Do Young Bilinguals Acquire Past Tense Morphology Like Monolinguals

8/22/2019 Do Young Bilinguals Acquire Past Tense Morphology Like Monolinguals

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Applied Psycholinguistics, page 1 of 23, 2011

doi:10.1017/S0142716411000439

Do young bilinguals acquire past

tense morphology like monolinguals,only later? Evidence from

FrenchEnglish and ChineseEnglish

bilinguals

ELENA NICOLADIS, JIANHUI SONG, and PAULA MARENTETTE

University of Alberta

Received: September 24, 2009 Accepted for publication: October 3, 2010

ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE

Elena Nicoladis, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, P2-17 Biological Sciences

Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have shown that preschool bilingual children lag behind same-aged monolinguals intheir production of correct past tense forms. This lag has been attributed to bilinguals less frequent

exposure to either language. If so, bilingual children acquire the past tense like monolinguals, only later.

In this study, we compared the English past tense production of ChineseEnglish bilingual children

with a matched sample of FrenchEnglish bilinguals (512 years old). The results showed small but

reliable differences in the childrens past tense production (e.g., the kinds of errors the children made)

that could be attributed to knowledge of the other language. Both groups of children showed equivalent

rates of accuracy, suggesting that bilinguals exposed to naturalistic speech acquire the past tense much

like monolinguals do, only later and with some effects, most likely morphophonological, from their

other language.

From very early in development, simultaneous bilingual children can differentiatetheir two languages (see review in Genesee & Nicoladis, 2007). This is not to saythat bilingual children learn their two languages like two monolinguals (see dis-cussion in Paradis & Genesee, 1996). Bilingual childrens language developmentshows at least two marked differences from that of monolingual children: (a) lagin the age of acquisition of some aspects of language and (b) transfer from theirother language or cross-linguistic transfer. The present study tested whether these

differences are observable in bilingual childrens acquisition of tense marking inEnglish.In comparison to monolingual children of the same age, bilinguals show some

lags in language acquisition. For example, bilingual preschool children often have

Cambridge University Press 2011 0142-7164/11 $15.00


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Applied Psycholinguistics 2Nicoladis et al.: Bilingual past tense

smaller vocabularies within either of their languages than monolingual childrenof the same age (e.g., Nicoladis, 2002, 2003, 2006; Pearson, Fernandez, & Oller,1993). In some aspects of morphology, such as compound production, bilingualchildren produce fewer target constructions relative to monolingual children of the

same age (e.g., Nicoladis, 2007). Bilingual children do not show lags relative tosame-age monolingual children in all domains of language. For example, Paradisand Genesee (1996) showed that simultaneous FrenchEnglish bilingual childrenordered negative markers and pronouns relative to the verb at about the same degreeof accuracy as reported for monolingual children of the same age. Some researchershave argued that the domains of language acquisition that are particularly stronglyrelated to input frequency may be those domains in which bilingual children arelikely to show lags (e.g., Nicoladis, 2008). Many researchers have argued that, onaverage, bilingual children probably hear and/or use each language less often thanmonolingual children (e.g., Marchman, Martnez-Sussman, & Dale, 2004). For

example, input frequency is highly predictive of monolingual childrens vocabu-lary acquisition (e.g., Goodman, Dale, & Li, 2008). Because bilingual childrensexposure to language is divided between two languages (see, e.g., David & Li,2008), it follows that their vocabulary size within a language would be lower thanthat of monolingual children. Similarly, Gathercole (1997) showed that 7-year-oldSpanishEnglish bilingual children lagged behind English monolinguals in theirinterpretation of mass/count noun distinctions, whereas 9-year-old bilingual chil-dren were on par with their monolingual peers. The acquisition of the mass/countnoun distinction may partly rely on hearing enough exemplars in the input toacquire general patterns.

When bilingual children show lags in acquisition relative to monolingual chil-dren, one corollary is that they acquire those aspects of language at a later agethan monolinguals. In that case, the bilingual children may have matured and/ordeveloped socially and cognitively to a greater extent when they acquired thoseaspects relative to monolingual children, who usually acquire those aspects ata younger age (e.g., Ionin & Wexler, 2002; Wexler, 1998). For example, in theGathercole (1997) study mentioned previously, 9-year-old bilingual children wereon par with monolingual children in the use of mass/count noun distinction. Sim-ilarly, Paradis and Nicoladis (2008) have shown that FrenchEnglish bilingualchildren in Canada score at the norm for monolingual children of the same age onvocabulary tests in both languages, starting around 9 years of age. These studiessuggest that bilingual childrens language acquisition is not simply dependent oninput frequency.

Bilingual childrens language use also differs from monolinguals in that theysometimes show cross-linguistic transfer, that is, influence from their other lan-guage, in the production or interpretation of the target language. Young bilingualchildren show signs of transfer in phonology (e.g., Barlow, 2002; Brulard &Carr, 2003; Holm & Dodd, 1999; Paradis, 2001), morphology (e.g., Nicoladis,2002, 2003), and syntax (e.g., Dopke, 1998; Hulk & Muller, 2000; Muller, 1998;

Nicoladis, 2006; Paradis & Navarro, 2003; Yip & Matthews, 2000). For example,Dopke (1998) examined verb placement in the spontaneous speech of GermanEnglish bilingual children. In main clauses, German typically requires a secondverb (V2), whereas English requires subjectverbobject (SVO); in dependent


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clauses, both German and English allow SVO. The childrens verb placement wasinfluenced by their knowledge of the other language; for instance, the childrendid not stringently use V2 placement in German main clauses. Transfer in simul-taneous bilingual children can often be observed in both of their languages (e.g.,

Nicoladis, 2002). Not all domains of language acquisition show signs of transferin young bilingual children (e.g., Paradis & Genesee, 1996). It is not yet clear whysome domains of language acquisition are affected by cross-linguistic transfer andothers are not.

