In morphologically richer languages, including French, one must learn the specific properties of ... more In morphologically richer languages, including French, one must learn the specific properties of number agreement in order to understand the language, and this learning process continues into adolescence. This study examined similarities and differences between French‐speaking adolescents with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) when processing number agreement, and investigated how morpho‐syntactic regularity affected language processing. Using event‐related potentials (ERP) and only grammatical sentences with audio‐visual mismatches, we studied ERP correlates to three types of number agreement: (1) regular determiner agreement in noun phrases, (2) regular subject‐verb plural liaison, and (3) irregular subject‐verb agreement. We also included a lexico‐semantic mismatch condition to investigate lexico‐semantic processing in our participants. 17 adolescents with DLD (M = 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with typical language (TL, M = 12.2 years) participated in the study. Our results suggest three patterns. First, French‐speaking teenagers without DLD are still consolidating their neurocognitive processing of morpho‐syntactic number agreement and generally display ERP profiles typical of lower language proficiency than adult native speakers. Second, differences in morphosyntactic processing between teenagers with and without DLD seem to be limited to rule‐based (regular) number agreement. Third, there is little evidence for corresponding differences in lexico‐semantic processing.
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 2024
We used electrophysiological brain wave measures (EEG) to study French grammatical violations' ef... more We used electrophysiological brain wave measures (EEG) to study French grammatical violations' effect on adolescents. Previous event-related potentials (ERP) studies have shown that younger children elicit different brainwave patterns than adults and that this pattern varies depending on the type of linguistic error. The main goal of the study is to test whether adolescents' brain response to gender agreement violations differs from adults' pattern or not. Adolescents have been targeted as they are in a transition period where most grammatical knowledge is assumed to be mature, while processing mechanisms are still undergoing consolidation. Despite the important cognitive changes during this period, EEG studies measuring real-time processing in adolescence are lacking in most languages, including French. This project tries to fill this knowledge gap. Our results point towards different processing between adults and adolescents for gender agreement on irregular adjectives, but not on regular determiners, which are processed similarly to adults.
Contexte : Peu d’outils normés existent pour l’évaluation du vocabulaire d’adjectifs de couleur e... more Contexte : Peu d’outils normés existent pour l’évaluation du vocabulaire d’adjectifs de couleur et de grandeur, de la syntaxe et de l’accord en genre du syntagme nominal en français. Objectif : Cette étude présente un outil, composé de quatre casse-têtes ludiques, qui peut évaluer rapidement les compétences en production de syntagmes nominaux avec des adjectifs de grandeur ou de couleur. Hypothèse : Nous observerons une consolidation de l’accord de l’adjectif entre les âges de 3 à 6 ans, mais une maîtrise de l’assignation du genre chez les plus jeunes. Méthode : Les données de 190 enfants francophones âgés de 3 à 9 ans sont présentées. Nous rapportons des résultats sur quatre tâches de difficulté croissante impliquant des adjectifs de couleur et de grandeur (p. ex. le petit canard vert). Résultats : Les résultats permettent de situer la performance d’un enfant par rapport à ses pairs, de multiples façons. Les seuils de risque, les taux de réussite et les erreurs typiques à chaque âge sont présentés. De plus, l’âge auquel les différentes tâches devraient être réussies par la majorité des jeunes est répertorié. Les erreurs morphologiques ou syntaxiques typiques (ou non) des enfants grandissant dans des milieux francophones sont aussi rapportées. Conclusion : Ces points de repères quantitatifs et qualitatifs pourront alimenter l’évaluation clinique des orthophonistes, que ce soit avec la tâche ou à partir de corpus de langage, et éclaireront le raisonnement menant au diagnostic clinique en contribuant à l’ensemble des données prises en compte dans un processus de raisonnement clinique.
Examining the language abilities of children with language disorders should be a deductive proces... more Examining the language abilities of children with language disorders should be a deductive process, using much more than the data that formal measures provide. The assessment should be a systematic, psycholinguistic exploration of aspects of a child's input and output, with a focus on the attempt to pinpoint specific areas of deficit within the language-processing system. Chiat, in this insightful and extremely accessible book, provides basic profiles of children with language disorders, along with case study examples, that both illustrate various forms of language disorder and demonstrate the use of tasks, commonly applied in psycholinguistic research, to problem-solve specific cases. Chiat is a senior lecturer in Linguistics at City University, London, where she is an established researcher who focuses primarily on phonological development and disorders and the impact of impaired phonology on lexical/semantic development.
In this chapter, we critically review experiments on morphological processing focusing on compoun... more In this chapter, we critically review experiments on morphological processing focusing on compounds, derived and inflected words. Two main types of experiments are presented, those with single word or priming paradigms and those involving sentence processing, while focusing on morphological properties of words. We present as much cross-linguistic data as possible, in order to extract commonalities in morphological processing found across languages. Furthermore, studies on second-language learners, and occasionally early bilinguals, as well as child language development are presented, as they provide interesting data on differences and changes in brain behavior relating to morphological processing. Following this we discuss domains of further research while highlighting issues in data interpretation for present and future studies, in the hopes that readers will be encouraged to develop innovative research paradigms for the study of morphological processing
The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and ... more The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of partic...
The classification of LA children showed an accuracy above 75%, but it varied depending on the va... more The classification of LA children showed an accuracy above 75%, but it varied depending on the variables tested. Moreover, the model could achieved an accurate classification by only considering three electrodes (O1, P4, and T4), corresponding to occipital, right parietal and right temporal locations, respectively. The analysis of EEG parameters allow the distinction of children with low-math achievements with respect to their classmates, along with the identification of several brain regions operationally involved in LA children performance, as well as explore their functional relationships with other cerebral areas while numericcomparison tasks are performed. These methods might be useful to early evaluate the math skills acquisition, and to adjust interventional therapies design in order to deal with potential difficulties in this area.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2023
Purpose: This research aimed to identify reliable tasks discriminating French-speaking adolescent... more Purpose: This research aimed to identify reliable tasks discriminating French-speaking adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) from their peers with typical language (TL) and to assess which linguistic domains represent areas of particular weakness in DLD. Unlike English, morphosyntax has not been identified as a special area of weakness when compared with lexicosemantics in French preschoolers with DLD. Since there is evidence that subject–verb number agreement is consolidated in later childhood, one might expect morphosyntax to be a particular weakness and marker of French DLD only in (pre)adolescence. Method: We administered 20 subtasks that assessed linguistic and phonological working memory skills of two groups: 17 adolescents clinically identified as having DLD ( M = 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with TL ( M = 12.2 years). Using robust statistics that are less affected by outliers, we selected the most discriminating subtasks between our groups, calculated their...
Cette étude vise à établir les normes de réussite d’adolescents francophones sur des tâches à la ... more Cette étude vise à établir les normes de réussite d’adolescents francophones sur des tâches à la fois standardisés et expérimentales, dont le fLEX 2 et 3 (Pourquié, 2017), Zilda (Courteau Poulin et al., 2013) et la tâche de répétition de non-mots de Courcy (2011). La fidélité inter-juge très élevée retrouvée sur toutes les tâches permet d’avoir confiance en leur fiabilité.
Certaines études récentes sur les effets des données négatives directes (par ex., Chouinard et Cl... more Certaines études récentes sur les effets des données négatives directes (par ex., Chouinard et Clark 2003, Saxton 2000, Saxton et al. 2005) semblent montrer que celles-ci ont un effet sur la correction de productions erronées dans le langage des enfants. Notre étude sur l’effet de différents types de rétroaction (Correction, Répétition et Question de clarification) sur la correction des erreurs de surgénéralisation en production de formes verbales chez les enfants russophones d’âge pré-scolaire (N = 65) en arrive à la conclusion contraire : les données négatives directes ne joue apparemment aucun rôle en ce qui a trait aux corrections des erreurs des enfants.
