Early exposure to both sign and spoken language for children who are deaf or hard of hearing: Might it help spoken language development?

The literature on the benefits and deficits of bilingualism is reviewed with an emphasis on sign/spoken bilingualism and on the population of deaf or hard of hearing children. Since there are a limited number of reports on sign/spoken bilingualism for these children, a research plan is outlined for a large study whose results could have a significant impact on oral education policy and spoken language development in deaf or hard of hearing children

Do Bilinguals Earn More in Texas?

Curious about the effects of knowing a second language on income, I used data from the 2017 American Community Survey to analyze the economic advantages associated with bilingualism for adults 18-64 in Texas who reported an income and positive weeks worked in the year prior to the survey. Bilingualism is defined as speaking a language at home other than or in addition to English

Modeling two-language competition dynamics

During the last decade, much attention has been paid to language competition in the complex systems community, that is, how the fractions of speakers of several competing languages evolve in time. In this paper we review recent advances in this direction and focus on three aspects. First we consider the shift from two-state models to three state models that include the possibility of bilingual individuals. The understanding of the role played by bilingualism is essential in sociolinguistics. In particular, the question addressed is whether bilingualism facilitates the coexistence of languages. Second, we will analyze the effect of social interaction networks and physical barriers. Finally, we will show how to analyze the issue of bilingualism from a game theoretical perspective.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures; published in the Special Issue of Advances in Complex Systems "Language Dynamics

Causes and effects of Substratum, Superstratum and Adstratum influence, with reference to Tibeto-Burman languages

Language contact has become a major focus of inquiry in historical and typological linguistics in the last twenty years, spurred in a large part by the publication of Thomason & Kaufman (1988), which tried to make sense of a large amount of language contact data. They argued that there was a direct relationship between the degree or intensity of language contact and the amount and type of influence the contact would have on one or more of the languages involved. Essentially, the greater the degree of bilingualism, the greater the degree of contact influence (see also Thomason 2001); if the contact and bilingualism was minimal, then there might just be a few loanwords adapted to the borrowing language's phonology and grammatical system, but if the contact and bilingualism was of a greater degree there would be influence in the grammar and phonology of the affected language. As more linguists came to take language contact more seriously, they came to realize how common language contact phenomena are

Heritage Language and L2 Learning Connections: Views from within Japan

Bearing in mind the Japanese context, this paper elaborates on how maintenance of international children’s heritage language (HL) might contribute to the spread of bilingualism in the country. It also expands on the ways these young learners see themselves as well as how they are seen by their families and within their academic context. It is argued that young HL learners’ propensity towards bilingualism might not only pave these children’s way to the acquisition of a second and/or foreign language, but also contribute to future developments in foreign language learning among the monolingual sectors of society

Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to investigate whether bilingualism confers an advantage on children’s conversational understanding. A total of 163 children aged 3 to 6 years were given a Conversational Violations Test to determine their ability to identify responses to questions as violations of Gricean maxims of conversation (to be informative and avoid redundancy, speak the truth, and be relevant and polite). Though comparatively delayed in their L2 vocabulary, children who were bilingual in Italian and Slovenian (with Slovenian as the dominant language) generally outperformed those who were either monolingual in Italian or Slovenian. We suggest that bilingualism can be accompanied by an enhanced ability to appreciate effective communicative responses

Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education, by Ofelia García and Li Wei

Ressenya de Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education, escrit per Ofelia García i Li Wei.Review of Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education, by Ofelia García and Li Wei.Reseña de Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education, escrito por Ofelia García y Li Wei.Critique de Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education, écrit par Ofelia García et Li Wei

Types and the Classification Criteria of the Bilingualism in Turkey: A Meta-Synthesis

This meta-synthesis study aims to reveal the types of bilingualism in Turkey by interpreting the quantitative data and findings obtained from studies on bilingualism types. In the light of the findings, 28 types of bilingualism and 5 classification criteria have been identified in the theses written on bilingualism in the “Turkish Higher Education Institution Thesis Center database”. The synthesis data show that the most addressed type of bilingualism in 22 theses was “balanced” and “dominant bilingualism”. The most frequently used criterion in classifying bilingualism is “skill level criterion”, followed by “age of acquisition”, “cognitive organization,” and “status of the two languages”

Bilingualism and Communicative Benefits

We examine patterns of acquiring non-native languages in a model with two languages and two populations with heterogeneous learning skills, where every individual faces a binary choice of learning the foreign language or refraining from doing so. We show that both interior and corner linguistic equilibria can emerge in our framework, and that the fraction of learners of the foreign language is higher in the country with a higher gross cost adjusted communicative benefit. It turns out that this observation is consistent with the data on language proficiency in bilingual countries such as Belgium and Canada. We also point out that linguistic equilibria can exhibit insufficient learning which opens the door for government policies that are beneficial for both populations.Communicative Benefits, Linguistic Equilibrium, Learning Costs

Bilingualism Is Associated with a Delayed Onset of Dementia but Not with a Lower Risk of Developing it: a Systematic Review with Meta-Analyses.

Some studies have linked bilingualism with a later onset of dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Not all studies have observed such relationships, however. Differences in study outcomes may be due to methodological limitations and the presence of confounding factors within studies such as immigration status and level of education. We conducted the first systematic review with meta-analysis combining cross-sectional studies to explore if bilingualism might delay symptom onset and diagnosis of dementia, AD, and MCI. Primary outcomes included the age of symptom onset, the age at diagnosis of MCI or dementia, and the risk of developing MCI or dementia. A secondary outcome included the degree of disease severity at dementia diagnosis. There was no difference in the age of MCI diagnosis between monolinguals and bilinguals [mean difference: 3.2; 95% confidence intervals (CI): -3.4, 9.7]. Bilinguals vs. monolinguals reported experiencing AD symptoms 4.7 years (95% CI: 3.3, 6.1) later. Bilinguals vs. monolinguals were diagnosed with dementia 3.3 years (95% CI: 1.7, 4.9) later. Here, 95% prediction intervals showed a large dispersion of effect sizes (-1.9 to 8.5). We investigated this dispersion with a subgroup meta-analysis comparing studies that had recruited participants with dementia to studies that had recruited participants with AD on the age of dementia and AD diagnosis between mono- and bilinguals. Results showed that bilinguals vs. monolinguals were 1.9 years (95% CI: -0.9, 4.7) and 4.2 (95% CI: 2.0, 6.4) older than monolinguals at the time of dementia and AD diagnosis, respectively. The mean difference between the two subgroups was not significant. There was no significant risk reduction (odds ratio: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.68-1.16) in developing dementia among bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Also, there was no significant difference (Hedges' g = 0.05; 95% CI: -0.13, 0.24) in disease severity at dementia diagnosis between bilinguals and monolinguals, despite bilinguals being significantly older. The majority of studies had adjusted for level of education suggesting that education might not have played a role in the observed delay in dementia among bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Although findings indicated that bilingualism was on average related to a delayed onset of dementia, the magnitude of this relationship varied across different settings. This variation may be due to unexplained heterogeneity and different sources of bias in the included studies. Registration: PROSPERO CRD42015019100