BOOK OF ABSTRACTS - EUROSLA

Child Second Language (L2) Acquisition and Cognitive Development: Is
earlier always better?
Jason Rothman, Drew Long, Anne Lingwall, Tushar Chakravarty,
Jacob Firestine and Becky Halloran
University of Florida
Is there such a thing as “too early” for child L2 acquisition in nonnaturalistic
contexts? Highlighting the fact that children below the age of 6-7
are not fully developed cognitively, Paradis (2010) suggests that older
children might have an advantage for speed of efficient L2 development. In
other words, until cognition is fully developed children might not be ripe for
L2 acquisition, resulting in asymmetric comparative developmental
sequences depending on age of exposure. This is an important empirical
question beyond child L2 studies, because it presents a unique angle to
reveal links between linguistic and cognitive development more generally.
This study compares two sets of child English L2ers in a dual immersion
setting in Cali, Colombia, ages 6-7 and 10-11 at the time of testing, who
have had the same amounts and types of exposure to English (3 years in the
same instructed setting). We report the finding from the first stage of this
larger research project in which the children (n=25 per group) performed a
standardized elicited production picture-story task, a question-answer
comprehension task based on the story and an oral interview. The data show
that the older child L2 group who was 7-8 from the onset of L2 exposure is
much more advanced after 3 years as a group (using MLU measures,
stylistics in story-telling, error rates and overall fluency) compared to the
younger group. We discuss the follow-up empirical experiments currently
underway, examining the acquisition of passive constructions. Paradis’
hypothesis predicts a lag in the younger group for such properties precisely
because they depend on the (cognitively costly) formation of A-chains. The
children will be followed for 5 years moving forward to test whether
Paradis’ contention that the older child advantage fades in time as cognitive
abilities of both groups catch up. We discuss how this second phase will be
accomplished and what it is likely to reveal.
Paradis (2010).The interface between bilingual development and specific
languageimpairment.Plenary address at Generative Approaches to Language
Acquisition North America. University of Toronto
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