Discussion Response patterns highlight type frequency (morphological), productivity and reliabili... more Discussion Response patterns highlight type frequency (morphological), productivity and reliability effects. Contrary to our expectations, both language groups show strengths on default patterns and sensitivity to sub-regular verbs, including those ending in /y/, which is considered non-productive (e.g., Royle, Beritognolo, & Bergeron, 2012). These data show that even though they have lesser exposure to French, MUL participants rapidly master verb conjugation patterns to the same level as those speaking French as an L1, in immersive contexts. H1 Age group effect: kindergarten < Virst grade < adults H2 Non signiVicant trend for language status: L1 = MUL H3 Partial productivity effect of Conjugation group in L1: /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > Other H4 MUL do not show stronger Conjugation group effects: /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > Other Our results are consistent with other Romance studies (e.g., Clahsen et al., 2002 for Spanish; Say & Clahsen, 2002 for Italian) that show sensitivity to sub-regular patterns in children. We provide further evidence of morphological sensitivity to productivity (/e/ and /i/ vs. /y/ and Other) and phonological consistency (/y/ vs. Other) in young children French passé composé (past perfect) Cl + AUX.pres. + past participle e.g., Methods Participants: 162 children 5;7-7;7 y (M = 6;5 y, SD = .61; 80F, 82M)-L1 French children 5;7-7;7 y (M = 6;5 y, SD = .63, n = 92; 39F, 53M)-MUL children 5;8-7;6 y (M = 6;3 y, SD = .57, n = 70; 41F, 29M) 36 adults 19-42 y (M = 27y, SD = 6.81 ; 26F, 10M) (L1: n = 25, 20F, 5M; MUL: n = 11, 6F, 5M) Schooling level:-kindergarten 5;7-6;8 y (M = 6;0, SD = .29, n = 101; 47F, 54M; L1: n = 56, MUL: n = 45)-Virst grade 6;5-7;7 y (M = 7;1, SD = .32, n = 61; 33F, 28M; L1: n = 36, MUL: n = 25) Main effect of verb group, F(3, 190) = 77.92, p < .001, η 2 = .55 /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > O Interaction of verb group x age group, F(6, 380) = 6.40, p < .001, η 2 = .09 kindergarten < Virst grade < adults Figure 1: Participant group and verb type effects on production of the passé composé.
Late second language (L2) learners report difficulties in specific linguistic areas such as synta... more Late second language (L2) learners report difficulties in specific linguistic areas such as syntactic processing, presumably because brain plasticity declines with age (following the critical period hypothesis). While there is also evidence that L2 learners can achieve native-like online-processing with sufficient proficiency (following the convergence hypothesis), considering multiple mediating factors and their impact on language processing has proven challenging. We recorded EEG while native (n = 36) and L2-speakers of French (n = 40) read sentences that were either well-formed or contained a syntactic-category error or a lexical-semantic anomaly. Consistent with the critical period hypothesis, group differences revealed that while native speakers elicited a biphasic N400-P600 in response to ungrammatical sentences, L2 learners as a group only elicited an N400. However, individual data modeling using a Random Forests approach revealed that language exposure and proficiency are the most reliable predictors in explaining the ERP responses, with N400 and P600 effects becoming larger as exposure to French as well as proficiency increased, as predicted by the convergence hypothesis.
This study investigates negative feedback effects on inflectional morphology acquisition in Russi... more This study investigates negative feedback effects on inflectional morphology acquisition in Russian. In order to examine the effects of adult feedback on child error elimination and assess the lasting effect of feedback, a series of elicited tasks was conducted with 65 Russian children aged from 3 to 4 years. Twelve verbs which undergo overregularization in the non-past tense resulting from applying the yod /j/-pattern were used as stimuli. The experiment was repeated over four sessions with bi-weekly intervals between sessions 1, 2, 3 and a four-week interval between sessions 3 and 4. Four groups of participants were formed with three types of feedback (Correction, Clarification Question and Repetition), and a control group without feedback. No significant differences were observed between groups with different feedback types, or even without feedback. This finding supports the general hypothesis that negative feedback is not a strong driver of recovery from overregularization erro...
According to Friederici’s (2002, 2011) extremely influential “syntax-first” model of sentence pro... more According to Friederici’s (2002, 2011) extremely influential “syntax-first” model of sentence processing, each incoming word of a sentence is initially analyzed in terms of its syntactic word category (noun, verb, etc) in order to create a coherent phrase-structure representation (Phase 1: 100-300 ms). This syntactic representation is essential to initiate subsequent semantic interpretation in Phase 2 (300-500 ms). As predicted by this model, German word category violations seemed to elicit early left-anterior negativities (ELANs) in Phase 1 and ‘block’ semantic N400 effects in Phase 2 (Friederici et al., 1999). However, some studies in other languages could not replicate either the ELAN or the semantic blocking effect, and a review article by Steinhauer and Drury (2012) argued that most previous ELAN studies used flawed designs, where pre-target context differences may have caused ELAN-like artifacts as well as the absence of N400s. The present study follows Steinhauer and Drury’s recommendation to avoid such context effects by creating a balanced design with 2 correct and 2 violation conditions. Our paradigm takes advantage of the homophony between French definite articles le/la/les (= the in (1)) and accusative clitics le/la/les (= him/her/them; in (2)). (1) Elles poussent le camion. (They push the truck) (2) Elles pensent le saluer. (They think of greeting him). The verbs in (1) and (2) subcategorize specifically for either noun or verb complements, respectively. Syntactic category violations (3) and (4) are created by cross-splicing the two sentences before the target word. (3) Elles poussent le *saluer. (They push the *greet) (4) Elles pensent le *camion. (They think of *truck him) Note that collapsing across the subconditions avoids any differences between correct and violation conditions. In addition, all experimental sentences (1-4) were preceded by a “lead-in sentence” that: a) Introduced referent antecedent noun phrases that licensed the clitics and definite determiners (e.g., “Two women see a colleague from work” for sentence (2)), and; b) Established various degrees of semantic priming, allowing us to study semantic N400 effects in the presence of word category violations. Results indicate no ELAN component for word-category violations. Instead, we found temporal negativities (300-500 ms) reflecting integration of morphological and semantic information, and a late P600. These findings suggest (1) that there is no early automatic stage of syntactic processing prior to 300 ms, (2) that previous ELAN findings may be context-driven artifacts, and (3) that lexical semantic processing is not blocked but takes place in parallel to syntactic processes.
In morphologically richer languages, including French, one must learn the specific properties of ... more In morphologically richer languages, including French, one must learn the specific properties of number agreement in order to understand the language, and this learning process continues into adolescence. This study examined similarities and differences between French‐speaking adolescents with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) when processing number agreement, and investigated how morpho‐syntactic regularity affected language processing. Using event‐related potentials (ERP) and only grammatical sentences with audio‐visual mismatches, we studied ERP correlates to three types of number agreement: (1) regular determiner agreement in noun phrases, (2) regular subject‐verb plural liaison, and (3) irregular subject‐verb agreement. We also included a lexico‐semantic mismatch condition to investigate lexico‐semantic processing in our participants. 17 adolescents with DLD (M = 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with typical language (TL, M = 12.2 years) participated in the study. Our results suggest three patterns. First, French‐speaking teenagers without DLD are still consolidating their neurocognitive processing of morpho‐syntactic number agreement and generally display ERP profiles typical of lower language proficiency than adult native speakers. Second, differences in morphosyntactic processing between teenagers with and without DLD seem to be limited to rule‐based (regular) number agreement. Third, there is little evidence for corresponding differences in lexico‐semantic processing.
