The Role of Language Similarity in the Development of the Infant Bilingual Lexicon

语言相似性在婴儿双语词汇发展中的作用

• 批准号: ES/S010947/1
• 负责人: Kim Plunkett
• 金额: $ 106.4万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FS010947%2F1
• 关键词: Role; Language; Similarity; Development; Infant

How do infants growing up in bilingual homes learn words and how are these words represented in the infant bilingual mind? We propose that answers to these questions are heavily influenced by the similarity of the languages involved. For instance, Dutch and English are close languages, while Chinese and English are distant. At the word level, language similarity is reflected in the percentage of 'cognate' words that two languages share. Cognates are word translations that share the same etymological origin and sound similar (such as father and vader in English and Dutch). Evidence for the importance of cognates in bilinguals comes from naming studies with adults. For example, adult bilinguals can name pictures faster when they correspond to cognates (father/vader) than pictures corresponding to non-cognates (bicycle/fiets). A critical property of adult bilingualism is that of non-selective access to the words in both languages. Bilinguals activate all potential word candidates from either language consistent with what they hear or want to say, even in fully monolingual situations. Such findings point to important interactions between the two languages in the bilingual mind. Such interactions are likely to be even more important in the case of infants raised bilingually. Such infants often know only one word in one of their languages to refer to a concept. In this situation, cross-language lexical similarity may facilitate word recognition, but it may hinder the establishment of language-specific lexicons. We propose to conduct a series of experimental studies to uncover the structure of the mental lexicon in bilingual infants, and to construct brain-inspired models to explore theoretical accounts of the structure of their lexicon(s). We will exploit the availability of bilingual learning environments in Oxford and Barcelona. In Barcelona, there is ready access to bilingual infants learning both Spanish and Catalan (two Romance languages sharing many cognates). In Oxford, there is a sufficiently large number of bilingual Spanish and English families. Spanish and English have fewer cognates and offers a critical contrast to the Barcelona context.Experiments: We will use new experimental paradigms, pioneered on monolingual infants in the Oxford BabyLab, that employ well-understood eye-tracking and neuro-imaging techniques. The methods developed with monolingual infants are ideally suited to exploring our research questions. The tasks involve infants looking at pictures at the same time as they hear speech. By monitoring their eye-movements and recording their brain activity, we hope to discover important clues as to how their two languages influence their reaction to the pictures they see. An important methodological advantage of this project is that it will follow infants' performance in a longitudinal manner - at 18, 24 and 30 months of age. A longitudinal design allows us to consider the substantial individual differences observed between infants in their vocabulary development and to apply sophisticated and powerful statistical analyses to the data collected on the project. We will also test monolingual infants on exactly the same set of studies as our bilingual population, thereby providing the appropriate baseline against which to assess the bilingual infants.Modelling: The purpose in constructing a neural model is to understand the mechanism that underlies observed behaviour. Current bilingual computational models only consider adult (large and stable) vocabularies. We will develop the first computational model of early bilingual learning. Recently, we have shown how developmental changes in the self-organising processes in neural network models of word learning can capture important aspects of infant behaviour. We will translate these modelling insights from monolingual infant word learning and recognition to infant bilingual development, in a manner that honours the results of our experiments.

在双语家庭中长大的婴儿是如何学习单词的，这些单词在婴儿的双语思维中是如何表现的？我们认为，这些问题的答案在很大程度上受到所涉及语言相似性的影响。例如，荷兰语和英语是亲密的语言，而汉语和英语是遥远的语言。在单词层面，语言相似性反映在两种语言共享的“同源”单词的百分比上。同源词是指具有相同词源且发音相似的单词翻译（如英语和荷兰语中的father和vader）。同源词对双语者的重要性的证据来自对成年人的命名研究。例如，成年双语者能更快地说出与同源词（父亲/维达）对应的图片，而不是与非同源词（自行车/fiets）对应的图片。成人双语的一个重要特征是对两种语言中单词的非选择性获取。双语者会激活两种语言中与他们听到或想说的内容一致的所有潜在候选词，即使在完全只说一种语言的情况下也是如此。这些发现指出了双语者思维中两种语言之间的重要互动。这种互动在双语养育的婴儿中可能更为重要。这样的婴儿通常只知道他们的一种语言中的一个词来指代一个概念。在这种情况下，跨语言词汇相似性可能有助于单词识别，但它可能阻碍特定语言词汇的建立。我们建议通过一系列的实验研究来揭示双语婴儿的心理词汇结构，并构建脑启发模型来探索其词汇结构的理论解释。我们将利用牛津和巴塞罗那的双语学习环境。在巴塞罗那，双语婴儿可以学习西班牙语和加泰罗尼亚语（两种罗曼语有许多同源词）。在牛津，有足够多的西班牙语和英语双语家庭。西班牙语和英语的同源词较少，这与巴塞罗那的语境形成了鲜明的对比。实验：我们将使用新的实验范式，这是牛津婴儿实验室在单语婴儿身上首创的，它采用了众所周知的眼球追踪和神经成像技术。针对单语婴儿开发的方法非常适合探索我们的研究问题。这些任务包括让婴儿在听讲话的同时看图片。通过监测他们的眼球运动和记录他们的大脑活动，我们希望发现重要的线索，了解他们的两种语言是如何影响他们对所看到的图片的反应的。这个项目在方法论上的一个重要优势是，它将以纵向的方式跟踪婴儿的表现——在18、24和30个月大的时候。纵向设计允许我们考虑在婴儿词汇发展中观察到的实质性个体差异，并对项目收集的数据进行复杂而强大的统计分析。我们还将对单语婴儿和我们的双语人群进行完全相同的研究，从而为评估双语婴儿提供适当的基线。建模：构建神经模型的目的是了解观察到的行为背后的机制。目前的双语计算模型只考虑成人（大而稳定）的词汇。我们将开发第一个早期双语学习的计算模型。最近，我们展示了单词学习的神经网络模型中自组织过程的发展变化如何捕捉婴儿行为的重要方面。我们将以一种尊重实验结果的方式，将这些从单语婴儿单词学习和识别的建模见解转化为婴儿双语发展。

项目成果

UK bilingual toddlers show a lag in vocabulary size relative to monolinguals in both comprehension and production

英国双语幼儿的词汇量在理解和表达方面均落后于单语幼儿

• 发表时间: 2022
• 作者: Siow S

The effect of cognates on bilingual infant vocabulary trajectories: a study using bilingual CDIs of English and one additional language

同源词对双语婴儿词汇轨迹的影响：一项使用英语和另一种语言的双语 CDI 的研究

• 发表时间: 2022
• 作者: Siow S

Colour perception changes with basic colour word comprehension

颜色感知随着基本颜色词理解的变化而变化

• DOI: 10.1111/desc.13406
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Developmental Science
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Forbes S

How Bilingual Language Experience Shapes the Infant Lexicon: Implications for Word Learning and Lexical Access

双语语言体验如何塑造婴儿词汇：对单词学习和词汇访问的影响

• 发表时间: 2023
• 作者: Siow S

Double it up: Vocabulary size comparisons between UK bilingual and monolingual toddlers

加倍：英国双语和单语幼儿的词汇量比较

• DOI: 10.1111/infa.12562
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Infancy
• 影响因子: 2.6
• 作者: Siow S