[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages
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20230721T101520230721T1800Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages100 % Online sessionAILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Language shift during primary school? Reported Language Use, Proficiency and Narratives in German-Italian bilingual children
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 11:15:00 UTC
Background: Language dominance has often been related to (i) the majority language in a given (national) setting, (ii) reported language use, (iii) relatively proficiency. We will add a fourth dimension: narrative abilities. We investigated whether bilingual children have different degrees of formal and informal language experience and whether these correlate differently with measured proficiency. We were further interested in a potential dominance shift during primary school from minority to majority language (e.g., Kupisch et al. 2021).
Hypotheses: We hypothesized, first, that reported language use, particularly formal, would correlate with linguistic proficiency since amount of language exposure at school was previously shown to determine linguistic proficiency (Goldberg et al. 2008, Paradis 2011). Second, we expected to find a shift in dominance determined by age and language experience.
Methods: We tested 84 Italian-German bilingual children (6-9 years) in Germany. Reported language experience was assessed by questionnaires, linguistic proficiency (Microstructure) and narrative abilities (Macrostructure) with the MAIN Narrative task (Gagarina et al. 2019) carried out online. Linguistic proficiency was determined using Mean Length of Utterances, lexical diversity and fluency measures (speech rate). The MAIN score was used to calculate narrative abilities.
Results: Results showed that Italian informal language experience correlated with all Italian proficiency measures (excl. TTR), whereas German informal language experience only correlated with German speech rate. Moreover, Italian informal language experience correlated with lower proficiency scores in German (excl. MLU) and German informal experience with lower scores in Italian. Formal language did not affect proficiency in any language.[TK1] All children developed VOCD and macrostructure comprehension faster in German. Overall, the study implies that language experience in informal contexts[TK2] promotes proficiency. The study also suggests that, during primary school, a shift from the minority to the majority language seems to be in progress.
Figure 1. Formal and Informal Language Use in German and Italian
References Gagarina, N., Klop, D., Kunnari, S., Tantele, K., Välimaa, T., Bohnacker, U., & Walters, J. (2019). MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives - Revised.ZAS Papers in Linguistics 63.
Goldberg, H, Paradis, J, & Crago, M. (2008). Lexical acquisition over time in minority L1 children learning English as L2.Applied Psycholinguistics, 29(01), 41-65.DOI: 10.1017/S014271640808003X
Kupisch, T., Kolb, N., Rodina, Y., & Urek, O. (2021). Foreign Accent in Pre- and Primary School Heritage Bilinguals.Languages,6(96), 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.3390/languages6020096
Paradis, J. (2008). Individual differences in child English second language acquisition: Comparing child-internal and child-external factors. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(3), 213-237. DOI: 10.1075/lab.1.3.01par
Presenters Mariapaola Piccione PhD Student, University Of Stuttgart Co-authors
Bilingual profiles in Catalan-Spanish children at the onset of primary schooling
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 11:15:00 UTC
Describing linguistic abilities in children entering primary school is relevant to setting appropriate expectations for development during the initial stages of schooling and advising concerned parents about the effects of early multilingualism. Since early differences in language skills may compound, creating increasing gaps in achievement, determining the best recipients for linguistic support early on is crucial for educators. In doing so, describing bilingual profiles (i.e., profiles of proficiency that consider both languages simultaneously) provides a valuable tool. This study investigates abilities in Catalan and Spanish at the beginning of Grade 1 in Catalonia, a province where Catalan and Spanish are co-official languages, where Catalan is the minority language. Catalan-Spanish bilingual children (N=162) completed tests of receptive vocabulary and grammar in the two languages during the first two months of primary education (ages 5-6). Parents completed a background questionnaire that yielded information on participant/family demographics and their linguistic environment. We investigated two questions: 1-What bilingual profiles are present in the data? 2-What are the best predictors of these profiles? Given previous research on bilingual development in Catalan-Spanish bilingual children, for question 1, we hypothesized that there would be two main profiles in the sample: one that is more Catalan-dominant (i.e., higher scores for the two Catalan tests and lower scores in the Spanish tests) and a Spanish-dominant one. For question 2, we hypothesized that the former group would be characterized