In sum, the research to date has shown that bilingual children can sometimes lagin language acquisition relative to same-age monolingual children, particularly indomains of acquisition related to input frequency. In some cases, bilingual childrenseem to catch up, suggesting that maturational or developmental factors also playa role. Bilingual children also show cross-linguistic transfer with some domainsof language acquisition and not with others. The present study focuses on the

acquisition of tense marking in English by young bilinguals. Our goal was totest whether bilinguals past tense acquisition resembles that of monolinguals(only later) and/or whether their past tense acquisition is affected by knowledgeof another language. In order to understand how bilingual children acquire tensemarking, we must first review what is known about first-language (L1) acquisitionof tense marking.

L1 ACQUISITION OF TENSE MARKING IN ENGLISH

The past tense of most English verbs is formed by adding -ed to the stem, as injumped. The -ed is considered the regular form of the past tense (for discussion ofhow to identify regular forms, see Marcus, Brinkman, Clahsen, Wiese, & Pinker,1995). The past tense of some English verbs is irregular, often involving a vowelchange relative to the stem (e.g., sang, bit, ate, flew), although consonants canchange as well (e.g., brought, went).

When English-speaking children first start producing verbs, they are usuallyproduce bare verbs, unmarked for tense, even when talking about events fromthe past (Marchman & Bates, 1994; Paradis & Crago, 2001; see Wexler, 1998).For example, a child might say, I eat banana to refer to an event that happenedlast week. Children start using past tense morphemes on verbs around the age of2 years (Brown, 1973; Philips, 1995). Most of the verbs that English-speakingchildren produce at around this age are irregular (e.g., ate) and children make veryfew errors in production (Marcus et al., 1992). After that initial stage, childrenstart to produce many more regular verbs (e.g.,jumped) and they make some errorsin using past tense morphology (Kuczaj, 1977; Marcus et al., 1992). Around thesame age, children can also extend the use of the morpheme -ed to novel verbs,although they often still produce many bare stems with novel verbs (Berko, 1958).The most frequent error in past tense marking on familiar verbs among English-speaking children is overregularization of irregular verbs (such as ringed instead

ofrang; Berko, 1958; Marcus et al., 1992), although some irregularizations havebeen observed (such as brang instead ofbrought; Xu & Pinker, 1995). The ratesof errors vary widely across studies, depending to some extent on how they arecalculated (e.g., compare, Kuczaj, 1977; Marcus et al., 1992). English-speaking


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children continue producing some overregularizations until around 6 or 7 years ofage (Kuczaj, 1977; Marcus et al., 1992).

Some of the patterns seen in L1 acquisition can be explained by the relativetype and/or token frequency of irregular and regular past tense forms in English

(see discussion of the role of input frequency in Gathercole & Hoff, 2007; seealso Legate & Yang, 2007). For example, many irregular past tense forms are, onaverage, high in token frequency in child-directed speech. High token frequencycan lead to childrens acquiring that form by entrenchment or rote memory (Bybee,1995; Marchman, 1997; see also Pinker & Ullman, 2002). Regular past tenseforms are high in type frequency but not necessarily in token frequency. Hightype frequency can lead to childrens productive use of regular forms (Bybee,1995; Marchman, 1997; Marchman & Bates, 1994; Plunkett & Marchman, 1993).Children produce past tense morphemes productively only after they have reacheda critical mass in vocabulary (Jackson-Maldonado, 2004). Overregularizations

occur when children do not immediately access the entrenched or memorizedirregular form and apply the regular past tense formation (e.g., Marchman &Bates, 1994; Marcus et al., 1992; Plunkett & Marchman, 1993).

L1 acquisition of tense marking is highly related to frequency in the input: hightoken frequency seems to lead to memorization and high type frequency seems tolead to productive use of morphemes. To the extent that young bilinguals acquiretheir languages like monolinguals, the less frequent exposure, on average, to eitherlanguage should lead to lags in their acquisition of tense marking. So, even school-aged bilingual children might not yet have reached ceiling in their accuracy ofpast tense marking. Their accuracy might be related to the number of verbs theycan use in the past tense, predicting a positive correlation between numbers ofdifferent verbs used and accuracy in marking the past tense. Also, regardless ofthe childrens other language, they might also use bare verbs for a more prolongedperiod of time than monolinguals. Furthermore, we expect to see childrens mostfrequent error to be overregularization of the most common pattern of Englishpast tense marking, -ed.

ACQUISITION OF TENSE MARKING IN YOUNG BILINGUALS

Most of the research on young bilinguals acquisition of past tense marking haspointed to the same acquisition patterns in young bilinguals as L1 acquisition,only later. For example, in a longitudinal study, Gavruseva (2002) showed thata child with L1 Russian and second-language (L2) English showed some of thesame patterns of tense acquisition as monolingual children. This child initiallydid not mark for tense at all, then used many irregular verbs correctly and laterproduced some overregularizations. This pattern of acquisition corresponds withwhat has been observed with monolingual children.

Nicoladis, Palmer, and Marentette (2007) compared the use of past tense insimultaneous FrenchEnglish bilinguals (46 years of age) relative to same-age

English and French monolinguals. They found that the children marked tensecorrectly in both languages less often than monolinguals, suggesting a lag. InEnglish, they found that the children were more accurate with regular forms thanirregular forms and most of the errors were overregularizations, as would be the


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case with younger monolingual children. In French, they found that the childrenwere more accurate with regular forms than irregular forms but that most ofthe errors were not overregularizations, but present or stem forms. The authorsattributed the cross-linguistic differences in error patterns to differing type/token

frequency of regular and irregular tense markings in French and English. Theauthors further argued that there was no evidence of cross-linguistic transfer inthe bilinguals use of tense marking. They based this argument on the past tensein French is a compound form and there was no higher rate of the bilinguals usingcompound past forms in English than with the monolinguals.

