TY - JOUR

T1 - Longitudinal evidence for simultaneous bilingual language development with shifting language dominance, and how to explain it

AU - Oppenheim, Gary

AU - Griffin, Zenzi

AU - Pena, Elizabeth

AU - Bedore, Lisa

N1 - National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Grant Numbers: R01 DC010366, T32DC000041 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

PY - 2020/6/15

Y1 - 2020/6/15

N2 - Theories of how language works have shifted from rule‐like competence accounts to more skill‐like incremental learning accounts. Under these, people acquire language incrementally, through practice, and may even lose it incrementally as they acquire competing mappings. Incremental learning implies that (1) a bilingual's abilities in their languages should depend on how much they practice each (not merely age of acquisition), and (2) using a L2 more could cause a bilingual to gradually “unlearn” their L1. Using timed picture naming and vocabulary measures, we tracked 139 children for several years as they transitioned from mostly‐Spanish homes to mostly‐English schools. Following their increased English use, many became more proficient in English than Spanish around the third grade, demonstrating continual learning. But their Spanish also improved, showing that L1‐attrition is not inevitable. Incremental learning explains both co‐improvement and L1‐attrition as consequences of experience‐driven learning: improvement from continuing L1 use can offset competitive unlearning.

AB - Theories of how language works have shifted from rule‐like competence accounts to more skill‐like incremental learning accounts. Under these, people acquire language incrementally, through practice, and may even lose it incrementally as they acquire competing mappings. Incremental learning implies that (1) a bilingual's abilities in their languages should depend on how much they practice each (not merely age of acquisition), and (2) using a L2 more could cause a bilingual to gradually “unlearn” their L1. Using timed picture naming and vocabulary measures, we tracked 139 children for several years as they transitioned from mostly‐Spanish homes to mostly‐English schools. Following their increased English use, many became more proficient in English than Spanish around the third grade, demonstrating continual learning. But their Spanish also improved, showing that L1‐attrition is not inevitable. Incremental learning explains both co‐improvement and L1‐attrition as consequences of experience‐driven learning: improvement from continuing L1 use can offset competitive unlearning.

KW - bilingualism

KW - incremental learning

KW - longitudinal study

KW - shifting language dominance

KW - word production

M3 - Article

VL - 70

SP - 20

EP - 44

JO - Language Learning

JF - Language Learning

SN - 0023-8333

IS - 52

ER -