by significantly higher exposure to Catalan in the home and at school, and vice versa for the Spanish-dominant group. To answer question 1 empirically, we employed k-means clustering, which found two main bilingual profiles in the data. Contrary to our hypothesis, one bilingual profile could be described as high-performing in the two languages, with the second one appearing as relatively low-performing. To answer question 2, we ran a logistic regression predicting whether a participant would be classified in the high-performing or in the low-performing group. The predictors were language use (in the home, with friends, and in the classroom), frequency of Catalan and Spanish use in reading/watching TV/extracurricular activities, and socioeconomic status. The model found two predictors that contributed significantly to the model. Specifically, it was found that participants in classrooms where Spanish was the most common language were significantly more likely to be classified in the low-performing cluster, and participants who engaged in reading activities more frequently in Catalan were more likely to be classified in the high-performing cluster. Two main findings emerge from these results: 1-When it comes to receptive abilities in Catalan and Spanish at the onset of primary school, languages do not take away from each other. That is, higher abilities in one language are related to higher abilities in the other language, resulting in high-performing and low-performing profiles. 2-Despite societal bilingualism in Catalonia, engaging more frequently with the minority language, Catalan, at school and outside may confer advantages not only in Catalan but in Spanish as well.
The Bilingual Language Profile (BLP) as a tool to characterize language dominance in bilingual young adults in Catalonia
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 11:15:00 UTC
A number of studies have demonstrated language dominance effects at different linguistic levels, also in Catalan-Spanish early and functional bilinguals (phonetic: Ramírez & Simonet, 2019; lexical: Ferré & Brysbaert, 2017; morphosyntactic: Puig-Mayenco et al., 2018; among others). However, there is not a single definition of language dominance, nor a consensus as to how to measure and operationalize it (Silva-Corvalán & Treffers-Daller, 2016). For this purpose, a variety of sociolinguistic questionnaires have been designed (e.g., Marian et al., 2007; Dunn & Fox-Tree, 2009), but none of them has been thought for assessing language dominance in bilingual societies such as Catalonia. Nowadays, there are progressively more studies using the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP; Birdsong et al., 2012). This self-reported questionnaire understands language dominance as a multidimensional and gradual construct and aims at placing bilingual participants in a bilingual continuum. It is divided in four modules: a) language history, b) language use, c) language proficiency, and d) language attitudes. The scores obtained for each module are used to generate a global dominance score. The aim of the present study is to analyze to what extent the BLP allows for characterizing bilinguals who live and have grown up in a bilingual society where both languages are used daily and in a variety of contexts. To do so, 254 bilinguals raised and educated in Catalonia, mainly university students, answered the BLP. From their global dominance score, they were classified into three groups: Catalan-dominant bilinguals, balanced bilinguals, and Spanish-dominant bilinguals. Several comparisons were made to investigate in which modules or questions the three bilingual groups presented similar or different experiences. Results show that the BLP global dominance score allows for grouping Catalan- and Spanish-dominant bilinguals homogeneously enough. These two groups show clearly polarized scores in their respective dominant languages. Conversely, balanced bilinguals show more variation, specially in the language use module, which is the module that more categorically distinguishes the three groups. The language history module offers a higher overlap between groups than the language use module. Indeed, in the responses referring to language history, the shared experiences by our bilinguals seem to be more weighted than the experiences that distinguish them. This finding suggests the need to refine this module. Regarding language proficiency, very few differences emerge between bilinguals, which questions its relevance as a determining element for bilinguals schooled in Catalonia. Finally, clear differences appear in the attitudes' module, specially referring to language identification. Overall, language use and attitudes are the modules that make the most relevant contribution to the BLP's global score. In this regard, we bring up the question of whether language attitudes should have the same weight or value as language history and use as explanatory parameters of language dominance. In short, the BLP can delimit bilinguals with clearly polarized linguistic experiences (i.e., Catalan- and Spanish-dominant bilinguals), but does not allow for clearly identifying the bilingual profile of more balanced bilinguals. Hence, there is a need to develop a tool that assesses language dominance adapted to the sociolinguistic reality of Catalonia.
