The Bilingual Advantage

A Gender Metalinguistic Task in Arabic–English Bilingual Children

Authors

  • Huda Qalil Althobaiti Bangor University
  • Dr Eirini Sanoudaki Bangor University
  • Dr George Kotzoglou University of the Aegean

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jmbs.14237

Keywords:

syntactic awareness, bilingual development, metalinguistic awareness, Arabic, child language, bilingualism

Abstract

A finding that has not received much attention in the metalinguistic awareness literature is that bilingual children may be better at identifying gender mismatches between a subject and a predicate. This phenomenon is not well understood, nor has it been studied systematically. In the present study we present a systematic investigation of the phenomenon involving all three levels of metalinguistic awareness (identification of the mismatch, correction and explanation) in a language pair that has not been tested previously. We tested a group of six-year-old Arabic–English bilingual children in comparison with two monolingual control groups. Results reveal that bilinguals performed better than monolinguals at the correction level. The study reveals a bilingual advantage in this population for the first time, while enhancing our knowledge of the development of metalinguistic awareness.

References

Adesope, O. O., Lavin, T., Thompson, T. & Ungerleider, C. (2010). Systematic review and meta-analysis on the cognitive benefits of bilingualism. Review of Educational Research, 80, 207â??45. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654310368803

Badawi, E., Carter, M. G. & Gully, A. (2016). Modern written Arabic: A comprehensive grammar, rev. edition. London: Routledge.

Bahloul, M. (2006). Agreement. In K. Vesteegh (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Arabic language and linguistics, vol. 1 (pp. 43â??8). Leiden: Brill.

Barac, R. & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development, 83, 413â??22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01707.x

Barac, R., Bialystok, E., Castro, D. C. & Sanchez, M. (2014). The cognitive development of young dual language learners: A critical review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29, 699â??714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.02.003

Berko, J. (1958). The childâ??s learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150â??77.

Bialystok, E. (1987). Words as things: Development of word concept by bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9, 133â??40. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100000437

Bialystok, E. (1988). Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness. Developmental Psychology, 24, 560â??67. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.24.4.560

Bialystok, E. (2010). Global-local and trail-making tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: Beyond inhibition. Developmental Psychology, 46, 93â??105. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015466

Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Klein, R. & Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon Task. Psychology and Aging, 19, 290â??303. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.19.2.290

Bialystok, E. & Martin, M. M. (2004). Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: Evidence from the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task. Developmental Science, 7, 325â??39. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2004.00351.x

Bialystok, E. & Senman, L. (2004). Executive processes in appearance-reality tasks: The role of inhibition of attention and symbolic representation. Child Development, 75, 562â??79. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00693.x

Bialystok, E. & Viswanathan, M. (2009). Components of executive control with advantages for bilingual children in two cultures. Cognition, 112: 494â??500. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.06.014

Cain, K. (2007). Syntactic awareness and reading ability: Is there any evidence for a special relationship? Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 679â??94. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716407070361

Cairns, H. S., Waltzman, D. & Schlisselberg, G. (2004). Detecting the ambiguity of sentences: Relationship to early reading skill. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 25, 68â??78. https://doi.org/10.1177/15257401040250020401

Carlson, S. M. & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. Developmental Science, 11, 282â??98. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00675.x

Chaney, C. (1994). Language development, metalinguistic awareness, and emergent literacy skills of 3-year-old children in relation to social class. Applied Psycholinguistics, 15, 371â??94. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400004501

Cheung, H., Chung, K. K. H., Wong, S. W. L., McBride-Chang, C., Penney, T. B. & Ho, C. S. H. (2010). Speech perception, metalinguistic awareness, reading, and vocabulary in Chineseâ??English bilingual children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 367â??80. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017850

Comrie, B. (1999). Grammatical gender systems: A linguistâ??s assessment. Journal of Psych­olinguistic Research, 28, 457â??66.

Corbett, G. (1991) Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cromdal, J. (1999). Childhood bilingualism and metalinguistic skills: Analysis and control in young Swedishâ??English bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 1â??20. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716499001010

Cummins, J. (1993). Bilingualism and second language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 13, 51â??70.

Davidson, D., Raschke, V. R. & Pervez, J. (2010). Syntactic awareness in young monolingual and bilingual (Urduâ??English) children. Cognitive Development, 25, 166â??82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2009.07.003

Dodd, B. J., So, L. K. H. & Lam, K. K. C. (2008). Bilingualism and learning: The effect of language pair on phonological awareness abilities. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 13, 99â??113. https://doi.org/10.1080/19404150802380514

Dunn, L. M., Dunn, D. M. & Styles, B. (2009). The British picture vocabulary scale. Swindon: GL Assessment.

