Moderator: Silvina Montrul, Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Child heritage speakers’ Spanish nominal demonstratives

• Naomi Shin, Ph.D., The University of New Mexico

Previous research has found that Spanish-English adult bilinguals’ use of demonstratives esta ‘this’ and esa ‘that’ is shaped by crosslinguistic influence. To explore whether the same is true for child heritage speakers, the current study compares 42 Spanish-English bilingual children and 18 Spanish-English bilingual adults in New Mexico. Participants completed a puzzle task designed to elicit nominal demonstratives referring to puzzle pieces near the participant or farther away. Analyses of the children’s demonstratives reveal a reliance on Spanish esa for near and far referents. This tendency was more pronounced among children with restricted Spanish input and was not found among the adult bilinguals, suggesting that it is a developmental phenomenon that dissipates with increased exposure to Spanish. In contrast to Spanish, in English the children tended to rely on ‘this’ for near and far referents. This trend decreases with age. The reliance on ‘this’ in English and esa in Spanish suggests little interaction between the children’s demonstrative systems. Furthermore, since crosslinguistic influence affects demonstrative use among the adults but not the children, this study suggests that in some cases bilinguals may experience increased language interaction as they age.

The Bilingual Delay is a Myth

• Elizabeth Peña, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

In the U.S., one in five children has exposure to another language in addition to language. Group patterns of performance in the home language and English in bilinguals compared to monolinguals appears to suggest that bilinguals show delays in both their languages. But, is this really the case? We examine dual-language performance in 2,150 bilinguals between the ages of 4-10, representing the entire range of Spanish and English exposure. Results indicate significant associations between amount of exposure and children’s performance in each language on measures of morphosyntax and semantics. Importantly, across the range of exposure, comparison of children’s best score (Spanish or English) indicates performance within the normative range with no evidence of a bilingual delay at the individual level.

Executive Function, Metalinguistic Awareness, Vocabulary and Reading Skills in Korean-English Bilingual Children

• Young-Suk Kim, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine
• Youngsun Moon, University of California, Irvine
• Joongwon Lee, Ph.D., Texas State University

We present data from Korean-English bilingual children in the US with a focus on the relations among executive function, metalinguistic awareness, vocabulary and reading skills. A total of 100 Korean-English bilingual children from kindergarten to Grade 4 were assessed on their phonological awareness, alphabet letter knowledge, orthographic pattern knowledge, morphological awareness, word reading, spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in Korean and English. Our preliminary findings from a structural equation model indicate that while similar structural relationships are supported in both languages, the relative and unique relationships differ between English and Korean.

General discussion