Minority and majority language children in CLIL (French/German) and regular French classes in Bavarian Elementary Schools – Longitudinal results from the Bavarian program ‘Bilingual Elementary School French’/’Bilinguale Grundschule Französisch’
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 11:15:00 UTC
The effectiveness of bilingual elementary school programs in comparison with mainstream foreign language programs remains an important research topic (e.g. Wesche 2002; Zaunbauer et al. 2012). For example, more recent research has shown that pupils' foreign language competencies are strongly affected by the overall intensity of a foreign language program and that an intensive mainstream program can be at least as effective as a less intensive CLIL program (cf. Steinlen 2018). Another variable that has recently gained increased attention in studies comparing students attending regular foreign language lessons or CLIL programs is linguistic background. Whereas many children are still learning their first foreign language at school as an L2 because they grow up with only one language (hereafter referred to as majority language children), there is also an increasing number of children who grow up with more than one language and for whom the first foreign language is already an L3 or L4 (cf. Steinlen 2021). The current study examines the data of more than 400 Bavarian elementary school students who have either attended a German-French CLIL program or a voluntary regular French program in which French is taught for two 45-minute lessons per week. In the CLIL program, the students are taught both in French and in German in subjects such as mathematics, science, physical education, music and art whereas the students who receive two voluntary French lessons per week are taught all school subjects in German. The major goal of the study is to determine which level of competence majority language and minority language students attending either the CLIL program or the regular program can reach in the foreign language French, the majority language German and in mathematics. A second goal is to identify similarities and differences in the minority and the majority language children's development of French from grade 1 until the end of elementary school in grade 4. In order to examine these research issues, a large test battery including standardized and non-standardized tests as well as questionnaires is employed. The tests examining the children's French skills had to be developed by the research team itself because standardized tests suitable to adequately assess the French skills of the different learner groups compared in the Bavarian school project are not available. One finding of the study is that whereas majority language students tend to achieve better results in French in the regular program after the first year of learning, minority language students tend to achieve better results in the CLIL program at the end of the second and third year. In other words, the longer the children are exposed to the foreign language, the more the minority language students seem to benefit from the CLIL program. We will not only discuss possible reasons for findings like these, but we will also describe teaching strategies and examples of promising practices suitable to support elementary school students from various linguistic backgrounds in CLIL classes and regular foreign language lessons.
Presenters Patricia Uhl Postdoctoral Researcher, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg Co-authors Thorsten Piske Full Professor And Chair, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
What role do input quality and quantity play in French-English bilingual acquisition of past tense-aspect morphology by English-dominant children?
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages10:15 AM - 01:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 11:15:00 UTC
I investigated how bilingual children learn to use the past verb forms available to them in their dual-language input. Past tense forms are particularly relevant to the study of heritage language (HL), as their acquisition depends on various factors, such as the frequency of the form in the input, its functional complexity or discursive salience (Tomasello, 2009; Nicoladis & Paradis, 2012; Parisse et al., 2018). Because bilingual children are often unevenly exposed to their two languages, monolinguals may draw patterns from their more stable input faster than their bilingual peers (Paradis 2010; Paradis et al., 2011). I questioned whether children acquiring French as a HL differed from their French monolingual peers in their paths and rates of acquisition of past morphology. I analyzed longitudinal data from two French monolingual children living in Paris and aged between 1;06 and 4;06 (Parisse & Morgenstern, 2012), and two French-English bilingual children living in London and aged between 2;06 and 3;07 (Hervé, 2016). All the children were video-recorded monthly in interaction with their caregivers. The data was transcribed and coded using the CLAN software. All verb forms were identified and described formally. Past verb forms were further coded as target or non-target (in which case the deviation from target was characterized), and as either contributed by the child to the interaction or reproduced from a previous utterance. The results suggest dominance effects on the acquisition of past morphology by the two bilingual children under study, especially in their HL. Individual differences were linked to language use - the child who used French more consistently over the period followed the same path of acquisition as the French monolingual children whose productions were analyzed. Crosslinguistic influence accounted for the bilingual children's non-target realizations of French past forms, which differed qualitatively from those observed in the monolingual corpora. This study supports usage-based theories of language acquisition by confirming that the children's path of acquisition of past morphology was guided by input properties, regardless of language status (majority or HL), but that the quantity of input received impacted the children's rate of acquisition of past verb forms. BibliographYHervé, C., & Serratrice, L. (2018). The development of determiners in the context of French–English bilingualism: a study of cross-linguistic influence. Journal of child language, 45(3), 767-787. Nicoladis, E., & Paradis, J. (2012). Acquiring regular and irregular past tense morphemes in English and French: Evidence from bilingual children. Language Learning, 62(1), 170-197. Paradis, J. (2010). Bilingual children's acquisition of English verb morphology: Effects of language exposure, structure complexity, and task type. Language Learning, 60(3), 651-680. Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E., Martha, C., & Genesee, F. (2011). Bilingual children's acquisition of the past tense: A usage-based approach. Journal of Child Language, 38(03), 554-578. Parisse, C., de Pontonx, S., & Morgenstern, A. (2018). L'imparfait dans le langage de l'enfant. Language Interaction and Acquisition, 9(2), 183-225. Tomasello, M. (2009). Constructing a language. Harvard University Press.
