This article presents a longitudinal panel study analyzing the evolution of a sample of more than 1000 informants in the language practices with peers during the period between the end of primary education and the end of secondary education in Catalonia. Results led to the identification of five clusters of informants according to their linguistic…

Two experimental paradigms, a picture-naming task and a Stroop interference task, were employed to address the structure of the multilingual mental lexicon; more specifically, the process of multilingual non-selective lexical access. German-English-French speakers named objects in their native and most dominant language in a task that included a…

In two case studies of trilingual development in the home, it was not the home languages that were the strongest but the language of the respective daycare centres. This paper investigates, first, how well the trilingual children could separate their daycare language from their home languages. Then it explores the kinds of communicative…

Stuttering patterns may differ when comparing two languages. In bilinguals, specific patterns of stuttering in each one of the languages may potentially be found. This study reports on the case of a 27-year-old Spanish/English simultaneous bilingual whose dominant language is English. Speech and language testing was performed in both languages…

Hong Kong popular culture played an important role in the construction and consolidation of Hong Kong identity long before the handover to China. In the past few years leading up to the 10th anniversary of the handover, both Hong Kong and China have undergone numerous changes which seem to be changing their relations. Whilst Hong Kong people had…

Explores how children's performance on picture description tasks in French, their limited-use language, compares to their performance on the same tasks in English. Investigates whether home language environment has an effect on performance. (SR)

Forty-one French-English bilinguals in England and France participated in three segmentation experiments with English and French materials. Bilinguals formed two groups, defined by forced choice of a dominant language. Only the French-dominant group showed syllabic segmentation and only with French language materials. The English-dominant group…

Sociolinguistic patterns, including internal structuring and clinical norms and values, of Chinese communities in Britain are examined. The complexity of the composition of the Chinese population there are reported, and findings from a pilot study of language choice are discussed in the context of wide sociolinguistic issues Chinese people in…

These case studies describe and compare the language characteristics of two bilingual children (age 7), one with specific language impairment (SLI). Results found the child with SLI produced significantly more morphosyntactic errors and less variety of grammatical forms and sentence types in both languages, and demonstrated significant…

Research in a Puerto Rican community in New York City was undertaken to explore the language climate in that community, which included the linguistic forms in use, their distribution and functions in daily life, community members' attitudes toward language, and the way in which language phenomena are influenced by various social factors. An…

Similarities and differences in language acquisition and variations in patterns of language dominance were studied with three four-year-old girls. The ideoqraphic study of child speech involved a monolingual English-speaking child, a monolingual Spanish-speaking child, and a bilingual English-Spanish-speaking child. The following measures were…

Investigates the relative frequency with which U.S. subjects with a non-English first language use English vis-a-vis their other non-English languages. Data from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education (over 150,000 households) indicate that societal pressure and demographic constraints on interactions in non-English languages influence language…

This study investigated the ways in which a bilingual's choice between the minority first language (L1) and the dominant second language (L2), in this case English, suggests the value the language has for the social and in-group identity of the bilingual. Adult bilinguals (n=38) of widely varying L1 backgrounds were surveyed concerning their…

This is a study of three contiguous generations of the extended families of Olivo and Atilano that emigrated from Central Mexico to Illinois. The general purpose of the investigation is to describe the development of the home language (Spanish) in an emigrant environment by concentrating on the generation as a transitional stage. In particular,…

This paper considers speakers' differing degrees of self-confidence in their bilingual abilities and their effects on reported language use and observed patterns of language choice. One hundred and twenty individuals from New Zealand's four largest Pasifika communities--Samoan, Cook Islands, Tongan and Niuean--reported on their self-confidence in…