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 2024
We used electrophysiological brain wave measures (EEG) to study French grammatical violations' ef... more We used electrophysiological brain wave measures (EEG) to study French grammatical violations' effect on adolescents. Previous event-related potentials (ERP) studies have shown that younger children elicit different brainwave patterns than adults and that this pattern varies depending on the type of linguistic error. The main goal of the study is to test whether adolescents' brain response to gender agreement violations differs from adults' pattern or not. Adolescents have been targeted as they are in a transition period where most grammatical knowledge is assumed to be mature, while processing mechanisms are still undergoing consolidation. Despite the important cognitive changes during this period, EEG studies measuring real-time processing in adolescence are lacking in most languages, including French. This project tries to fill this knowledge gap. Our results point towards different processing between adults and adolescents for gender agreement on irregular adjectives, but not on regular determiners, which are processed similarly to adults.
Contexte : Peu d’outils normés existent pour l’évaluation du vocabulaire d’adjectifs de couleur e... more Contexte : Peu d’outils normés existent pour l’évaluation du vocabulaire d’adjectifs de couleur et de grandeur, de la syntaxe et de l’accord en genre du syntagme nominal en français. Objectif : Cette étude présente un outil, composé de quatre casse-têtes ludiques, qui peut évaluer rapidement les compétences en production de syntagmes nominaux avec des adjectifs de grandeur ou de couleur. Hypothèse : Nous observerons une consolidation de l’accord de l’adjectif entre les âges de 3 à 6 ans, mais une maîtrise de l’assignation du genre chez les plus jeunes. Méthode : Les données de 190 enfants francophones âgés de 3 à 9 ans sont présentées. Nous rapportons des résultats sur quatre tâches de difficulté croissante impliquant des adjectifs de couleur et de grandeur (p. ex. le petit canard vert). Résultats : Les résultats permettent de situer la performance d’un enfant par rapport à ses pairs, de multiples façons. Les seuils de risque, les taux de réussite et les erreurs typiques à chaque âge sont présentés. De plus, l’âge auquel les différentes tâches devraient être réussies par la majorité des jeunes est répertorié. Les erreurs morphologiques ou syntaxiques typiques (ou non) des enfants grandissant dans des milieux francophones sont aussi rapportées. Conclusion : Ces points de repères quantitatifs et qualitatifs pourront alimenter l’évaluation clinique des orthophonistes, que ce soit avec la tâche ou à partir de corpus de langage, et éclaireront le raisonnement menant au diagnostic clinique en contribuant à l’ensemble des données prises en compte dans un processus de raisonnement clinique.
Examining the language abilities of children with language disorders should be a deductive proces... more Examining the language abilities of children with language disorders should be a deductive process, using much more than the data that formal measures provide. The assessment should be a systematic, psycholinguistic exploration of aspects of a child's input and output, with a focus on the attempt to pinpoint specific areas of deficit within the language-processing system. Chiat, in this insightful and extremely accessible book, provides basic profiles of children with language disorders, along with case study examples, that both illustrate various forms of language disorder and demonstrate the use of tasks, commonly applied in psycholinguistic research, to problem-solve specific cases. Chiat is a senior lecturer in Linguistics at City University, London, where she is an established researcher who focuses primarily on phonological development and disorders and the impact of impaired phonology on lexical/semantic development.
In this chapter, we critically review experiments on morphological processing focusing on compoun... more In this chapter, we critically review experiments on morphological processing focusing on compounds, derived and inflected words. Two main types of experiments are presented, those with single word or priming paradigms and those involving sentence processing, while focusing on morphological properties of words. We present as much cross-linguistic data as possible, in order to extract commonalities in morphological processing found across languages. Furthermore, studies on second-language learners, and occasionally early bilinguals, as well as child language development are presented, as they provide interesting data on differences and changes in brain behavior relating to morphological processing. Following this we discuss domains of further research while highlighting issues in data interpretation for present and future studies, in the hopes that readers will be encouraged to develop innovative research paradigms for the study of morphological processing
The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and ... more The growing interdisciplinary research field of psycholinguistics is in constant need of new and up-to-date tools which will allow researchers to answer complex questions, but also expand on languages other than English, which dominates the field. One type of such tools are picture datasets which provide naming norms for everyday objects. However, existing databases tend to be small in terms of the number of items they include, and have also been normed in a limited number of languages, despite the recent boom in multilingualism research. In this paper we present the Multilingual Picture (Multipic) database, containing naming norms and familiarity scores for 500 coloured pictures, in thirty-two languages or language varieties from around the world. The data was validated with standard methods that have been used for existing picture datasets. This is the first dataset to provide naming norms, and translation equivalents, for such a variety of languages; as such, it will be of partic...
The classification of LA children showed an accuracy above 75%, but it varied depending on the va... more The classification of LA children showed an accuracy above 75%, but it varied depending on the variables tested. Moreover, the model could achieved an accurate classification by only considering three electrodes (O1, P4, and T4), corresponding to occipital, right parietal and right temporal locations, respectively. The analysis of EEG parameters allow the distinction of children with low-math achievements with respect to their classmates, along with the identification of several brain regions operationally involved in LA children performance, as well as explore their functional relationships with other cerebral areas while numericcomparison tasks are performed. These methods might be useful to early evaluate the math skills acquisition, and to adjust interventional therapies design in order to deal with potential difficulties in this area.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2023
Purpose: This research aimed to identify reliable tasks discriminating French-speaking adolescent... more Purpose: This research aimed to identify reliable tasks discriminating French-speaking adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) from their peers with typical language (TL) and to assess which linguistic domains represent areas of particular weakness in DLD. Unlike English, morphosyntax has not been identified as a special area of weakness when compared with lexicosemantics in French preschoolers with DLD. Since there is evidence that subject–verb number agreement is consolidated in later childhood, one might expect morphosyntax to be a particular weakness and marker of French DLD only in (pre)adolescence. Method: We administered 20 subtasks that assessed linguistic and phonological working memory skills of two groups: 17 adolescents clinically identified as having DLD ( M = 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with TL ( M = 12.2 years). Using robust statistics that are less affected by outliers, we selected the most discriminating subtasks between our groups, calculated their...
Cette étude vise à établir les normes de réussite d’adolescents francophones sur des tâches à la ... more Cette étude vise à établir les normes de réussite d’adolescents francophones sur des tâches à la fois standardisés et expérimentales, dont le fLEX 2 et 3 (Pourquié, 2017), Zilda (Courteau Poulin et al., 2013) et la tâche de répétition de non-mots de Courcy (2011). La fidélité inter-juge très élevée retrouvée sur toutes les tâches permet d’avoir confiance en leur fiabilité.
Certaines études récentes sur les effets des données négatives directes (par ex., Chouinard et Cl... more Certaines études récentes sur les effets des données négatives directes (par ex., Chouinard et Clark 2003, Saxton 2000, Saxton et al. 2005) semblent montrer que celles-ci ont un effet sur la correction de productions erronées dans le langage des enfants. Notre étude sur l’effet de différents types de rétroaction (Correction, Répétition et Question de clarification) sur la correction des erreurs de surgénéralisation en production de formes verbales chez les enfants russophones d’âge pré-scolaire (N = 65) en arrive à la conclusion contraire : les données négatives directes ne joue apparemment aucun rôle en ce qui a trait aux corrections des erreurs des enfants.