Fabiano-Smith, L. & Barlow, J. A. (2010). Interaction in bilingual phonological acquisition: Evidence from phonetic inventories. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13, 81â??97. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050902783528

Fabiano-Smith, L. & Goldstein, B. A. (2010). Phonological acquisition in bilingual Spanishâ??English speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53(1), 160â??78. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2009/07-0064)

Fowler, A. E. (1988). Grammaticality judgments and reading skill in grade 2. Annals of Dyslexia, 38, 73â??94. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02648249

Friesen, D. C. & Bialystok, E. (2012). Metalinguistic ability in bilingual children: The role of executive control. Riv. Psicolinguist. Appl., 12, 47â??56.

Galambos, S. J. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1990). The effects of learning two languages on levels of metalinguistic awareness. Cognition, 34, 1â??56. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(90)90030-n

Gathercole, V. C. Mueller, Thomas, E. M., Kennedy, I., Prys, C., Young, N., Viñas Guasch, N., Roberts, E. J., Hughes, E. K. & Jones, L. (2014). Does language dominance affect cognitive performance in bilinguals? Lifespan evidence from preschoolers through older adults on card sorting, simon, and metalinguistic tasks. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00011

Gombert, J. E. (1992). Metalinguistic development. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Grosjean, F. (2001). The bilingualâ??s language modes. In J. L. Nicol (ed.), Explaining linguistics. One mind, two languages: Bilingual language processing (pp. 1â??22). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Hirata-Edds, T. (2011). Influence of second language Cherokee immersion on childrenâ??s development of past tense in their first language, English. Language Learning, 61, 700â??33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00655.x

Hockett, C. F. (1958). A course in modern linguistics. New York: Macmillan.

Ibrahim, R., Eviatar, Z. & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2007). Metalinguistic awareness and reading performance: A cross language comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 36, 297â??317. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-006-9046-3

Kang, J. Y. (2012). Do bilingual children possess better phonological awareness? Investigation of Korean monolingual and Koreanâ??English bilingual children. Reading and Writing, 25, 411â??31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9277-4

Kovács, Ã. M. (2008). Early bilingualism enhances mechanisms of false-belief reasoning. Developmental Science, 12, 48â??54. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00742.x

Kremers, J. M. (2003). The Arabic noun phrase: A minimalist approach. Amsterdam: Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap.

Loizou, M. & Stuart, M. (2003). Phonological awareness in monolingual and bilingual English and Greek five-year-olds. Journal of Research in Reading, 26, 3â??18. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.261002

Malakoff, M. & Hakuta, K. (1991). Translation skill and metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals. In E. Bialystock (ed.), Language processing in bilingual children (pp. 141â??66). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511620652.009

Moawad, R. (2006) The acquisition of the Arabic gender and number systems. PhD dissertation, Bangor University.

Müller, N. (1998). Transfer in bilingual ï¬rst language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 151â??71. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1366728998000261

Paap, K. R. (2014). The role of componential analysis, categorical hypothesising, replicability and confirmation bias in testing for bilingual advantages in executive functioning. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 26, 242â??55. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2014.891597

Paradis, J. & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 1â??25. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100014662

Paradis, J. (2001). Do bilingual two-year-olds have separate phonological systems? International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 19â??38. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069010050010201

Peal, E. & Lambert, W. E. (1962). The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Ricciardelli, L. A. (1992). Bilingualism and cognitive development in relation to threshold theory. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 21, 301â??16.

Ryding, K. C. (2005). A reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Semel, E., Wiig, E. H. & Secord, W. A. (2003). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals, fourth edition (CELF-4). Toronto, Canada: Psychological Corporation.

Serratrice, L., Sorace, A. & Paoli, S. (2004). Crosslinguistic influence at the syntaxâ??pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in Englishâ??Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(3), 183â??205. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1366728904001610

Siok, W. T. & Fletcher, P. (2001). The role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese reading acquisition. Developmental Psychology, 37, 886â??99. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.37.6.886

Sorace, A., Serratrice, L., Filiaci, F. & Baldo, M. (2009). Discourse conditions on subject pronoun realization: Testing the linguistic intuitions of older bilingual children. Lingua, 119, 460â??77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2008.09.008

Tong, X., Deacon, S. H., Kirby, J. R., Cain, K. & Parrila, R. (2011). Morphological awareness: A key to understanding poor reading comprehension In English. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103, 523â??34. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023495

Tunmer, W.E., Nesdale, A. R. & Wright, A. D. (1987). Syntactic awareness and reading acquisition. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 25â??34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835x.1987.tb01038.x

Zipke, M. (2007). The role of metalinguistic awareness in the reading comprehension of sixth and seventh graders. Reading Psychology, 28, 375â??96. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702710701260615

Published

2020-12-24

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Althobaiti, Huda Qalil, Eirini Sanoudaki, and George Kotzoglou. 2020. “The Bilingual Advantage: A Gender Metalinguistic Task in Arabic–English Bilingual Children”. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech 2 (2): 165–184. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmbs.14237.