TY - CHAP
T1 - A case study of a quadrilingual child
T2 - The influence of exposure and cognates when developing multiple languages
AU - Hakansson, Gisela
AU - Waters, Birgitta
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This paper reports on a case study of a quadrilingual child, Stefan, born and raised in Sweden and exposed to four languages before his first birthday: English, French, Russian and Swedish. We examine his vocabularies in these languages by the Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (Haman, Łuniewska, & Pomiechowska, 2015), designed to measure vocabulary in monolingual and multilingual children. Stefan’s scores on comprehension and production reveal proficiency in all his languages, to varying degrees, and with comprehension exceeding production. While highlighting direct and indirect exposure as explanation for the variation in proficiency, we also discuss cognate vocabulary as an important factor for multilingual language development. In the production tasks, Stefan demonstrates not only vocabulary knowledge but also language-specific use of morphosyntax.
AB - This paper reports on a case study of a quadrilingual child, Stefan, born and raised in Sweden and exposed to four languages before his first birthday: English, French, Russian and Swedish. We examine his vocabularies in these languages by the Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (Haman, Łuniewska, & Pomiechowska, 2015), designed to measure vocabulary in monolingual and multilingual children. Stefan’s scores on comprehension and production reveal proficiency in all his languages, to varying degrees, and with comprehension exceeding production. While highlighting direct and indirect exposure as explanation for the variation in proficiency, we also discuss cognate vocabulary as an important factor for multilingual language development. In the production tasks, Stefan demonstrates not only vocabulary knowledge but also language-specific use of morphosyntax.
KW - Cognates
KW - Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks
KW - Distributed vocabulary
KW - Exposure
KW - Quadrilingual
KW - Simultaneous multilingualism
KW - Vocabulary
U2 - 10.1075/tilar.29.03hak
DO - 10.1075/tilar.29.03hak
M3 - Book chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85120687559
T3 - Trends in Language Acquisition Research
SP - 78
EP - 97
BT - Language Impairment in Multilingual Settings. LITMUS in action across Europe
A2 - Armon-Lotem, Sharon
A2 - Grohmann, Kleanthes K.
PB - John Benjamins Publishing Company
ER -