Other studies have suggested that there may be some small differences betweenbilinguals and monolinguals in the acquisition of morphology. For example, Shirai(2003) argues that there may be small differences between L1 and L2 in terms ofthe semantics of regular and irregular morphology. Other researchers have pointedto the possibility of greater individual variation in morphological acquisition (e.g.,

Paradis, Rice, Crago, & Marquis, 2008; see also Jia, 2003, for similar results withthe acquisition of plural morphology). Still other studies suggest some qualitativedifferences. For example, Jacobson and Schwartz (2005) showed that typicallydeveloping sequential SpanishEnglish bilingual children between 7 and 9 yearsproduced past tense verbs in English with a high degree of accuracy, but madeno overregularization errors, one of the most frequent error types observed withmonolingual children.

In sum, the research evidence to date suggests that bilingual children acquiremorphology like monolinguals, only later (e.g., Nicoladis et al., 2007). There islittle evidence for cross-linguistic transfer affecting past tense markings in youngbilinguals. However, there is no study comparing two groups of young bilinguals,one with two tense-marking languages (like English and French) and one withone tense-marking language and one nontense-marking language (like Englishand Chinese). In this study, we make precisely this comparison. The results willallow us to understand to what extent bilinguals develop past tense marking fromtheir exposure to the target language and to what extent bilinguals acquisition isaffected by their knowledge of another language.

If transfer did affect bilingual childrens past-tense production, what wouldtransfer? One possibility is that there is syntactic transfer of tense marking (e.g.,Hawkins & Liszka, 2003; Lardiere, 1998). Adult late learners of English whosefirst language is Chinese often have difficulty with tense in English, presumablybecause Chinese does not mark verbs for tense (e.g., Goad, White, & Steele,2003; cf. Leung, 2006). For example, Yang and Huang (2004) showed that astheir proficiency in L2 English increased, Cantonese L1 speakers (both childrenand adults) switched gradually from using Cantonese-like strategies for markingtemporality (such as adverbs) to marking verbs for tense. The low suppliance oftense marking by Chinese L1 learners of L2 English can persist, for at least upto 18 years of living in an English-speaking country (e.g., Lardiere, 1998). Ifsyntactic transfer affected tense marking, we would expect that ChineseEnglish

bilinguals would be less accurate than FrenchEnglish bilinguals in producingtense markers in English.Another possibility is that there is morphophonological transfer from Chinese

(e.g., Goad et al., 2003; cf. Hawkins & Liszka, 2003), specifically with Chinese


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favoring one-syllable words and French multisyllable words. If this were the case,then ChineseEnglish bilinguals might try to mark tense word internally (e.g., asin the vowel change involved in many irregular English verbs) more often thenFrenchEnglish bilinguals, who might produce multisyllabic past tense forms (as

in some regular verbs).

THIS STUDY

We elicited past-tense forms from bilingual children between 5 and 12 yearsby asking them to watch a cartoon and tell the story back. This methodologyreplicates that of Nicoladis et al. (2007), who showed that both English andFrench monolinguals between 4 and 6 years of age used the past tense to tellthe story over 90% of the time and with over 90% accuracy for both regular andirregular verbs.

The primary purpose of this study was to test if there were any differences be-tween ChineseEnglish and FrenchEnglish bilingual children in their use of theEnglish past tense. If bilingual children acquire the English past tense like mono-linguals, then the two bilingual groups should use the past tense with equivalentrates of accuracy to each other.1 The most frequent error in English for both groupsshould be overregularizations, although there may still be (equivalent) rates of us-ing verb stems (i.e., unmarked for tense), as observed in younger monolingual chil-dren, and, because accuracy is thought to be related to the number of different verbsknown (see, e.g., Jackson-Maldonado, 2004), then the number of verb types chil-

dren spontaneously use might be a better correlate of correct inflection use than age.If there were cross-linguistic transfer effects, the ChineseEnglish bilingualsmight be less accurate in marking tense than the FrenchEnglish bilinguals. If thetransfer effects were due to the lack of tense marking in Chinese, we might expectequivalent rates of accuracy in regular and irregular verbs for the ChineseEnglishbilinguals because tense marking would be used primarily when a form wasmemorized. In contrast, the FrenchEnglish bilinguals would be more accuratewith regular verbs, because regularity is a property of both French and English past-tense markings. If the transfer effects were due to morphophonology, we mightfind that ChineseEnglish bilinguals are more accurate with irregular verbs than

regular verbs and make more errors by using root verbs than overregularizationscompared to the FrenchEnglish bilinguals.The primary focus of this study was on the childrens use of tense marking in

English. For the sake of interest, we also present the results for the childrens tensemarking in French, expecting to replicate previous studies showing that bilingualsare more likely to overregularize the regular past tense marker in English than inFrench.

METHODS

Participants

All of the participants in the present study were growing up in Edmonton, Alberta,Canada. The majority language in this city is English. Chinese represents the


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most populous minority language spoken in Edmonton. According to the 2006census, 3.8% of the population of the greater Edmonton area spoke Chineseas a mother tongue (www.statcan.gc.ca). There are five elementary schools inEdmonton with a MandarinEnglish bilingual program. According to the same

census, French is spoken as at least one of the languages at home by 0.9% ofthe population (www.statcan.gc.ca). Although the French-speaking population ofEdmonton is smaller than the Chinese-speaking population, French is an officiallanguage of Canada. Edmonton is the capital of the province and so many federalinstitutions, often requiring FrenchEnglish bilingual employees, are seated here.There are five French-only elementary schools catering to L1 French-speakingchildren (not counting the popular French Immersion programs that cater to L1English-speaking children).

All of the children in this study were simultaneous bilinguals, having beenexposed to both of their languages from at least the age of 2 years or earlier (for

a discussion of what constitutes a simultaneous bilingual, see Meisel, 2004). Allof the children heard the minority language (i.e., Chinese or French) from at leastone parent in the home. All of the children were deemed to be typically developingby their parents. All of the children were born in Canada.