L1 Spanish in contact with HL English and with HL Bulgarian: Does language dominance relate to lexical specialization?
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 16:00:00 UTC
In the case of simultaneous bilingual acquisition, language dominance has been defined in terms of language proficiency (e.g., Petersen 1988; Genesee et al. 1995), language knowledge (e.g., Yip and Matthews 2006), or related to the amount of language input (e.g., Romaine 1995). Liceras et al. (2008) offer a language-internal definition of the dominant language (DL) in terms of the Grammatical Features Spell-out Hypothesis (GFSH). Under the GFSH, the DL is the language whose features are more lexically specialized. It is also the language that will determine both the directionality as well as the effect of crosslinguistic influence. In the case of the acquisition of copula verbs in English and Spanish, Fernández Fuertes and Liceras (2010) argue that, given the lexical specialization in Spanish (two copulas, 1), as opposed to English (one copula, 2), bilingual children overcome the null copula stage that characterizes monolingual children sooner (Becker 2004). This will be so because the lexically specialized language will make the necessity of the overt copula in English more obvious. pro es una investigadora pro está en Valladolid SER/ESTAR she is a researcher She is in Valladolid BE Tya e izledovatel Tya e v Valladolid SUM Considering these previous works and in order to test the GFSH, we analyze the copula-auxiliary verbs of two L1Spanish/HL(heritage)English bilingual children (FerFuLice corpus) and one L1Spanish/HLBulgarian child (ra2UVALAL corpus) from the age of 2;03 to the age of 5;00. The spontaneous longitudinal bilingual data are compared to L1 English (Brown corpus), L1 Spanish (Marrero corpus), and L1 Bulgarian (LabLing corpus) monolingual data. These corpora, except for the ra2UVALAL, are available in CHILDES (MacWhinney 2000). Given that these verbs are lexically specialized in Spanish (1) but not in English (2) or in Bulgarian (3), the 2L1 children show no influence from the one-copula language into Spanish, and their production is similar to that of monolinguals. However, in the case of the English and Bulgarian verbs, Spanish accelerates the acquisition of the adult-like structures compared to L1 children, which indicates that the DL as per the GFSH is shaping these children's acquisition patterns.
