingual region of South Tyrol in Italy. We manipulated cognate status, comparing naming accuracy and latencies in both the L1 and the L3 across double, triple, and non-cognates. The results reveal cognate facilitation effects in naming accuracy, but not in naming speed, for all cognate conditions relative to non-cognates. Furthermore, cognate facilitation was restricted to the L3, replicating previously attested asymmetric effects in unbalanced speakers. In sum, the results indicate that cognate facilitation may boost lexical learning in unbalanced trilingual children who acquire the L2 and the L3 in mainly instructed settings. We discuss these findings in relation to the potential role of language proximity, the L2 status factor, and implications for lexical learning in diverse multilingual environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Language Use, Processing and Acquisition in Multilingual Contexts)
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31 pages, 1716 KiB  
Article
Catalan as a Heritage Language in Germany
by Laia Arnaus Gil and Amelia Jiménez-Gaspar
Languages 2022, 7(1), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010043 - 22 Feb 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4212
Abstract
Germany is currently the third country with more Catalan residents mainly characterized as families with children born in Germany but raised with Catalan as heritage language (HL). Only few studies have investigated Catalan as an HL in Germany. Our study tries to fill [...] Read more.
Germany is currently the third country with more Catalan residents mainly characterized as families with children born in Germany but raised with Catalan as heritage language (HL). Only few studies have investigated Catalan as an HL in Germany. Our study tries to fill this gap with spontaneous recordings of 16 bilingual and trilingual children (mean age 5;7). In terms of language competence (measured via MLU), balanced bilingualism is present in most children (44%), followed by those showing a dominance into German (38%). Interestingly, regarding language use (measured in w/minute), both balanced and Catalan dominants were fluent in both L1s similarly, while the German dominant group mostly prefer German. Moreover, the parents filled in a questionnaire on current and cumulative input from which some factors were examined such as family language policies (FLP), child’s language choice to the Catalan-speaking parent, Catalan skills of the non-native parent, family language and frequency of comprehension and production activities. In a nutshell, the results show that FLP and HL as FL or no FL seem to have an impact in the child’s grammatical development in the very early years, as opposed to family language. Children mostly direct their speech in the HL when talking to the Catalan-speaking parent. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Heritage Languages in Germany)
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