The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to examine whether English finite morphology has the potential to differentiate children with and without language impairment (LI) from Spanish-speaking backgrounds and different levels of English proficiency in comparison to Hispanic English speakers and (b) to investigate the extent to which children who…

Bilingual speech requires that the language of utterances be selected prior to articulation. Past research has debated whether the language of speaking can be determined in advance of speech planning and, if not, the level at which it is eventually selected. We argue that the reason that it has been difficult to come to an agreement about language…

In this article we explore some of the ways that language ideologies--shared beliefs about language forms and practices embedded in social conflicts over power--mediated the language choices of 4 girls in peer activities. These activities took place in the Spanish and English first-grade classrooms of a dual-language program that enrolled children…

Purpose: The effect of semantic naming treatment on crosslinguistic generalization was investigated in 3 participants with English-Spanish bilingual aphasia. Method: A single-subject experimental designed was used. Participants received semantic treatment to improve naming of English or Spanish items, while generalization was tested to untrained…

Studies in Spanish heritage language writing have recently uncovered two opposing tendencies: "backwards biliteracy" where writing conforms to rhetorical traditions in the dominant language and "forward biliteracy" where writing breaks away from canonical rhetorical traditions and where writers carve out their own, transcultural paths of…

This paper describes multiple Estonian-Russian language contacts in Estonia. For synchronic microsociolinguistic research it is usual to concentrate on the impact of a sociolinguistically dominant language A on an immigrant/minority language B. In the Soviet setting, the dominant language was usually Russian (despite Russians being a minority).…

The purpose of this study was to design a model for "first language" dominance over "second language" performance and the interference of one language over the other. Two sets of equivalence relations showing a common element (i.e., the reference) were established under different contextual conditions. One set ("first language") was over trained…

This review of research considers the occurrence and function of Spanish discourse markers and other particles in indigenous speech. I discuss important research that has examined these phenomena and refer to studies of bilingual discourse markers in other non-indigenous language contact situations to address unresolved issues concerning the form…

Spanish-speaking (SS) children with language impairment (LI) present with deficits in morphology and verb argument structure. These language areas may be useful for clinical identification of affected children. This study aimed to evaluate the discrimination accuracy of spontaneous language measures with SS preschoolers to tease out what…

An experiment is described that is designed to test for the operation of an input switch mechanism in bilinguals. Their ability to selectively avoid processing words presented in one of their languages while they are attending to words presented in their other language is described. The 20 subjects were all French-English bilinguals. The specific…

The stability of an ethnic minority's language in a bilingual situation is viewed as a function of: (1) level of literacy in each of the two languages; (2) economic, social, and political power as related to the two languages; (3) geographic and social mobility; (4) social integration within each language group and across groups; (5) amount and…

Social attitudes marking the linguistic behavior of French Canadians living in New England during the last century are examined, including language values and stigmas, ethnocentrism, and adoption of or resistance to American attitudes. Three groups are considered: the "Little Canadas'" founders, their descendents of 50-70 years, and…

The present investigation examined the functioning of inhibitory mechanisms in younger and older bilinguals using a bilingual version of the Stroop test. The study predicted different patterns of age related decline in inhibitory mechanisms (inter- and intralingual interference) in bilinguals depending on their level of proficiency. Consistent…

Bullock and Gerfen show that two of the last speakers of French in Frenchville, Pennsylvania, systematically replace the French front mid round vowel (in words like "deux, neuf") with the rhoticized schwa of American English, their dominant language. As the authors argue, it is unlikely that this sound change would have arisen in the…

The Hispanic population of the United States is quite diverse and with each passing year, due to (im)migration patterns, more and more students are entering language classrooms with some degree of familiarity with the language. However, because of the tendency toward intergenerational loss of Spanish, the linguistic proficiency covers the…