Lecture | LUCL Colloquium 2023-2024
Why do multilingual children mix their languages?
- Date
- Thursday 19 October 2023
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.19
Abstract
All multilingual children mix their languages and although there is a strong research tradition on children’s mixing, much is still unknown. Because parents as well as educational and healthcare professionals often worry about language mixing by children, it is important to further our knowledge about the cost of mixing and the reasons for children’s mixing. Investigating these topics, it is moreover essential to include children with a wide range of language abilities. In this presentation, I discuss a number of studies (partly ongoing/in preparation) for which we analyzed data from bilingual Turkish-Dutch children, both with and without Developmental Language Disorder. Data were collected over the course of a two-year period with three waves of data collection spanning an age range between five and eight years. In addition to narrative tasks in both Turkish and Dutch that provided data about voluntary switching, we also administered a verbal switching task in which switching between Turkish and Dutch was more involuntary. These data allow us to determine mixing and switching cost, and investigate the role of language status, dominance and proficiency, as well as relationships between language mixing and cognitive control over time and in children with and without language learning problems. When time permits, I will also introduce our ongoing research project Children and Language Mixing: developmental, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic aspects (CALM).
Registration
You can register for the colloquium via this link. The deadline is the 29th of September.