Editorial: Language Acquisition in Diverse Linguistic, Social and Cognitive Circumstances

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Linguistic and Cognitive Skills in Sardinian–Italian Bilingual Children

We report the results of a study which tested receptive Italian grammatical competence and general cognitive abilities in bilingual Italian–Sardinian children and age-matched monolingual Italian children attending the first and second year of primary school in the Nuoro province of Sardinia, where Sardinian is still widely spoken. The results show that across age groups the performance of Sardinian–Italian bilingual children is in most cases indistinguishable from that of monolingual Italian children, in terms of both Italian language skills and general cognitive abilities. However, where there are differences, these emerge gradually over time and are mostly in favor of bilingual children

Can readability formulae adapt to the changing demographics of the UK school-aged population? A study on reading materials for school-age bilingual readers

Background: Due to the increase bilingual population in the UK, it is imperative that reading materials are made accessible for them in and out of school. This study begins by reviewing literature on bilinguals reading comprehension competence, discussing findings and impact on limiting academic achievement. Much literature criticises readability formulae as a tool for grading reading materials. Readability formulae, for example, do not account for differences in reader's dialects and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, this study looks to identify those discrepancies and assess the effectiveness of two well-known readability formulae. It then compares these to a readability formula for bilinguals to identify any consistencies between outcomes, enabling identification of any categories or factors crucial in identifying the reading difficulty of texts for bilinguals not included in well-known readability formulae, specifically for school-aged children. Method: 20 randomly selected eBooks available for children aged 7-9 y were quantitatively evaluated using three readability formulae: Spache, Flesch-Kincaid and McAlpine EFLAW. Findings: Based on these results, it is inconclusive if the readability formulae are consistent with each other, as they did not appear to follow the same trend and assessed different criteria. Therefore, the findings suggest no readability formula used in this study can be confidently used on its own to successfully assess the readability of books to deem suitability for bilingual readers as it is paramount that non-text factors need to be incorporated when matching books for students. Conclusions: This study concludes that a formula or a new set of criteria needs to be created which incorporates the salient factors affecting reading comprehension of bilinguals to best allow educators and authors to select and modify reading materials for this growing population, to increase accessibility academically, enabling best outcomes to be achieved

A discourse account of intervention phenomena: An investigation of interrogatives

Sentences where like-moves-over-like, e.g. this is the cat that the dog was chasing , have occupied language researchers over the past two decades. They are often described as “intervention” sentences as one element intervenes in the movement of another. Such structures are difficult to comprehend by children or adults, and this effect is exacerbated in language-impaired individuals. Dominant theories, e.g. Rizzi’s Relativised Minimality (RM), propose that the two NPs interfere with each other by virtue of having overlapping features. However, such sentences are also rarely encountered due to discourse constraints. For example, subject NPs (the dog) tend to be pronominal as they are typically aligned with topic-hood. This paper investigates whether discourse can account for intervention in questions. It employs a mixed methodology. Firstly, corpora were investigated to assess the degree to which discourse impacts on input frequency. Secondly, a behavioural study was conducted to unpack the relationship between frequency and processing in children. It was found that the input frequencies of intervention structures are predominantly influenced by discourse, and that intervention structures are vanishingly rare in the input. However, a link between frequency and processing was not observed, with the findings more supportive of RM. It is suggested that a consideration of discourse as an external phenomenon may yield new insights into intervention structures

Linguistic and Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism with Regional Minority Languages: A Study of Sardinian–Italian Adult Speakers

This study explores the effects of bilingualism in Sardinian as a regional minority language on the linguistic competence in Italian as the dominant language and on non-linguistic cognitive abilities. Sardinian/Italian adult speakers and monolingual Italian speakers living in the same geographical area of Sardinia were compared in two kinds of tasks: (a) verbal and non-verbal cognitive tasks targeting working memory and attentional control and (b) tasks of linguistic abilities in Italian focused on the comprehension of sentences differing in grammatical complexity. Although no difference was found between bilinguals and monolinguals in the cognitive control of attention, bilinguals performed better on working memory tasks. Bilinguals with lower formal education were found to be faster at comprehension of one type of complex sentence (center embedded object relative clauses). In contrast, bilinguals and monolinguals with higher education showed comparable slower processing of complex sentences. These results show that the effects of bilingualism are modulated by type of language experience and education background: positive effects of active bilingualism on the dominant language are visible in bilinguals with lower education, whereas the effects of higher literacy in Italian obliterate those of active bilingualism in bilinguals and monolinguals with higher education

Is it possible to differentiate multilingual children and children with Developmental Language Disorder?

The language profiles of monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typically developing multilingual children can overlap, presenting similar paths and delays in learning specific aspects of language in comparison with typically developing monolingual children of the same age. • In an increasingly multilingual society, it is essential to develop guidelines and tools for differentiating the two populations, avoiding both under- and overdiagnosis of language disorders in multilingual children. • Many multilingual children have a narrower vocabulary compared with monolinguals of the same age. Therefore, grammatical features are considered more reliable clinical markers of a possible disorder. • Clinical markers for children with DLD are language-specific. For example, in English-speaking children with DLD, verb endings may be omitted, as in “*Mary cook it”. For Italian or French children with DLD, a reliable marker is the realisation of certain pronouns, as in Mary lo cucina, “Mary it cooks”, with omissions or substitution of the pronoun lo depending on age. • Despite similarities between multilingual children and children with DLD, it is possible to distinguish between the two groups after multilingual children have at least two years of exposure to their second language (L2). • Multilingual children can learn their L2 fully, while this is generally not the case for monolingual children with DLD; however, children’s success in learning their L2 depends on length of exposure to the language, the type of multilanguage experience, and the structural relatedness of the two languages