The acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2) by bilingual preschool children (Russian-L1)
A longitudinal multiple-case study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20507293 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mila Schwartz (0000-0002-3175-9357, Oranim Academic College of Education, corresponding author), Hadas Rovner (Department of Learning Disabilities, Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Israel) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 548-571 |
| Publication date | 2015-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Bilingualism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1367-0069 • E-ISSN: 1756-6878 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1367006914526073 |
| OpenAlex | W2037663272 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 30 |
In this longitudinal study, we examined bilingual children’s acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew distinguishes between definite and indefinite nouns by marking definiteness by article. We recorded the speech of nine bilingual Russian–Hebrew-speaking children ranging in age from three to four years old in monthly sessions over a period of seven months. Their age of onset of acquisition of Hebrew (L2) ranged from six to 42 months. The L1 of all participants was Russian, which has no definite and indefinite articles. We compared the bilingual children’s acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew to that of monolingual Hebrew-speaking children to outline the qualitative and/or quantitative differences in the patterns found. This comparison also enabled us to determine whether the bilinguals transfer their knowledge from L1 to L2 ( transfer hypothesis) or show fluctuation in their article choice ( fluctuation hypothesis). Four tendencies were found with regard to the bilingual children: 1. All bilingual children made omission errors in definite contexts (evidence of transfer); 2. We observed misuse of articles, overuse and syntactic errors in all the children’s utterances (evidence of fluctuation); 3. We found both similarities and differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in acquisition of definiteness; and 4. Children with early age of L2 onset (before age three) demonstrated more accelerated acquisition of definiteness than children with later onset of L2 (after age three)
Definiteness · Hebrew · Linguistics · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Noun · Language Development and Disorders · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Philosophy · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development
One Parent – One Language
Definiteness
Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar
The Bilingual Child
Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism
Word Order and Nominative Case in Non-Native Language Acquisition
Article Semantics in L2 Acquisition
The role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch
Syntactic Acquisition in Bilingual Children
Articles in child L2 English
The Acquisition of Noun Plurals among Early Sequential Russian-Hebrew Speaking Bilinguals
Second Language Acquisition in Early Childhood
Early successive bilingualism
What Makes Learning Second‐Language Grammar Difficult? A Review of Issues
The acquisition of articles in child second language English
Articles, adjectives and age of onset
Definiteness in the Hebrew noun phrase
L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model
Sources of linguistic knowledge in the second language acquisition of English articles
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,44 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |