Frequency, Redundancy, and Context in Bilingual Acquisition

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Frequency, Redundancy, and Context in Bilingual Acquisition
Language: English
Authors: Paul Ibbotson (ORCID 0000-0001-8346-0616), Stefan Hartmann (ORCID 0000-0002-1186-7182), Nikolas Koch (ORCID 0000-0001-6917-9318), Antje Endesfelder Quick
Source: Journal of Child Language. 2024 52(6):1280-1294.
Availability: Cambridge University Press. 100 Brook Hill Drive, West Nyack, NY 10994. Tel: 800-872-7423; Tel: 845-353-7500; Fax: 845-353-4141; e-mail: subscriptions_newyork@cambridge.org; Web site: https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 15
Publication Date: 2024
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Bilingual Education, Young Children, Bilingual Students, German, English, Predictor Variables, Language Usage, Bilingualism, Word Frequency, Syntax, Redundancy
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000924000473
ISSN: 0305-0009
1469-7602
Abstract: We report findings from a corpus-based investigation of three young children growing up in German-English bilingual environments (M = 3;0, Range = 2;3-3;11). Based on 2,146,179 single words and two-word combinations in naturalistic child speech (CS) and child-directed speech (CDS), we assessed the degree to which the frequency distribution of CDS predicted CS usage over time, and systematically identified CS that was over- or underrepresented in the corpus with respect to matched CDS baselines. Results showed that CDS explained 61% of the variance in CS single-word use and 19.3% of the variance in two-word combinations. Furthermore, the bilingual nature of the over- or underrepresented CS was partially attributable to factors beyond the corpus statistics, namely individual differences between children in their bilingual learning environment. In two out of the three children, overrepresented two-word combinations contained higher levels of syntactic slot redundancy than underrepresented CS. These results are discussed with respect to the role that redundancy plays in producing semiformulaic slot-and-frame patterns in CS.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: EJ1487032
Database: ERIC
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