Discussion Response patterns highlight type frequency (morphological), productivity and reliabili... more Discussion Response patterns highlight type frequency (morphological), productivity and reliability effects. Contrary to our expectations, both language groups show strengths on default patterns and sensitivity to sub-regular verbs, including those ending in /y/, which is considered non-productive (e.g., Royle, Beritognolo, & Bergeron, 2012). These data show that even though they have lesser exposure to French, MUL participants rapidly master verb conjugation patterns to the same level as those speaking French as an L1, in immersive contexts. H1 Age group effect: kindergarten < Virst grade < adults H2 Non signiVicant trend for language status: L1 = MUL H3 Partial productivity effect of Conjugation group in L1: /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > Other H4 MUL do not show stronger Conjugation group effects: /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > Other Our results are consistent with other Romance studies (e.g., Clahsen et al., 2002 for Spanish; Say & Clahsen, 2002 for Italian) that show sensitivity to sub-regular patterns in children. We provide further evidence of morphological sensitivity to productivity (/e/ and /i/ vs. /y/ and Other) and phonological consistency (/y/ vs. Other) in young children French passé composé (past perfect) Cl + AUX.pres. + past participle e.g., Methods Participants: 162 children 5;7-7;7 y (M = 6;5 y, SD = .61; 80F, 82M)-L1 French children 5;7-7;7 y (M = 6;5 y, SD = .63, n = 92; 39F, 53M)-MUL children 5;8-7;6 y (M = 6;3 y, SD = .57, n = 70; 41F, 29M) 36 adults 19-42 y (M = 27y, SD = 6.81 ; 26F, 10M) (L1: n = 25, 20F, 5M; MUL: n = 11, 6F, 5M) Schooling level:-kindergarten 5;7-6;8 y (M = 6;0, SD = .29, n = 101; 47F, 54M; L1: n = 56, MUL: n = 45)-Virst grade 6;5-7;7 y (M = 7;1, SD = .32, n = 61; 33F, 28M; L1: n = 36, MUL: n = 25) Main effect of verb group, F(3, 190) = 77.92, p < .001, η 2 = .55 /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > O Interaction of verb group x age group, F(6, 380) = 6.40, p < .001, η 2 = .09 kindergarten < Virst grade < adults Figure 1: Participant group and verb type effects on production of the passé composé.
Late second language (L2) learners report difficulties in specific linguistic areas such as synta... more Late second language (L2) learners report difficulties in specific linguistic areas such as syntactic processing, presumably because brain plasticity declines with age (following the critical period hypothesis). While there is also evidence that L2 learners can achieve native-like online-processing with sufficient proficiency (following the convergence hypothesis), considering multiple mediating factors and their impact on language processing has proven challenging. We recorded EEG while native (n = 36) and L2-speakers of French (n = 40) read sentences that were either well-formed or contained a syntactic-category error or a lexical-semantic anomaly. Consistent with the critical period hypothesis, group differences revealed that while native speakers elicited a biphasic N400-P600 in response to ungrammatical sentences, L2 learners as a group only elicited an N400. However, individual data modeling using a Random Forests approach revealed that language exposure and proficiency are the most reliable predictors in explaining the ERP responses, with N400 and P600 effects becoming larger as exposure to French as well as proficiency increased, as predicted by the convergence hypothesis.
This study investigates negative feedback effects on inflectional morphology acquisition in Russi... more This study investigates negative feedback effects on inflectional morphology acquisition in Russian. In order to examine the effects of adult feedback on child error elimination and assess the lasting effect of feedback, a series of elicited tasks was conducted with 65 Russian children aged from 3 to 4 years. Twelve verbs which undergo overregularization in the non-past tense resulting from applying the yod /j/-pattern were used as stimuli. The experiment was repeated over four sessions with bi-weekly intervals between sessions 1, 2, 3 and a four-week interval between sessions 3 and 4. Four groups of participants were formed with three types of feedback (Correction, Clarification Question and Repetition), and a control group without feedback. No significant differences were observed between groups with different feedback types, or even without feedback. This finding supports the general hypothesis that negative feedback is not a strong driver of recovery from overregularization erro...
According to Friederici’s (2002, 2011) extremely influential “syntax-first” model of sentence pro... more According to Friederici’s (2002, 2011) extremely influential “syntax-first” model of sentence processing, each incoming word of a sentence is initially analyzed in terms of its syntactic word category (noun, verb, etc) in order to create a coherent phrase-structure representation (Phase 1: 100-300 ms). This syntactic representation is essential to initiate subsequent semantic interpretation in Phase 2 (300-500 ms). As predicted by this model, German word category violations seemed to elicit early left-anterior negativities (ELANs) in Phase 1 and ‘block’ semantic N400 effects in Phase 2 (Friederici et al., 1999). However, some studies in other languages could not replicate either the ELAN or the semantic blocking effect, and a review article by Steinhauer and Drury (2012) argued that most previous ELAN studies used flawed designs, where pre-target context differences may have caused ELAN-like artifacts as well as the absence of N400s. The present study follows Steinhauer and Drury’s recommendation to avoid such context effects by creating a balanced design with 2 correct and 2 violation conditions. Our paradigm takes advantage of the homophony between French definite articles le/la/les (= the in (1)) and accusative clitics le/la/les (= him/her/them; in (2)). (1) Elles poussent le camion. (They push the truck) (2) Elles pensent le saluer. (They think of greeting him). The verbs in (1) and (2) subcategorize specifically for either noun or verb complements, respectively. Syntactic category violations (3) and (4) are created by cross-splicing the two sentences before the target word. (3) Elles poussent le *saluer. (They push the *greet) (4) Elles pensent le *camion. (They think of *truck him) Note that collapsing across the subconditions avoids any differences between correct and violation conditions. In addition, all experimental sentences (1-4) were preceded by a “lead-in sentence” that: a) Introduced referent antecedent noun phrases that licensed the clitics and definite determiners (e.g., “Two women see a colleague from work” for sentence (2)), and; b) Established various degrees of semantic priming, allowing us to study semantic N400 effects in the presence of word category violations. Results indicate no ELAN component for word-category violations. Instead, we found temporal negativities (300-500 ms) reflecting integration of morphological and semantic information, and a late P600. These findings suggest (1) that there is no early automatic stage of syntactic processing prior to 300 ms, (2) that previous ELAN findings may be context-driven artifacts, and (3) that lexical semantic processing is not blocked but takes place in parallel to syntactic processes.
Routledge Handbook in Experimental Linguistics, 2024
In this chapter we present current issues on experimental methods in the study of atypical langua... more In this chapter we present current issues on experimental methods in the study of atypical language development with a focus on developmental language disorders (DLD). We first present a short history of terminology surrounding DLD and follow this with a discussion of critical topics related to DLD assessment including cross-linguistic research, multilingualism, persisting disorders in teenagers, age-differences (pre-school, school age, adolescence, and adults) in manifestations and domains studied, language comprehension versus production, and cognitive assessment. We also bring focus to the question of matching control groups in the study of atypical language development. We present the most common methods used in the investigation of language impairments from the behavioural and neurocognitive perspectives. We provide an overview of the issues related to establishing equivalence between groups with and without language impairments. We conclude with recommendations for practice and future directions in the study of atypical language development.
Proceedings of GALA 2017: Language Acquisition and Development, 2019
We investigated whether children and adults, French monolinguals (L1) or multilinguals (MUL) are ... more We investigated whether children and adults, French monolinguals (L1) or multilinguals (MUL) are sensitive to regular, sub-regular and irregular verb inflection patterns. We hypothesized that MUL participants would process these patterns differently, from L1-speakers, based on their default status or reliability, due to less exposure to French. Children were also expected to show lower proficiency than adults. Verbs were elicited in 162 children (preschoolers and first graders attending French school) and 36 adults that were either French L1 or MUL, all from the Montréal Canada area. Twenty-four French verbs were used to elicit the passé composé (perfect past) with regular, sub-regular, and irregular participle forms (6 each: ending in /e/, /i/, /y/ or Other idiosyncratic forms) using our Android application. Logistic regression analyses showed effects for verb group and participant group: adults responded better than children. Verb group comparisons revealed that Other verbs are significantly harder to produce than those ending in /e/ and in /i/, but not significantly harder than verbs ending in /y/. Children show additive effects of parental education and age. These data indicate that all participants show strengths on default patterns and sensitivity to sub-regular verbs, even though MUL children and adults have less exposure to French.
