Patterns of Bilingual Development and their Environmental Correlates

描述（由申请人提供）：来自双语家庭的儿童是人口中一个庞大且不断增长的部分。他们早期的语言能力既没有得到很好的描述，也没有得到很好的理解。由于学龄前时期的语言技能预示着以后的学业成就和社会适应，目前对早期双语发展的不了解构成了一个重大的公共卫生问题。本研究的目的一是确定与幼儿时期接触两种语言的儿童成功双语发展相关的环境因素。本研究将对两岁半的西英双语儿童的语言技能和语言环境进行评估，并调查他们的语言技能与语言环境的关系。该研究将首次从两种语言的语音、词汇和形态句法发展方面描述年轻双语儿童的语言能力，并采用标准化工具和基于自发语音样本的测量方法进行评估。这项提议的研究将是第一个使用看护人访谈、看护人记录孩子语言体验的日记以及看护人用两种语言指导孩子的语言样本来描述双语环境的研究。描述儿童语言能力和语言环境的方法将利用以变量为中心和以人为中心的数据分析技术，根据变化的连续维度和经常出现的类型或类别进行描述。对技能和环境之间关系的分析将使用这两种描述符。本研究的目的二是根据双语儿童语言技能各组成部分之间的语言内部和跨语言相互关系的证据，检验关于语言发展机制的理论驱动假设。相对于单语规范，双语儿童可能表现出语音和形态句法发展比词汇发展更先进，接受能力比生产能力更先进的发展模式。在这些双语儿童中，跨领域技能之间的相互关系应该与通常观察到的不同，这些相互关系的细节应该限制关于语言习得机制的假设，并提出两种语言知识增长在双语发展过程中是否相互作用的方法。这项拟议的研究将填补知识基础的空白，为全国很大一部分儿童提供高质量的教育和临床服务，并将促进对早期双语发展过程的科学理解。公共卫生相关性：目前缺乏关于在双语家庭中长大的儿童的语言技能的信息，这是最大限度地发挥我国相当一部分儿童的经济潜力的一个障碍。这项研究的目的是描述儿童表现出的双语能力模式，并在儿童发展的早期关键时刻确定成功双语的环境相关因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children from bilingual homes are a large and growing segment of the population. Their early language competencies are neither well described nor understood. Because language skills during the preschool years are predictive of later academic achievement and social adjustment, the current poor understanding of early bilingual development constitutes a significant public health problem. Aim 1 of the proposed research is to identify the environmental factors associated with successful bilingual development in children exposed to two languages from infancy. The language skills and language environments of 2 1/2 -year-old Spanish-English bilingual children will be assessed, and the relation of their language skills to their language environments investigated. The proposed research will be the first to describe young bilingual children's language competencies in terms of their phonological, lexical, and morphosyntactic development in both languages, assessed with standardized instruments and with measures based on spontaneous speech samples. The proposed research will be the first to describe bilingual environments using caregiver interviews, caregiver-kept diaries of their children's language experience, and samples of caregivers' child-directed speech in both languages. The approaches to describing children's language competencies and language environments will make use of variable-centered and person-centered data analytic techniques, yielding descriptions in terms of continuous dimensions of variability and in terms of frequently-occurring types, or categories. Analyses of the relations between skills and environments will be conducted using both kinds of descriptors. Aim 2 of the proposed research is to test theory-driven hypotheses regarding mechanisms of language development against the evidence of within- and across-language interrelations among components of language skill in bilingual children. Bilingual children may show patterns of development in which phonological and morphosyntactic development are more advanced than lexical development and in which receptive competence is more advanced than productive competence, relative to monolingual norms. In such bilingual children, the interrelations among skills across domains should differ from those typically observed, and the specifics of those interrcorrelations should constrain hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of language acquisition and suggest ways in which growing knowledge of two languages does or does not interact in the process of bilingual development. The proposed research will fill a gap in the knowledge base needed to provide quality educational and clinical services to a substantial segment of the nation's children and will advance scientific understanding of the process of early bilingual development. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The current lack of information about the language skills of children growing up in bilingual homes is an obstacle to maximizing the economic potential of a substantial segment of the nation's children. The aims of the proposed research are to describe the patterns of bilingual competencies that children display and to identify environmental correlates of successful bilingualism at an early, critical juncture in children's development.