Fourteen Mandarin ChineseEnglish bilinguals between the ages of 5 and 11years (M= 7.6 years, SD = 2.0) participated in this study. There were 8 boysand 6 girls. All of the children heard Chinese at home from both parents. Theywere all enrolled in English daycares or schools and were integrated in the classwith the rest of the English-speaking students (i.e., none was receiving English asa second language [ESL] instruction). The children produced an average of 24.5(SD= 5.9) verb types in their English narratives.

We matched these participants as closely as we could on age, gender, and thenumber of verb types they used to tell the story with FrenchEnglish bilingualsfrom a database of 32 children. These data were collected at the same time asthe data from the ChineseEnglish bilinguals and were collected originally totest hypotheses related to their use of manual gestures. We chose to match onage, gender, and number of verb types (in English) because these variables areimportant in L1 acquisition of past tense marking (Jackson-Maldonado, 2004;Marcus et al., 1992; Ullman et al. 2002). The 14 children included in the analysesranged between 5 and 12 years of age, averaging 7.8 years (SD = 2.0). Therewere 8 boys and 6 girls. At least one of their parents spoke French with them athome. The school-aged children were enrolled in French schools; the preschoolchildren attended French daycares. Not all the children had easily identifiableregular sources of English; in our experience, school-aged children from thispopulation hear English from a variety of contexts, including TV, internet, neigh-borhood children, and so forth. The children produced an average of 23.1 (SD =9.0) verb types in their English narratives and 21.7 (SD = 8.2) in their Frenchnarratives.

Materials

The participants watched two short segments of Pink Panther cartoons, one fromIn the Pink of the Night and the other from Jet Pink. In the first segment,


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the Pink Panther tries to get rid of a bothersome cuckoo bird but ends up likingthe bird. In the second segment, the Pink Panther accidentally takes off in anexperimental jet that subsequently seems to fly itself with the Pink Panther onboard. The two segments, shown one directly after the other, were about 5 min in

total. There is some written English in the segments, but no spoken words.

Procedure

The participants watched the two segments of the Pink Panther cartoons. A nativespeaker of the relevant language then asked the participants to recount what he orshe had seen in the cartoon. The participants were videotaped as they recountedthe stories. The participants were interviewed twice: once in English and once ineither French or Chinese. The order of the language was counterbalanced and thetwo sessions were separated by about a week. The order of the languages had no

significant effect on any of our dependent measures.

Transcription and coding

The speech used to tell the stories was transcribed in orthographic words. Wecounted all the verbs that were used to tell the story (i.e., excluding metanarrativeremarks like, Im not sure if I remember what happens after . . .). We assumedthat the verbs to tell the story were meant to be in the past tense (as it is a commonconvention to tell stories in the past tense; see Berman & Slobin, 1994) and codedas errors any verbs that were not in the past tense.

To count verb types, we counted each infinitive form as a single type (e.g., if achild said was, were, is, and be as the main verb of a sentence, these wereall classified as a single type). To count verb tokens, we counted the total numberof main verbs used to tell the story. To calculate the rate of accuracy, we used thenumber of verb tokens as the denominator because children were not necessarilyconsistent across verb types.

In English, we coded as regular all the verbs that usually took -ed in the pasttense in English in the form used in the story. All other verbs were coded asirregular. Appendix A lists the verbs used by children in both groups to tellthe story. Note that the two groups of children used a very similar pool ofverbs.

In French, we coded as regular all the verbs whose past participles end in -e. Allother verbs were coded as irregular. The list of verbs the children used to tell thestory in French appears in Appendix B. Two children code-mixed two differentverbs in French: smash and drop. The verb smash was included in the analysis,as a regular verb (the child said il a smashe). The verb drop was excluded fromthe analysis (the child said il drop) because it was unclear if the child said thestem as an error with the past tense or because it was code-mixed (for discussionof code-mixing possibilities, see Myers-Scotton, 1993).

In English, we coded for four kinds of errors: present, stem, overregularization,and irregularization (see examples in Table 1). Note that in English, only twokinds of errors were observed for regular verbs: present and stem. In French, itwas not always possible to distinguish between the present and the stem (e.g.,


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Table 1. Examples of error codings

EnglishFrench

Regular Irregular Irregular

Accurate He pushed a button. He brought the bird. Il a couru.Present He pushes a button. He brings the bird. Il court.Stem He push a button. He bring the bird. Overregularization He bringed the bird. Il a coure.Irregularization He brang the bird. Il a couri.

il mange could be the present he eats or the stem of the verb manger toeat) so in analyzing French errors, we present the errors as present/stem. Theonly kind of error the children made with French regular verbs was the use ofpresent/stem, so no examples are presented in Table 1. No child told the storyexclusively or mostly in the present tense, justifying the categorization of thepresent as an error. Almost all subjects were third person singular; the few ex-ceptions were always marked accurately for past tense and so were included in theanalyses.

Although we recorded the Chinese stories, we do not present any analysesbecause they were not relevant to our research questions. Recall that Chinese does

not mark verbs for past tense.

RESULTS

The average number of verb types that the ChineseEnglish bilinguals used to tellevents from the story was 24.5 (SD = 5.9), whereas the average for the FrenchEnglish bilinguals was 23.1 (SD = 9.0). There was no significant differencebetween the two groups (F< 1, 2p = 0.009).

The FrenchEnglish bilinguals used an average of 21.7 (SD= 8.2) verb types inFrench to tell the story. There was no significant difference between the bilinguals

number of verb types in French and in English on a paired ttest (t< 1).

Accuracy

The ChineseEnglish bilinguals overall rate of accuracy on past tense usageaveraged 77.1% (SD = 18.1%). The FrenchEnglish bilinguals overall rate ofaccuracy averaged 70.5% (SD = 36.7%). There was no significant differencebetween the two groups (F< 1, 2p = 0.014).