Language Processing: New Research (pp. 33-64), 2014
Recent advances in neuroimaging have allowed for insight into the millisecond-by-millisecond unfo... more Recent advances in neuroimaging have allowed for insight into the millisecond-by-millisecond unfolding of language processing in the brain. In particular, event-related brain potentials (ERPs), non-invasive measures of scalp-based EEG (electroencephalographic) recordings of underlying brain activity, can reflect on-line neurocognitive processes involved in linguistic processing. In this chapter we will present a review of ERP research focusing on lexical-semantic, morphosyntactic and syntactic processing during language comprehension in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). We will highlight results important for our understanding of SLI, as well as methodological issues and challenges involved in ERP research.
We review our studies and others on French acquisition of morphosyntax that refer to regular and ... more We review our studies and others on French acquisition of morphosyntax that refer to regular and irregular rules. Data on French past participle and adjective production and elicitation reveal that children distinguish regular, irregular and sub-regular rules. Children are sensitive to distinctions between verb conjugation classes even when they occur infrequently in the corpus. We propose that for morphological processes to become regular rules during language acquisition, they must show productivity and morphophonological consistency.
Language Processing: New Research (pp. 1-32), 2014
This paper provides an update on a decade of neuroimaging studies (using electroencephalography, ... more This paper provides an update on a decade of neuroimaging studies (using electroencephalography, EEG, and magnetoencephalography, MEG) that have focused on linguistic processing in patients with aphasia. of EEG and MEG techniques for aphasiology; the second reports the procedures, targets and main results of reviewed studies; the last section addresses the following issues: What does neuroimagery add to classical behavioral studies on aphasia? Are they both necessary and why?
The research is concerned with the link between children’s oral language abilities and their capa... more The research is concerned with the link between children’s oral language abilities and their capacity to acquire written language skills, especially in the domain of spelling. In addition to theoretical examinations of the oral language foundations of spelling abilities, the goal of this project was to develop a tablet based application for screening children at school entry in order to identify those children who may be at risk for delayed acquisition of spelling skills unless they obtain additional supports during the primary grades.
We addressed whether children learning French as a first (L1) and multilingual children (MUL, for... more We addressed whether children learning French as a first (L1) and multilingual children (MUL, for whom French is a second or third language) are sensitive to sub-regular verb conjugation patterns (i.e., neither default, nor idiosyncratic) (e.g., Albright, 2002; Clahsen, 1999). Some argue that children with other first languages have more difficulty learning verb conjugation patterns due to their lesser exposure to the language (e.g., Nicoladis, Palmer, & Marentette, 2007). We hypothesized that older children would perform better than younger children and that L1 and MUL children learning French would process verb inflection patterns differently based on their default status (-er verbs), and reliability (e.g., sub-regular-ir verbs), with MUL children showing weaknesses in non-default types (Royle, Beritognolo, & Bergeron, 2012). We elicited verbs in 169 children (aged 67 to 92 months) attending preschool (n = 105) or first grade (n = 64), who were L1 or MUL learners of Québec French, using 24 verbs with regular, sub-regular, and irregular participle forms (6 of each, ending in /e/, /i/, /y/ or IDiosyncratic) in the passé composé (perfect past). Using our Android application Jeu de verbes, verbs were presented with images (see Figure 1) to each child in an infinitival form (infinitival complements or the periphrastic future, e.g., Marie va cacher ses poupées 'Mary will hide her dolls') and present tense contexts (e.g., Marie cache toujours ses poupées 'Mary always hides her dolls'). Children were prompted to produce the passé composé by answering the question 'What did she do yesterday, Marie?'. Preliminary analyses (n = 94, 70 in preschool, 31 L1 and 39 MUL; 24 in first grade, 13 L1 and 11 MUL) reveal a Verb conjugation group effect, F(3, 88) = 52.31, p < .001 as well as a Verb conjugation group*Language group*Age group interaction, F(3, 88) = 3.35, p < .05. Moreover, trends toward significant effects were found for Age group, F(1, 90) = 3.07, p = .08, and for the interaction of factors Verb conjugation group*Language group, F(3, 88) = 2.36, p = .08. These results indicate that responses to verb conjugation groups differ according to verb conjugation, age and language group (see Figure 1). Overall, children's responses to verb conjugation groups highlight morphological productivity and reliability effects on mastery of French conjugation. Results also show higher target productions in the first grade than in preschool and varying response patterns depending on language background. In depth analyses comparing all 169 children including language group analyses (L1 vs MUL) will further inform us on children's mastery of French passé composé, while non-parametric analyses on frequency of response types should reveal a clearer picture of children's response strategies by verb or language group. These data will show that MUL children who have lesser exposure to oral French language, rapidly master verb conjugation patterns to the same level as L1 children (and might even do better) in immersive (school) contexts.
indicate that the access to specific grammatical rules or processes is inconsistent. Current theo... more indicate that the access to specific grammatical rules or processes is inconsistent. Current theories on agrammatic production cannot provide an adequate explanation of the types of errors noted in our data. Our data indicate that agrammatic speech cannot be characterized by a total loss of any particular element or process of grammar. In this paper we provide evidence to support our claim that access to the rules of the checking mechanism is not always successful in agrammatic speech. REFERENCES Friedmann, N., & Grodzinsky, Y. 2000. Split inflection in neurolinguistics. In L. Rizzi & M. Friedemann (Eds.), The acquisition of syntax (pp. 84-104). London: Longman. Hagiwara, H. 1995. The breakdown of functional categories and the economy of derivation. Brain and Language, 50, 92-116. Ouhalla, J. 1993. Functional categories, agrammatism and language acquisition. Linguistische Berichte, 143, 3-36. Penke, M. (in press). Controversies about CP: A comparison of language acquisition and language impairments in Broca's aphasia. Brain and Language.
Proceedings of the 37th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. (Vol. 1, pp. 87-99). , 2014
The present study used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate language processing i... more The present study used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate language processing in young children, focusing on gender agreement (determiner-noun and noun-adjective) and conceptual semantics in French.Electrophysiological measurement techniques provide a valuable addition to our methodological toolkit for studying agreement processing in this population, in particular concerning noun-adjective agreement (concord), since other traditional sources of data have tended to be uninformative. Although children arguably exhibit systematic constraints on their linguistic behavior, this is not always evident in the laboratory (e.g., where task demands may mask the presence of linguistic knowledge) or in investigations of child language corpora. For example, although French-speaking children seem to master adjective and determiner concord early on, productive use of gender-marked adjectives is not clearly supported in the corpus, where determiner use predominates (Valois & Royle, 2009), or in elicitation, where idiosyncratic gender marking on adjectives may result in variable mastery of feminine forms (Royle & Valois, 2010). Here we report on an auditory/visual ERP study that shows that the processing of gender agreement can be reliably tapped in young French children
This paper addresses issues of frequency and transparency in word recognition and their importanc... more This paper addresses issues of frequency and transparency in word recognition and their importance for the organization of the mental lexicon in Developmentally Language Impaired (DLI) francophones. A simple visual lexical decision task probes responses of DLI and control participants when presented with verbs. DLI participants are sensitive to whole-word frequency and show little or no transparency effects. These results are interpreted as indicating that words are not organized according to ''morphological families'' in the DLI mental lexicon, but rather according to a principle of frequency. These facts support the hypothesis that words in the DLI mental lexicon lack lexical features and morphological structure.