Selected references: Becker, M. 2004. Copula omission is a grammatical reflex. Language Acquisition 12(2), 157-167 Fernández Fuertes, R., J.M. Liceras. 2010. Copula omission in the English developing grammar of English/Spanish bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 13(5), 525-551 Genesee, F., E. Nicoladis, J. Paradis. 1995. Language differentiation in early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language 22, 611-631 Liceras, J.M., R. Fernández Fuertes, S. Perales, R. Pérez-Tattam, K.T. Spradlin. 2008. Gender and gender agreement in the bilingual native and non-native grammar: a view from child and adult functional-lexical mixings. Lingua 118(6), 827-251 MacWhinney, B. 2000. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. The Database (Vol. 2). Lawrence Erlbaum Petersen, J. 1988. Word-internal code-switching constrains in a bilingual child's grammar. Linguistics 26,479-493 Romaine, S. 1995. Bilingualism. Blackwell Yip, V. S. Matthews. 2006. Assessing language dominance in bilingual acquisition: a case for mean length utterance differentials. Language Assessment Quarterly 3(2),97-116
Codeswitching and grammatical gender: language dominance at the crossroads of convergent/divergent experimental data
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 16:00:00 UTC
Codeswitching provides important information on the linguistic and psycholinguistic status of grammatical features such as gender in the mind of native and non-native speakers (Burkholder 2018; Liceras et al. 2008, 2016; Fairchild & Van Hell 2017; Parafita Couto & Gullberg 2019; among others). The analysis of gender agreement in the Determiner Phrase (DP) and in the adjectival predication (AdjPred) involving codeswitching-examples (1) and (2), respectively-is a challenge for researchers in that, even when the dominant language of the bilingual and the type of structure seem to allow us to account for the bilingual's behavior, data obtained via different methodologies (production versus interpretation) in relation to a specific structure are not convergent. That is, there is no guarantee that the bilingual will always prefer or produce switches like those in (1a) and (2a), where the so-called "analogical criterion" (Otegui & Lapidus 2005) holds (i.e., the English noun bears the gender of the Spanish translation equivalent noun as it agrees with the Spanish determiner or the Spanish adjective). (1) a. La(fem. 'the') house(SP fem. 'casa') / El(masc. 'the') book(SP masc. 'libro') (1) b. El(masc. 'the') house(SP fem. 'casa') / La(fem. 'the') book(SP masc. 'libro') (2) a. The house(SP fem. 'casa') es bonita(fem. 'beautiful') / The book(SP masc. 'book') es bonito(masc. 'beautiful') (2) b. The house(SP fem. 'casa') es bonito(masc. 'beautiful') / The book(SP masc. 'book') es bonita(fem. 'beautiful') In order to account for the bilinguals' behaviour, different explanations have been put forward within the framework of the Minimalist Program (Liceras et al. 2008; Moro 2011, 2014), Distributed Morphology (Burkholder 2018; Peters 2017) or acquisition theory (Liceras et al. 2005; 2008). However, those explanations do not account for the divergence that is observed in the bilingual's behavior. Using data from English dominant English–Spanish bilinguals from Trinidad and Tobago and Spain, in this study we focus on the divergence that the bilingual data show with respect to the analogical criterion depending on: (i) whether codeswitching happens within the DP or the AdjPred (Liceras, Fernandez Fuertes & Klassen 2016), a divergence that is accounted for by the directionality of feature checking (from the left to the right in AdjPred or in both directions, from the right to the left and from the left to the right, in the DP); and (ii) whether the data are obtained using production or interpretation tasks where the complexity of the structures intertwine with lexical access (accessing the noun in the case of the DP versus the noun and the adjective in the case of the AdjPred). We argue that, in order to provide an explanation for the divergence in the representation of grammatical gender related to the type of structure and to the data elicitation technique, syntax (the mechanisms of feature checking) and lexical access impose processing restrictions rooted in the mental lexicon and in formal linguistics.
Selected bibliography • Burkholder, M. (2018). Language mixing in the nominal phrase: Implications of a Distributed Morphology perspective. Languages, 3(2), 10. • Fairchild, S. & Van Hell, J. (2017) Determiner-noun code-switching in Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20(1), 150-161. • Liceras, J.M., Fernández Fuertes, R., Perales, S., Pérez-Tattam R. & Spradlin, K.T. (2008). Gender and gender agreement in bilingual native and non-native grammars: a view from children and adult functional-lexical mixings. Lingua, 118(6), 827-851. • Liceras, J.M., Fernández Fuertes, R. & Klassen, R. (2016). Language dominance and language nativeness: the view from English–Spanish code-switching. In R. E. Guzzardo Tamargo, C.M. Mazak & M. C. Parafita Couto (Eds.) Spanish- English codeswitching in the Caribbean and the U.S. (pp. 107-138). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. • Liceras, J.M., Fernández Fuertes, R., Perales, S., Pérez-Tattam R. & Spradlin, K.T. (2008). Gender and gender agreement in bilingual native and non-native grammars: a view from children and adult functional-lexical mixings. Lingua, 118(6), 827-851. • Otheguy, R. & Lapidus, N. (2005). Matización de la teoría de la simplificación en las lenguas en contacto: El concepto de la adaptación en el español de Nueva York. En L. Ortiz López & M. Lacorte (Eds.), Contactos y contextos lingüísticos. El español en los Estados Unidos y en contacto con otras lenguas (pp. 143-160). Madrid / Frankfurt: Iberoamericana / Vervuert. • Parafita Couto, M. C. & Gullberg, M. (2019). Code-switching within the noun phrase: Evidence from three corpora. International Journal of Bilingualism, 23(2), 695-714.