Figure 1 shows the average (standard deviation) percentage accuracy for regular

and irregular verbs. To analyze the English results, we compared the rate of ac-curacy between the two groups, with regular and irregular verbs as a repeatedmeasure. This analysis revealed no significant main effects for either group,F (1, 26) = 0.04, ns, 2p = 0.002, or for regular/irregular, F (1, 26) = 1.78,


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Figure 1. The percentage of accurate production of past tense markings with regular andirregular verbs. Error bars indicate standard deviations.

ns, 2p = 0.064. There was, however, a significant interaction between accuracy

with regular/irregular tense markings and group, F(1, 26)= 8.88, p= .006, 2p =0.255. As can be seen in Figure 1, this interaction is due to the ChineseEnglishbilinguals greater accuracy with irregular verbs than with regular verbs and theFrenchEnglish bilinguals greater accuracy with regular verbs than with irregularverbs.

In French, the children were significantly more accurate with the regular pasttense than the irregular past tense, t(13) = 2.40, p < .05. We next compared theFrenchEnglish bilingual childrens accuracy in their two languages with regularand irregular verbs, with both measures as repeated measures. The only significantresult was a main effect for regular/irregular, F(1, 13)= 5.54,p< .05, 2

p= 0.222.

As can be seen in Figure 1, this effect was due to the childrens greater accuracywith regular verbs than irregular verbs in both languages.

English errors: Regular and irregular verbs

To compare the groups on regular verbs, we compare exclusively the use of verbstems (because the use of the present tense is virtually identical to 100% of theerrors minus the percentage of verb stems). All of the ChineseEnglish bilingualsmade at least one error with a regular verb while only six of the FrenchEnglishbilinguals made at least one error. The average percentage of stem errors for theChineseEnglish bilinguals was 82.9% (SD = 26.4%) and for the six FrenchEnglish bilinguals 23.8% (SD = 39.4%). This difference was significant, F (1,18) = 15.81, p = .001, 2p = 0.467.


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Figure 2. The rate of errors with irregular verbs in English. Error bars indicate standarddeviations. [A color version of this figure can be viewed online at journals.cambridge.org/aps]

Over 95% of the childrens errors with irregular verbs fell into three categories:verb stems, overregularization, and present tense. The rates of these errors (outof the total number of errors made) are presented in Figure 2. The percentageswere calculated out of all the errors so the rates presented in Figure 2 do not total100% per group. Note that one FrenchEnglish bilingual child did not make anyerrors with irregular forms so this childs data were dropped from the analysis. Therates of errors were compared on a 2 3 (group error type) analysis of variance,with error type as a repeated measure. This analysis showed a significant maineffect for group, F (1, 25) = 4.27, p = .049, 2p = 0.146, and a significant main

effect for error type, F (2, 50) = 3.83, p = .028, 2p = 0.133, and a significantinteraction effect, F (2, 50) = 4.29, p = .019, 2p = 0.147. To see the source ofthe interaction, the groups were compared on planned univariate F tests. Theseanalyses revealed a significant difference in the rate of stems, F (1, 25) = 6.95,

p = .014, 2p = 0.218, and in the rate of overregularizations, F (1, 25) = 8.63,

p = .007, 2p = 0.257, but no difference in the rate of present tense (F< 1, 2p =

0.001). In other words, the ChineseEnglish bilingual children used significantlymore stems and significantly fewer overregularizations with irregular past tenseforms than the FrenchEnglish bilingual children.

Three of the ChineseEnglish bilingual children produced at least one irregu-larization error (six in total). For example, one child said he flow, meaning heflew. None of the FrenchEnglish bilingual children produced an irregularizationerror in English.


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Figure 3. The rate of errors with irregular verbs for FrenchEnglish bilingual children in bothlanguages. Error bars indicate standard deviations. [A color version of this figure can be viewedonline at journals.cambridge.org/aps]

French versus English errors: Regular and irregular verbsFor regular verbs in French, seven FrenchEnglish bilinguals made at least oneerror. Recall that it was not possible to reliably distinguish between the rootand present in French. The seven FrenchEnglish bilinguals used an average of99.6% (SD = 1.0%) stem/present verbs in French when they did not use thecorrect form. Collapsing across the use of stem and present in English, the sixFrenchEnglish bilinguals who had errors with regular verbs used an averageof 94.4% (SD = 13.6%) in the stem/present when they did not use the correctform.

Figure 3 summarizes the rate of errors for FrenchEnglish bilingual children

with irregular verbs. Note that one child did not produce any errors with irregularverbs in English and this child is excluded from the analysis. To compare the errortypes in the two languages, we included the two error types and the two languages,both as repeated measures. This analysis revealed a significant main effect for errortype, F (1, 12) = 14.77, p < .01, 2p = 0.359, and a near-significant main effectfor language, F (1, 12) = 4.22, p = .062, 2p = 0.211. The interaction effect didnot quite attain significance, F(1, 12)= 4.63, p= .052, 2p = 0.223. These results

show that the children made more stem/present errors than overregularizations inboth languages, but that there was a tendency to use more overregularizations in

English than in French.One child produced one irregularization in French (i.e., il a survi for il asurvecu). Recall that no FrenchEnglish bilingual child produced an irregularizedform in English.


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Table 2. Correlations with age and number of verb types

ChineseEnglish FrenchEnglish FrenchEnglish(English) (English) (French)

AgeCorrect (%) .522 .256 .306Stem (%) .739** .540* NAPresenta (%) .049 .486 .351Overregularization (%) .329 .200 .135

Verb typesCorrect (%) .718** .585* .443Stem (%) .521 .364 NAPresenta (%) .611* .651* .411Overregularization (%) .320 .362 .020

aFor French, this rate includes both the present and verb stems.*p < .05. **p < .01.

Correlation with age and verb types

Within each group, age was positively correlated with the number of verb typesused by the children: the ChineseEnglish bilinguals, r(12)= .528, p= .053, theFrenchEnglish bilinguals in English, r (12) = .680, p < .02, and the FrenchEnglish bilinguals in French, r(12)= .577, p< .05. The correlations between ageand verb types with the most important dependent variables (i.e., rate of accuracy,rate of the use of the present tense [and stems, in French], and the rate of errorswith irregular verbs that were overregularizations) in this study are summarizedin Table 2.