bootstrapping assumes that rhythmic properties contribute to specific word forms emerging already... more bootstrapping assumes that rhythmic properties contribute to specific word forms emerging already at the second half of first year of life. The objective of our ERP study was to reveal the ability of 6 and 10 month-old infants to use acoustically rich stress information. We aimed to separate ERP (event-related brain potentials) changes elicited by salient acoustic features (bottom-up process) and by violating the assumed pattern-or template-based representation (top-down process) reported for adults (Honbolygó and Csépe, 2013). A total of 48 infants (6 and 10 months old) participated, all born to monolingual families and raised in monolingual environment. Two types of stimuli, a Hungarian pseudo-word ('bebe') and its stress variant, were given in blocks in a passive oddball paradigm. They differed only in the stress pattern that is the syllabic position of accentuation. Stimuli were frequent standards and rare deviants presented in a passive oddball paradigm and delivered in random order (deviant: 20%, SOA: 730–830 ms). Two stimulus presentation conditions were used; one using legal standards and illegal deviants and one with opposite assignment. Robust age-related ERP differences were found, especially in the legal standard condition. Moreover, a significant legality-stimulus interaction was found for the first mismatch response. It had larger amplitude to the illegal than to the legal stress pattern. This difference was even larger in the younger infants investigated and a delicate response dynamics could be seen introduced by significant differences by the illegal standard. The ERP changes obtained in the different conditions speak for the emergence of a stress template fragile in nature. This might explain why no age differences were found in the legal standard condition and why no significant differences were found in the legal one. A possible explanation may rely on the robust age difference found between the ERPs elicited by the different type standard stimuli. Reference Honbolygó, F., Csépe, V., 2013. Saliency or template? ERP evidence for long-term representation of word stress. Int.
Kulinich, Elena, Phaedra Royle & Daniel Valois. 2015. Does negative feedback have an effect on language acquisition? Proceedings of the 39th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Vol.2 (p.301-310). Somerville, MA : Cascadilla Press.
We addressed whether children learning French as a first (L1) and multilingual children (MUL, for... more We addressed whether children learning French as a first (L1) and multilingual children (MUL, for whom French is a second or third language) are sensitive to sub-regular verb conjugation patterns (i.e., neither default, nor idiosyncratic) (e.g., Albright, 2002; Clahsen, 1999). Some argue that children with other first languages have more difficulty learning verb conjugation patterns due to their lesser exposure to the language (e.g., Nicoladis, Palmer, & Marentette, 2007). We hypothesized that older children would perform better than younger children and that L1 and MUL children learning French would process verb inflection patterns differently based on their default status (-er verbs), and reliability (e.g., sub-regular -ir verbs), with MUL children showing weaknesses in non-default types (Royle, Beritognolo, & Bergeron, 2012). We elicited verbs in 169 children (aged 67 to 92 months) attending preschool (n = 105) or first grade (n = 64), who were L1 or MUL learners of Québec French, using 24 verbs with regular, sub-regular, and irregular participle forms (6 of each, ending in /e/, /i/, /y/ or IDiosyncratic) in the passé composé (perfect past). Using our Android application Jeu de verbes, verbs were presented with images (see Figure 1) to each child in an infinitival form (infinitival complements or the periphrastic future, e.g., Marie va cacher ses poupées ‘Mary will hide her dolls’) and present tense contexts (e.g., Marie cache toujours ses poupées ‘Mary always hides her dolls’). Children were prompted to produce the passé composé by answering the question ‘What did she do yesterday, Marie?’. Preliminary analyses (n = 94, 70 in preschool, 31 L1 and 39 MUL; 24 in first grade, 13 L1 and 11 MUL) reveal a Verb conjugation group effect, F(3, 88) = 52.31, p < .001 as well as a Verb conjugation group*Language group*Age group interaction, F(3, 88) = 3.35, p < .05. Moreover, trends toward significant effects were found for Age group, F(1, 90) = 3.07, p = .08, and for the interaction of factors Verb conjugation group*Language group, F(3, 88) = 2.36, p = .08. These results indicate that responses to verb conjugation groups differ according to verb conjugation, age and language group (see Figure 1). Overall, children’s responses to verb conjugation groups highlight morphological productivity and reliability effects on mastery of French conjugation. Results also show higher target productions in the first grade than in preschool and varying response patterns depending on language background. In depth analyses comparing all 169 children including language group analyses (L1 vs MUL) will further inform us on children’s mastery of French passé composé, while non-parametric analyses on frequency of response types should reveal a clearer picture of children’s response strategies by verb or language group. These data will show that MUL children who have lesser exposure to oral French language, rapidly master verb conjugation patterns to the same level as L1 children (and might even do better) in immersive (school) contexts.
Canadian Linguistics Association Conference Proceedings, 2010
Research in linguistics and the cognitive sciences in general has undergone
major changes in the ... more Research in linguistics and the cognitive sciences in general has undergone major changes in the last two decades. New methodologies have been developed for the investigation of psycholinguistic processes that are complementary to more traditional approaches to the study of language. In particular, neuroimaging using fine-grained temporal tracking of brain signatures is possible now with electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings that are time-locked to specific linguistic events. These result in eventrelated brain potentials (ERPs) that allow us to tease apart the processing of semantics, morphology and orthography, for example. We present here an example of how the issue of morphological access during written word recognition (French verbs in a visual lexical decision task) can be investigated using ERP techniques.
French variable adjectives have traditionally been described as undergoing a process of final con... more French variable adjectives have traditionally been described as undergoing a process of final consonant deletion from the feminine to the masculine form. We review here different analyses that have been proposed to account for this phenomenon, highlighting problems with the theoretical analyses and advances in empirical work on the question. We present an analysis where, by default, French adjectives undergo no change (or C-deletion) and variable adjectives are treated as lexicalized irregulars. Finally we propose further avenues of research in psycho and neurolinguistics with French adjectives.
Cette étude vise à établir les normes de réussite d’adolescents francophones sur des tâches à la ... more Cette étude vise à établir les normes de réussite d’adolescents francophones sur des tâches à la fois standardisés et expérimentales, dont le fLEX 2 et 3 (Pourquié, 2017), Zilda (Courteau Poulin et al., 2013) et la tâche de répétition de non-mots de Courcy (2011). La fidélité inter-juge très élevée retrouvée sur toutes les tâches permet d’avoir confiance en leur fiabilité.
Cette étude compare la correction des clignement oculaires en utilisant deux méthodes : XEOG dans... more Cette étude compare la correction des clignement oculaires en utilisant deux méthodes : XEOG dans EEProbe et ICA dans EEGLAB. Les deux méthodes de correction des données permettent d'obtenir des résultats similaires. La méthode utilisant le calcul de régression (XEOG) a permis de conserver plus d'essais que l'ICA, mais l'ICA était plus rapide d'utilisation. De plus, l'ICA est la méthode recommandée par la littérature (Hoffman et Falkenstein, 2008; Woltering, Bazargani et Liu, 2013), et elle est plus objective que celle basée sur l'identification subjective des clignements. L'ICA est une méthode efficace et objective pour corriger les artefacts de clignements oculaires dans le signal EEG de jeunes participants ayant un trouble du langage. [This study compared eye blink correction two methods : XEOG in EEProbe and ICA in EEGLAB. Both methods provide similar results. XEOG regression allowed us to keep more trials than ICA, but ICA was more time-efficient. Furthermore, ICA is the method recommended in the literature (Hoffman & Falkenstein, 2008; Woltering, Bazargani & Liu, 2013), and is more objective than that based on subjective blink identification. ICA is thus an effective and objective method for correcting eye-blink artifacts in the EEG signal of young participants with language impairment.]