The role of internal and external factors for code-mixing: A study of early multilingualism in Germany with special reference to Catalan as a heritage language
Oral Presentation[SYMP45] Linguistic outcomes and language dominance assessments in early bi-/trilingualism with special reference to Romance languages as (non-)mainstream languages03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/21 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/21 16:00:00 UTC
The study of code-mixing (CM) has yielded a lot of debate in early bilingualism, particularly in heritage language (HL) acquisition. Several works tried to shed light on the internal and external factors that promote CM use (cf. Deuchar 2020 for a review of the literature). Concerning internal factors, language proficiency, language dominance and age have been examined for different language combinations. Most studies attribute a link between these factors and CM use (from the more proficient/dominant language to the less proficient/dominant, cf. Schlyter 1993; Bernardini & Schlyter 2004). For example, Schmeißer et al. (2016) analyzed the relation between inter- and intrasentential CM and language proficiency/dominance in four French-German children (1;4-4;0) and showed that whereas the former is employed by balanced bilinguals, the latter reflects a child's strategy not to accommodate to the contextually desired language. However, other empirical studies play down this connection since evidence for CM from the less proficient/dominant LB to the more proficient/dominant/used LA has also been observed (Cantone 2007). Regarding the external factors promoting CM, numerous authors have analysed different family language policies (FLP). For instance, those families that keep the community language (also called majority language or MaL) outside home help improving proficiency in the non-MaL and, therefore, CM is less frequent (De Houwer 2007, 2009; Patuto et al. 2014, Poeste et al. 2019; ; Arnaus Gil & Jiménez-Gaspar 2022; Arnaus Gil 2022, among others). Sixteen German-Catalan bi- trilingual children (mean age 5;7) being raised in Germany participated in our cross-sectional study that consists of a 30-minutes recording in every child's L1s in a spontaneous game situation. Moreover, we administered a questionnaire of linguistic input based on the work by Torregrossa & Bongartz (2018) to examine external factors of input quantity and quality. The aim of our study is to give insights from a less studied language pair which is, in turn, comparable to other studies that dealt with CS in typologically similar language combinations, such as Spanish/Italian/French-German in early bi- and trilingualism (Patuto et al. 2014; Müller et al. 2015; Schmeißer et al. 2016; Poeste et al. 2019, Arnaus Gil et al. 2019). Our contribution investigates the role of (i) child-internal factors such as age, language dominance and language use (measured with the aid of MLU and words per minute, respectively), and (ii) child-external factors that might promote CM use, e.g., FLP, family language and the siblings' directed speech. The general results on CM use show that bi- and trilinguals behave monolingually in 90.4% of the cases, and thus CM only represents 9.6% of the data. CM significantly declines with age and children who are dominant in the MaL code-mix more frequently than the other groups. Interestingly, balanced and HL dominant children present instances of intrasentential CM (particularly insertions), while intersentential CM is frequent across all groups. When families stick to OPOL and do not have a family language, CM is almost absent. Finally, those sibling pairs using the HL and the MaL in their interactions show low CM rates.
Mariapaola Piccione
Helena Roquet
Patricia Uhl
Thorsten Piske
Raquel Fernández Fuertes
Amelia Jiménez-Gaspar
Laia Arnaus Gil