The age of the children only correlated significantly with the rate of stems, forboth groups of bilingual children. That is, as the children got older, they were lesslikely to use verb stems. In contrast, the number of verb types used by the childrencorrelated significantly with accuracy and the use of the present. The correlationswere in opposite directions in the two language groups. The more verb types theChineseEnglish bilingual children used, the more likely they were to be correctand less likely they were to use the present in English. In contrast, the moreverb types the FrenchEnglish bilingual children used in English, the less correctthey were and the more likely they were to use the present. That latter trend wasobserved in French as well, although the correlations did not reach significance.

DISCUSSION

We originally posed the question guiding this study as an either/or question:Do young bilingual children acquire tense like monolinguals or do they show

evidence of cross-linguistic transfer? We reasoned that if we compared FrenchEnglish bilingual children with ChineseEnglish bilingual children, we would seeevidence of L1-like acquisition in English if both groups did not differ in accuracy,were more accurate with regular than irregular past tense forms and made mostly


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overregularization errors with irregular verbs. Furthermore, the childrens accuracyshould be highly correlated with the number of verb types they chose to use and notnecessarily age. French marks for tense whereas Chinese does not. For that reason,if there was evidence of transfer, we might expect less accuracy in marking tense

in English among the ChineseEnglish bilinguals than among the FrenchEnglishbilinguals and a greater use of verb stems (i.e., not marking verbs for tense) thanoverregularization errors. We argue that, in fact, the results of this study suggestthat the answer is yes to both of these questions. That is, the children were largelyacquiring the past tense in English like monolinguals (only later) and there werealso some small signs of transfer from the other language.

Which results supported the claim that both groups of young bilinguals wereacquiring their languages like monolinguals, only later? First, both groupswere quite accurate (70%77% accurate) at producing the past tense and therewere no differences in the rate of accuracy of marking past tense forms between

the two groups. So, even though French marks for tense and Chinese does not,both groups of bilingual children accurately marked tense at equivalent rates. Bothgroups are notably lower in accurately marking past tense than has been reportedfor younger monolingual children on a similar task (i.e., over 90%; Nicoladiset al., 2007). Second, the rate of accuracy in past tense inflection suppliance by theChineseEnglish bilinguals was far higher than has been reported for late EnglishL2 learners with L1 Chinese (see, e.g., Goad et al., 2003; Lardiere, 1998). Inaddition, there were correlations with verb types rather than age for the ChineseEnglish bilinguals (we discuss below why the FrenchEnglish bilinguals did notshow this pattern). This result suggests that the childrens degree of accuracywas highly related to the number of verbs that they knew and is consistent withthe explanation that productivity is related to type frequency (e.g., Bybee, 1995;Jackson-Maldonado, 2004). Thus, the results of this study suggest that youngbilinguals learn past tense markings largely like monolinguals, only with a lag,perhaps due to less frequent exposure, on average, to English (Nicoladis et al.,2007; see also Jia, 2003).

Note that there was also some evidence that maturation and/or development isalso playing a role in bilingual childrens acquisition of past tense marking. Forboth groups of bilingual children, age was correlated negatively with their use ofverb stems in English. This finding suggests that as the children got older, theybecame more sensitive to the verbs needing to be marked in some way. In contrast,the correlations between stem use and word types were not significant, suggestingthat greater exposure to or practice with English was a less important factor inavoiding stems than maturation or development.

There is one possible alternative explanation that we cannot rule out, namely,that young bilinguals acquire their morphology in a qualitatively different wayfrom monolinguals. Paradis et al. (2008) found that children aged 4 to 7 yearslearning ESL produced tense markings at a lower rate than monolinguals, matchedon mean length of utterance. The ESL children had a variety of L1s, including

some languages that marked for tense grammatically and others that did not andhad been exposed to English for an average of 9 months. They argued that theirresults showed that L2 learners pass through a fundamentally different acquisitionprocess compared to L1 learners. That is, the overall pattern of results with several


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inflectional morphemes in English suggested that the L2 learners were generallyomitting surface inflections. In contrast, the L1 learners use corresponded tothe use of nonfinite, or optional infinitive, usage. They argued that their resultscould not be explained by transfer from L1 because they observed the same

pattern of acquisition in children from a variety of L1s. To rule out the possibilityof qualitatively different acquisition in young bilinguals would require furtherevidence from a variety of inflections and a monolingual comparison group (ofthe same linguistic ability in English as the bilinguals; see Paradis et al., 2008).Nevertheless, for the children who participated in the present study, their pasttense usage showed some striking similarities to that of younger monolinguals.

Although there were similarities of the bilingual childrens past tense markingwith what has been reported for younger monolingual children, there were alsosome differences, many of these likely due to transfer from their other language.First, the ChineseEnglish bilinguals were more accurate with irregular verbs in

English than regular verbs, whereas FrenchEnglish bilinguals were more ac-curate with regular than irregular verbs. The finding with the ChineseEnglishbilinguals replicates what has been reported for adult late learners of English withL1 Chinese (Goad et al., 2003; Hawkins & Liszka, 2003). Monolingual Englishchildren, after an initial short-lived stage of greater accuracy with irregular verbs,are generally more accurate at producing regular past tense markings than irregularverbs (Kuczaj, 1977; Marcus et al., 1995; see also Berko, 1958). There were alsodifferences between the groups in terms of the errors that they made. When theChineseEnglish bilinguals made errors with regular verbs, they were more likelyto use verb stems (rather than the present tense), whereas the FrenchEnglish bilin-guals were more likely to use the present tense (rather than verb stems). When theymade errors with irregular verbs, the ChineseEnglish bilinguals were more likelyto use verb stems than overregularized forms, whereas the FrenchEnglish bilin-guals showed the reverse pattern. Although there were few irregularization errorsin English, they were all made by ChineseEnglish bilinguals. Irregularizationerrors arguably mark for tense but do not involve the suppliance of an inflectionmorpheme. Thus, there was a slightly higher rate of marking tense word-internallyor not marking tense at all among the ChineseEnglish bilinguals than among theFrenchEnglish bilinguals.