Discussion Response patterns highlight type frequency (morphological), productivity and reliabili... more Discussion Response patterns highlight type frequency (morphological), productivity and reliability effects. Contrary to our expectations, both language groups show strengths on default patterns and sensitivity to sub-regular verbs, including those ending in /y/, which is considered non-productive (e.g., Royle, Beritognolo, & Bergeron, 2012). These data show that even though they have lesser exposure to French, MUL participants rapidly master verb conjugation patterns to the same level as those speaking French as an L1, in immersive contexts. H1 Age group effect: kindergarten < Virst grade < adults H2 Non signiVicant trend for language status: L1 = MUL H3 Partial productivity effect of Conjugation group in L1: /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > Other H4 MUL do not show stronger Conjugation group effects: /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > Other Our results are consistent with other Romance studies (e.g., Clahsen et al., 2002 for Spanish; Say & Clahsen, 2002 for Italian) that show sensitivity to sub-regular patterns in children. We provide further evidence of morphological sensitivity to productivity (/e/ and /i/ vs. /y/ and Other) and phonological consistency (/y/ vs. Other) in young children French passé composé (past perfect) Cl + AUX.pres. + past participle e.g., Methods Participants: 162 children 5;7-7;7 y (M = 6;5 y, SD = .61; 80F, 82M)-L1 French children 5;7-7;7 y (M = 6;5 y, SD = .63, n = 92; 39F, 53M)-MUL children 5;8-7;6 y (M = 6;3 y, SD = .57, n = 70; 41F, 29M) 36 adults 19-42 y (M = 27y, SD = 6.81 ; 26F, 10M) (L1: n = 25, 20F, 5M; MUL: n = 11, 6F, 5M) Schooling level:-kindergarten 5;7-6;8 y (M = 6;0, SD = .29, n = 101; 47F, 54M; L1: n = 56, MUL: n = 45)-Virst grade 6;5-7;7 y (M = 7;1, SD = .32, n = 61; 33F, 28M; L1: n = 36, MUL: n = 25) Main effect of verb group, F(3, 190) = 77.92, p < .001, η 2 = .55 /e/ = /i/ > /y/ > O Interaction of verb group x age group, F(6, 380) = 6.40, p < .001, η 2 = .09 kindergarten < Virst grade < adults Figure 1: Participant group and verb type effects on production of the passé composé.
Misuse of definite determiners in child language may be due either to difficulties with uniquenes... more Misuse of definite determiners in child language may be due either to difficulties with uniqueness/maximality presuppositions (Wexler, 2011) or with the pragmatics of domain restriction (Munn et al. 2006). For definite plurals, previous work is inconsistent, showing either that maximality is encoded early on plurals but not singulars (between 3;0 and 5;5; Munn et al. 2006), or later in plurals but early on singulars (after age 6; Caponigro et al. 2012). We replicated the former study with French-speaking children and adults. We hypothesized that if children have difficulties with maximality they should show low scores on both singular and plural comprehension, while difficulties with implicit domain restrictions should affect singular definite comprehension only. We tested whether definiteness abilities were linked to age and also whether child language behaviour was different from that of adults.
Morphological ORs in child speech create the coexistence of two different forms at some given per... more Morphological ORs in child speech create the coexistence of two different forms at some given period of language development.
It is notoriously difficult to learn to write in French due to agreement (gender and number) and ... more It is notoriously difficult to learn to write in French due to agreement (gender and number) and morphology systems that are not orthographically or phonologically transparent. Moreover, many children in the Montreal area have never been exposed to French before entering the school system. The current longitudinal study presents data from French oral morphosyntax (production of passé composé past tense) at year one (first grade) and written morphosyntax (multiple choice task) at year two. We compared French-speaking monolingual children (ML) and children learning French as a second or third language (MUL), and studied the possible correlations between the tasks. Based on previous research, we expected a significant difference between ML and MUL children for the oral task, and no difference for the written task. We also expected to observe positive correlations between the tasks.
Résumés du Colloque : Recherches sur le bilinguisme et le multilinguisme: Un partage du savoir
L’acquisition du langage nécessite la maîtrise entre autres de l’identification des structures et... more L’acquisition du langage nécessite la maîtrise entre autres de l’identification des structures et des éléments morphologiques du mot (ex. racine+flexion). Celle-ci est importante dans la conjugaison des verbes. Les enfants francophones sont sensibles à la productivité morphologique, à la régularité et à la fréquence d’apparition des schèmes verbaux français (Royle, Beritognolo, & Bergeron, 2012). Dès l’âge de trois ans ils distinguent les groupes de conjugaison lors de la production des verbes, mais sont aussi sensible à la fréquence d’occurrence de chaque verbe (ex. Royle, 2007). Il se peut que cet apprentissage sois difficile chez l’enfant bilingue, dû à sa moindre exposition au français (Nicoladis, Palmer, & Marentette, 2007).
Certains soutiennent qu’il existe deux groupes de verbes en français : réguliers et irréguliers (Kresh, 2008; Nicoladis, et al. 2007). D’autres les décrivent avec une distinction tripartite (Royle et al., 2012) : les verbes du premier groupe (se terminant en -er à l’infinitif), du second groupe (se terminant en -ir) et les verbes irréguliers. Des groupes de régularité se manifestent parmi ces trois groupes. Certains présentent des schèmes de conjugaison sous-réguliers (ex. les irréguliers en -i, prendre – pris), tandis que d’autres se conjuguent de façon irrégulière (ex., ouvrir – ouvert). De plus, le sous-groupe des verbes en -u (ex. voir – vu) contient des verbes parmi les plus fréquents de la langue tels que voir, boire et vouloir. Il s’avère important d’étudier la connaissance des différents schèmes qui apparaissent fréquemment dans la langue. De plus, nous voulons savoir si les enfants apprenant le français comme langue seconde (L2) démontrent les mêmes schèmes que les enfants apprenant le français comme première langue (L1).
Méthode Nous avons évalué 35 enfants français québécois L1 et 25 enfants L2 (de types variés) sur la conjugaison de verbes fréquents réguliers, sous-réguliers et irréguliers au passé composé (en -é, -i, -u ou autres). Une tâche de production induite a été administrée à des enfants fréquentant la maternelle ou la première année d’une même école de la ville de Laval. Les verbes ont été présentés, avec des images les représentant, dans des contextes à l’infinitif (ex. Marie va cacher ses poupées) et au présent (ex. Marie cache toujours ses poupées), afin d’amorcer leur paradigme de conjugaison. Les enfants devaient répondre à la question ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il/elle a fait hier?’
Les résultats indiquent peu de différences entre les groupes d’enfants (F(1,56), 3,68 p = 0.06), en dépit du fait que le groupe L2 s’améliore en première année. Les deux groupes montrent le schéma de réussite suivant : é > i = u > autre. Tous présentent des résultats significativement moins bons sur les verbes en u en maternelle versus la première année ((F(1,58), 9,94 p = 0.003).
Cette étude suggère une distinction tripartite des schèmes réguliers, sous-réguliers et irréguliers des verbes fréquents en français. Les enfants L2 semblent s’approprier ces schèmes de façon similaire aux enfants L1, et ce malgré le fait qu’ils doivent apprendre deux langues. Ces données sont importantes pour les modèles d’apprentissage de la L2 ainsi que l’enseignement de la conscience morphologique des verbes chez tous les enfants.
