Individual Differences AR

• How bilinguals/multi-linguals may be different from each other: Number of languages, when language exposure begins, linguistic characteristics of languages, amount of exposure to each language, extent of language dominance, social and cultural support for each language
• Dominant Language: Language in which a child has greater proficiency
• Nondominant Language: Language in which a child has less proficiency
• Language dominance is a typical phenomenon
• Which language is dominant is linked to input
• Simultaneous Bilingualism: Acquire 2 or more languages from birth, or simultaneously
• Sequential Bilingualism: Learn first two languages in succession
• Majority ethnolinguistic community group: Group that speaks a language that the majority of people in an area value and assign high social status
• Majority ethnolinguistic community group helps to facilitate speaker better into a larger society
• Majority ethnolinguistic community group is usually the language of instruction at school, in media, in unofficial settings
• minority ethnolinguistic community group: group that speaks a language that few people in the group speak or value
• Minority ethnolinguistic groups are usually more valuable to maintain cultural heritage
• Minority ethnolinguistic community groups are usually more discouraged outside of specific personal setting
• Code-switching: Speakers alternate between languages when they have more than one language in common
• People code-switch in order to fill a lexical gap, when they don't have the word to describe it in one language, pragmatic effect, social norms
• Dialect users also code switch
• Testing bilinguals in single-language assessments and comparing them to monolingual norms is not recommended because bilingual children will have lower scores than their monolingual counterparts
• Possible solution to testing bilinguals: Test the child in using standardized tests in each of the child's languages
• Testing bilingual children in all of their languages doesn't reveal information on relationship between languages or the sum of their language capabilities
• Total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary are the two measures of bilingual children's combined vocabulary that have been proposed as methods for fully capturing bilingual children's vocabulary knowledge
• Total Vocabulary: The sum of the words a child knows across two languages
• Conceptual Vocabulary: Gives the child credit for knowing concepts rather than words, and concepts that are represented in both languages are counted only once
• Some researchers suggest that total vocabulary may result in an overestimation of the bilingual child's lexical knowledge
• Conceptual vocabulary is premised on the idea that word learning is CONCEPT learning so the child shouldn't get double credit knowing 2 forms of 1 concept. HOWEVER - recent literature argues one must acquire semantic, phonological, and lexical representations for a word to be considered LEARNED. these three are separated in different languages and therefore are considered two separate learned words
• Conceptual vocabulary requires identification of translation equivalents in a young child's vocabulary and there are translation equivalencies across two languages. Sometimes there are not direct translations
• Separate Underlying Proficiency (SUP): languages are viewed as entirely separate, thus, skills learned in one language will not transfer to the second language
• Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP): languages are viewed interdependent, thus, skills in one language influence skills in the other language
• Dialect: Regional or social varieties of language that differ in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar
• Dialects develop over a prolonged period when people are separated by geographical or social barriers
• Accent: Varieties of language that differ solely on pronunciation
• Dialects can have accents
• There is no single dialect that corresponds to a standard English
• People saying soda, pop, coke is an example of dialect
• Vowels /e/ and /i/ the same, pin and pen sound identical, use of monophthong, y'all and all y'all, is an example of SOUTHERN dialect
• Merge vowel /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ sound, caught and cot sound identical, raising and tensing of short /ae/, low back vowel /o/ shift forward, Lowering /ɔ/, /ʌ/ moved further back, /I/ lowered to /e/ are characteristics of a MIDWESTERN dialect
• Dropping postvocalic r sounds (cah for car), you all, you guys, youse, yuns, tonic, are all examples of a NORTHERN dialect
• Phonologically, many dialects of the WEST have a single vowel for the words caught and cot, fronted back vowels (totally sounds like twetally)
• Speech banana shows the pitch and dB level of speech sounds
• If children can hear sounds WITHIN the speech banana using amplification, there is a BETTER chance they WILL be able to perceive and produce those sounds
• Speech banana tells us how loud and what frequency speech sounds need to be heard best