The comprehension of Italian negation in Mandarin-Italian sequential bilingual children
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Shenai Hu
Abstract
This study investigates how sequential bilingual Mandarin-speaking children who had more than three years of exposure to Italian comprehended Italian negative sentences in comparison with affirmative ones. Sixteen bilingual children and 16 Italian monolingual peers were tested using a truth-value judgment task. All children showed greater difficulties in the comprehension of True negatives, indicating that the difficulties in the processing of negation, in the relevant experimental conditions, have a general validity across the two groups. This result can be readily interpreted in the light of the “experiential” theories of negation processing, by means of the two-step simulation hypothesis. In addition, it should be emphasized that bilingual children were more accurate in the comprehension of True negatives than monolingual children, a finding that deserves further investigation.
Abstract
This study investigates how sequential bilingual Mandarin-speaking children who had more than three years of exposure to Italian comprehended Italian negative sentences in comparison with affirmative ones. Sixteen bilingual children and 16 Italian monolingual peers were tested using a truth-value judgment task. All children showed greater difficulties in the comprehension of True negatives, indicating that the difficulties in the processing of negation, in the relevant experimental conditions, have a general validity across the two groups. This result can be readily interpreted in the light of the “experiential” theories of negation processing, by means of the two-step simulation hypothesis. In addition, it should be emphasized that bilingual children were more accurate in the comprehension of True negatives than monolingual children, a finding that deserves further investigation.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
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Part I. The acquisition of subjects
- French experiencer verbs and the Universal Freezing Hypothesis 7
- Discrimination of passive predicates by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 31
- The acquisition of Spanish 57
- Favorable processing conditions in the production of passive sentences by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 91
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Part II. The TP field
- Clitic omission in bilingual Portuguese-Spanish acquisition 119
- Syntactic awareness of clitic pronouns and articles in French-speaking children with autism, specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia 147
- The comprehension of Italian negation in Mandarin-Italian sequential bilingual children 169
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Part III. The CP field and recursion
- Subject position in Spanish as a heritage language in the Netherlands: External and internal interface factors 187
- Acquisition of backward anaphora in European Portuguese by Chinese learners 215
- Sentence repetition and language impairment in French-speaking children with ASD 235
- On the comprehension of recursive nominal modifiers in child Romanian 259
- Name index 279
- Subject index 285
- Language index 287
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. The acquisition of subjects
- French experiencer verbs and the Universal Freezing Hypothesis 7
- Discrimination of passive predicates by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 31
- The acquisition of Spanish 57
- Favorable processing conditions in the production of passive sentences by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 91
-
Part II. The TP field
- Clitic omission in bilingual Portuguese-Spanish acquisition 119
- Syntactic awareness of clitic pronouns and articles in French-speaking children with autism, specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia 147
- The comprehension of Italian negation in Mandarin-Italian sequential bilingual children 169
-
Part III. The CP field and recursion
- Subject position in Spanish as a heritage language in the Netherlands: External and internal interface factors 187
- Acquisition of backward anaphora in European Portuguese by Chinese learners 215
- Sentence repetition and language impairment in French-speaking children with ASD 235
- On the comprehension of recursive nominal modifiers in child Romanian 259
- Name index 279
- Subject index 285
- Language index 287