These results suggest that what is transferring may be primarily morphophono-logical in nature. We cannot completely rule out a possible effect of transfer oftense features (cf. Lardiere, 1998) because the ChineseEnglish bilinguals used arelatively high rate of verb stems and a low rate of overregularizations in English,compared to the FrenchEnglish bilinguals. However, it is unlikely that it is onlythe tense feature that is transferred: recall that the ChineseEnglish bilingualswere not significantly less accurate in marking tense that FrenchEnglish bilin-guals. In addition, as noted above, the ChineseEnglish bilinguals had a greatertendency to mark tense word-internally (i.e., higher rate of accuracy with irregularverbs than regular and some irregularizations). These results suggest that there may

be some phonological transfer at work as well. Goad et al. (2003) have arguedthat the low suppliance of past tense morphemes in adult L2 learners of Englishis due to transfer of what constitutes a prosodic word from their L1 Chinese (seediscussion in Bliss, 2006). We did not analyze the childrens prosody in this study,


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but it would be an interesting line of future research. A third possible contributorto the transfer could have been some aspect of semantics or concepts. For example,telicity can play a role in childrens likelihood to mark a verb for the past (seeGavruseva, 2004; see also Collins, 2002). We could not analyze the childrens

suppliance of past tense markings on the basis of telicity in this study becausetheir rates of accuracy were too high. Future studies that included speakers withlower proficiency could check for the effect of telicity. Nevertheless, we havesufficient evidence to argue that the small effects transfer observed here werelargely due to morphophonology.

We noted earlier that the childrens rates of accuracy with past tense markingswas very high relative to reported rates with adult L2 learners. Although weonly have cross-sectional data on these children, we have observed that adultsin Edmonton who have grown up in similar language situations to the childrenin this study sound like native speakers in English. In other words, we expect

the children to grow out of the stage of marking tense with less than 100%accuracy, unlike late adult L2 learners (e.g., Lardiere, 1998). Convergent withour expectations, Wang and Geva (2003) reported on a study with CantoneseEnglish bilingual childrens spelling in Grades 1 and 2. The childrens spellingperformance was linked to their auditory discrimination. As a result, the bilingualswere poorer spellers in L2 English than native speakers in Grade 1 but by Grade2 showed no differences. If we are correct in assuming that young bilingualchildren can outgrow tense marking errors, why children and not adults? Thisissue has been extensively discussed in the literature (e.g., Herschensohn, 2007;see also review in Schwartz, 2004). We mention one possibility here. Childrenolder than 4 years of age have been shown to benefit from the production of theirown linguistic errors (i.e., they often correct themselves), whereas adults tendto simply repeat errors (Ramscar & Gitcho, 2007). Ramscar and Gitcho (2007)attribute this difference to developmental changes in neuronal connectivity. Thispossibility could be particularly relevant for the bilingual children in this study,growing up in an English majority-language context. These children may bestrongly motivated to practice their English and then correct for any of their ownlinguistic errors that they hear.

There was one curious set of results in the present study that we have neverseen reported in the literature before. For the FrenchEnglish bilinguals, therewas a significant negative correlation between the number of verb types theyused and the correct past tense markers they used. Recall that we had predicteda positive correlation because the number of verb types would be related to theacquisition of a critical mass of verbs over which they could generalize. Onepossible explanation comes from the positive correlation between the use ofthe present and the number of verb types. The more verb types might indicatethat the more comfortable in English that they were, the more likely the FrenchEnglish bilinguals were to switch to the present tense in order to create a morevivid narrative. Another possible explanation is that French monolinguals are more

likely to use the present tense in recounting a narrative. If this were the case, theincreasing use of the present could reflect transfer from French.The main focus of this study was the childrens use of English. The French

results replicated previous studies with FrenchEnglish bilinguals, suggesting


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some cross-linguistic differences in the acquisition of past tense morphemes (e.g.,Nicoladis et al., 2007). The FrenchEnglish bilinguals were equally accuratein marking the past in French and in English. However, they were more likelyto overregularize English irregular verbs than French irregular verbs. The most

frequent error type in French was the use of the present or verb stems. Theseresults could be due to properties of French irregular verbs that tend to cluster intofamilies with highly predictable phonological patterns (see Nicoladis et al., 2007).

We raise two caveats in interpreting the results of the present study. First,because we relied on narratives, we had no control over which verbs the childrenused. The childrens high accuracy rate could be due to their use of familiar verbsfor which they felt sure of the past tense. An important follow-up study wouldcompare two groups of young bilinguals on past tense production of a particular setof verbs. Second, although there was some variation in the age of first exposure tothe two languages (i.e., between birth and 2 years), we have treated the children as

if they formed a homogenous group of simultaneous bilinguals. A more systematicstudy, controlling for initial age of exposure as well as continued exposure to thelanguage, could verify if this assumption were valid.

In closing, we conclude that young bilinguals acquire past tense marking inEnglish largely like L1 monolinguals only later and with some small effects oftransfer, most likely morphophonological in nature, from their other language.

APPENDIX A

English verbs the children used

ChineseEnglish Bilinguals FrenchEnglish Bilinguals

Regular Irregular Regular Irregular

Burn (2) Be (14) Attach (2) Be (14)Bypass (1) Become (1) Burn (2) Blow (2)Carry (1) Blow (4) Capture (1) Break (2)

Chase (3) Bring (1) Chase (1) Bring (2)Check (1) Catch (2) Clean (1) Can (7)Clean (1) Come (13) Click (1) Catch (1)Climb (2) Cut (7) Climb (1) Come (7)Close (1) Dig (1) Decide (2) Cut (1)Crash (1) Do (13) Die (1) Do (12)Decide (1) Fall (9) Dive (2) Drive (1)Die (2) Find (3) Drag (1) Eat (1)Dive (2) Fly (5) Dream (2) Fall (11)Drop (3) Get (13) Drop (2) Feel (2)Dump (2) Go (14) Duck (1) Find (3)

Grab (1) Have (7) End (1) Fly (5)Hammer (1) Hear (2) Flap (1) Get (9)Imagine (2) Hide (1) Grab (1) Go (14)Jump (4) Hit (3) Happen (1) Have (9)


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APPENDIX A (cont.)

ChineseEnglish Bilinguals FrenchEnglish Bilinguals

Regular Irregular Regular Irregular

Kill (1) Keep (1) Hook (1) Hear (5)Knock (4) Know (1) Hop (1) Hit (2)Land (7) Let (2) Imagine (2) Keep (5)Look (4) Lose (1) Install (2) Let (3)Nail (1) Make (9) Invite (1) Make (5)Open (4) Put (10) Jump (7) Put (8)Paddle (2) Read (2) Kick (1) Retake (1)Pass (1) Ring (5) Knock (2) Ride (1)Pat (1) Run (6) Land (4) Ring (6)

Pick (2) Say (3) Like (1) Run (5)Play (2) See (8) Look (8) Say (5)Pour (2) Set (5) Move (1) See (8)Press (8) Shake (1) Nail (2) Set (2)Pretend (1) Shrink (1) Open (5) Sing (1)Pull (1) Sing (1) Plug (1) Sink (2)Push (2) Sink (2) Press (6) Sleep (2)Reach (1) Sleep (4) Pull (1) Steal (1)Realize (1) Stand (1) Push (5) Swim (2)Renumber (1) Strike (3) Reinstall (1) Take (9)Sail (1) Swim (1) Saw (1) Think (8)

Scoop (1) Take (8) Scare (1) Throw (7)Search (1) Think (10) Smash (3) Wake (7)Slam (1) Throw (6) Smell (1)Smash (5) Wake (4) Splat (1)Smell (2) Will (1) Start (7)Start (3) Stop (2)Stay (1) Stuff (1)Tie (3) Tie (3)Trace (1) Try (4)Try (9) Turn (5)Tug (1) Use (2)

Turn (7) Walk (6)Use (8) Want (5)Wait (1) Work (2)Walk (5) Yell (1)Want (7)Wrap (1)Zoom (1)

Note: The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of children whoused that verb in their retelling. There were 14 children in each group.


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APPENDIX B

French verbs the FrenchEnglish bilingual children used

Regular Irregular

Abandonner to give up (1) Aterrir to land (3)Accrocher to hang up (1) Avoir to have (10)Acheter to buy (6) Conduire to drive (3)Aller to go (14) Courir to run (5)Arreter to stop (4) Couvrir to cover (1)Arriver to arrive (4) Croire to believe (1)Attacher to tie (5) Descendre to descend (1)Attraper to catch (5) Detruire to destroy (2)

Bloquer to block (1) Devenir to become (2)Briser to break (4) Dire to say (6)Bruler to burn (2) Dormir to sleep (7)Casser to break (1) Entendre to hear (3)

Causer to cause (1) Etre to be (11)Chequer to check (1) Faire to do/make (14)Chercher to look for (1) Finir to finish (1)Chopper to push very hard (1)a Lire to read (1)Cliquer to click (2) Mettre to put (9)Commencer to start (4) Mourir to die (5)Continuer to continue (4) Ouvrir to open (1)Coucher to lie down (1) Partir to leave (1)Couper to cut (5) Prendre to take (11)Decider to decide (1) Recourir to run again (1)Decoller to take off [plane] (2) Redescendre to descend again (1)Detacher to untie (1) Remettre to put back (3)Emmener to bring (2) Rendre to return (1)Enlever to take off/remove (3) Resortir to go out again (2)Entrer to go in (1) Reussir to succeed (1)Essayer to try (8) Revenir to come back (1)Fermer to close (2) Sendormir to fall asleep (1)Foncer to push in/down (2) Savoir to know (1)Frapper to knock (5) Se souvenir to remember (1)Glisser to slide (1) Sentir to feel/smell (1)Installer to install (1) Sortir to go out (12)Jeter to throw (8) Suivre to follow (1)Laisser to let (2) Survivre to survive (1)Lancer to throw (8) Venir to come (3)Laver to wash (1) Voir to see (9)Lever to lift up (2) Vouloir to want (3)Louer to rent (1)Marcher to walk (4)

Nager to swim (4)Passer to pass (5)Penser to think (8)Peser to push down (3)


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APPENDIX B (cont.)

Regular Irregular

Porter to carry (1)Pousser to push (5)Re-aller to go again (1)Recoucher to lie back down (1)Regarder to look (4)Reveiller to wake up (5)Rever to dream (1)Sauter to jump (8)Se lever to get up (1)Smasher to smash (1)Sonner to ring (4)

Souffler to blow (3)Taper to hit (1)Tirer to pull (5)Tomber to fall (9)Toucher to touch (5)Tourner to turn (2)Trouver to find (5)Truquer to fiddle around with (1)Tuer to kill (1)Utiliser to use (2)Voler to fly (6)

Note: The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of children whoused that verb in their retelling. There were 14 children in this group.aThis is not a standard word in Canadian French in the way the child used it;the child seems to have used it partly perhaps as a borrowing from Englishand partly for the onomatopoeic quality. The meaning we present here wasderived from the context of usage.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study received funding from a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada to the first and third authors. We thank the children who participated

so enthusiastically in this study. Carrie Jansen, Nathalie Savoie, and Natasha Tuck helped

collect the data.

NOTE1. This pattern could also be observed if bilingual acquisition was qualitatively different

from monolingual acquisition, as argued in Paradis et al. (2008). As we will point out

in the discussion, we cannot rule out this interpretation with the present study.

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Do Young Bilinguals Acquire Past Tense Morphology Like Monolinguals