Abstracts of the Aix-en-Provence Workshop on Bilingualism
Children attending French schools in Montreal often use another language at home, and are exposed... more Children attending French schools in Montreal often use another language at home, and are exposed to French only when entering kindergarten. These children are at different stages of their L2 acquisition. They provide a fascinating look at interference and transfer between their two languages. However, they can also be at risk of presenting a language delay and are often misdiagnosed as having a language disorder. Understanding linguistic processes underlying typical L2 acquisition allows us to identify normal and abnormal language acquisition behavior [1]. We investigate the acquisition of noun phrases and intranominal agreement Spanish--French L2 learners. Both Spanish and French have gender agreement, but their syntactic and morphological structures differ. In Spanish, morphological marking of agreement is transparent (1a), while in French it is opaque (having various final consonants for feminine adjectives) (1b). Moreover, Spanish usually only allows for postnominal adjectives while French has adjectives are either pre-or postnominal. According to Genesee et al. [1], Spanish children learning French should transfer their L1 grammar when producing L2 structures during their early interlanguage phases of language acquisition.
De nombreux enfants qui fréquentent les écoles montréalaises ont comme langue d’usage à la maison... more De nombreux enfants qui fréquentent les écoles montréalaises ont comme langue d’usage à la maison une langue autre que le français et n’y sont exposés qu’à leur entrée à la maternelle. L’évaluation du langage représente un défi pour les professionnels. Le diagnostic d’un trouble du langage dans un contexte d’apprentissage d’une langue seconde peut être problématique et l’utilisation de tests standardisés peut sous-évaluer les compétences réelles de l’enfant. Une évaluation adéquate du langage de ces enfants doit se baser, entre autres, sur une bonne connaissance de l’acquisition typique de la langue seconde, ici le français. Dix enfants hispanophones âgés de 4 à 6 ans, exposés au français depuis un an, ont exécuté des tâches induisant la production de syntagmes nominaux en français (adjectifs de couleur et de grandeur, masculins et féminins, variables et invariables ex. La petite maison blanche). Les résultats ont été comparés à ceux d’enfants unilingues francophones appariés selon l’âge, le sexe et le niveau de scolarité parentale. Un test t de Student effectué sur les scores globaux (présence de tous les éléments obligatoires du syntagme) révèle que les bilingues hispano-francophones performent moins bien que les enfants francophones. Des analyses de la variance à mesures répétées sur la réussite des adjectifs féminins et masculins, variables ou invariables révèlennt des effets de genre, de variabilité et de groupe. Les adjectifs féminins variables sont beaucoup plus difficiles pour les enfants bilingues (31,67%) que pour les enfants unilingues (83,33%). Ces résultats permettent d’identifier les difficultés normales d’accord dans le syntagme nominal chez les enfants apprenant une langue seconde.
Evaluation of linguistic abilities and mastery in children under school age can be a daunting tas... more Evaluation of linguistic abilities and mastery in children under school age can be a daunting task. Although children appear to have strong constraints on their linguistic behavior, they can often be unreliable participants in formal testing of experimental situations. When results are poor, it is often unclear whether the child understands what is asked of her, or whether the task is too difficult, or just badly designed. I report on a method to elicit structures of varying complexity, that children master at early ages, and can tap into language specific structures in an ecological way. Researchers and clinicians have occasionally used puzzles to elicit specific structures from children. These are especially useful for the evaluation of phonological and syllabic inventories (Bulle, xxxx), and even more complex structures such as verbs and their complements with case marking in German or Japanese (see Eisenbeiss, 2011). Our experiment was designed to elicit agreement in the French noun phrase and the more complex structures of the determiner phrase (DP). French speaking children seem to master agreement at very young ages. However, their productive use of adjectives is difficult to ascertain form the corpus (Royle & Valois, 2010). Our experimental technique was to develop puzzle boards of growing complexity, with puzzle pieces having minimal differences along one or two dimensions at a time (color or size). The participants are asked to name the piece they want to insert on the puzzle, and have to produce the appropriate adjectives in order to do this. This task is quite easy to use with children as young as three years old, and has proven useful in distinguishing children with SLI from normally developing children (Royle et al, 2010), as well as identifying specific difficulties in the acquisition of French L2 by Spanish-speakers (Bergeron et al, 2011) and in tracking normal development of the DP structure. These tasks are easily adaptable to other languages with similar linguistic features (here gender agreement). A Spanish version has been with Spanish-speaking children in New York (Royle et al, in preparation). The data from NYC is quite interesting as children evidence code-switching in these controlled settings, whereas Spanish-speaking children from Montreal do not (Bergeron et al, 2011). Thus the puzzles seem to tap into sociolinguistic styles in addition to morpho-syntactic structures. We will present a review of our findings for these different groups of children. Finally, in order to understand the cognitive processes underlying agreement, we have adapted our design to event related potential (ERP) methodology, presenting children with images of colorful objects concurrently with concordant or discordant auditory stimuli, while recording their brain activity (Royle et al, 2009-20012). We have established that typical ERPs related to agreement errors (LAN, P600) can be elicited without asking for grammaticality judgments form participants (Gascon et al, 2011) and that is will be useful for evaluating the emergence of agreement in young children. We will report on ongoing child data collection on this task.
This study investigates negative feedback effects on inflectional morphology acquisition in Russi... more This study investigates negative feedback effects on inflectional morphology acquisition in Russian. In order to examine the effects of adult feedback on child error elimination and assess the lasting effect of feedback, a series of elicited tasks was conducted with 65 Russian children aged from 3 to 4 years. Twelve verbs which undergo overregularization in the non-past tense resulting from applying the yod /j/-pattern were used as stimuli. The experiment was repeated over four sessions with biweekly intervals between sessions 1, 2, 3 and a four-week interval between sessions 3 and 4. Four groups of participants were formed with three types of feedback (Correction, Clarification Question and Repetition), and a control group without feedback. No significant differences were observed between groups with different feedback type, or even without feedback. This finding supports the general hypothesis that negative feedback is not a strong driver of the recovery from overregularization errors in language acquisition.
Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, 2019
We contrast elicitation and spontaneous speech data in French-speaking children with developmenta... more We contrast elicitation and spontaneous speech data in French-speaking children with developmental language disorder and controls, with a focus on determiner phrase and gender agreement. Eight French-speaking children with developmental language disorder and age-matched or language-matched controls were compared on an elicitation task for complex noun-phrases with one or two adjectives (e.g., la petite maison verte ‘the small green house’) and a spontaneous speech sample of 200 utterances containing determiner phrases. Elicitation and spontaneous speech data revealed different profiles in French children with developmental language disorder compared to controls: elicitation tasks revealed specific difficulties with adjective agreement as well as high levels of global error, while spontaneous speech revealed mostly omission and substitution errors, often on determiners. Ultimately, both approaches to evaluating language abilities are complementary, but elicitation tasks might be the most useful tool for rapid identification of difficulties with determiner phrases and agreement in young French-speaking children.
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Papers by Phaedra Royle
(2) regular subject‐verb plural liaison, and (3) irregular subject‐verb agreement. We also included a lexico‐semantic mismatch condition to investigate lexico‐semantic processing in our participants.
17 adolescents with DLD (M = 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with typical language (TL, M = 12.2 years) participated in the study. Our results suggest three patterns. First, French‐speaking teenagers without DLD are still consolidating their neurocognitive processing of morpho‐syntactic number agreement and generally display ERP profiles typical of lower language proficiency than adult native speakers. Second, differences in morphosyntactic processing between teenagers with and without DLD seem to be limited to rule‐based (regular) number agreement. Third, there is little evidence for corresponding differences in lexico‐semantic processing.
(2) regular subject‐verb plural liaison, and (3) irregular subject‐verb agreement. We also included a lexico‐semantic mismatch condition to investigate lexico‐semantic processing in our participants.
17 adolescents with DLD (M = 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with typical language (TL, M = 12.2 years) participated in the study. Our results suggest three patterns. First, French‐speaking teenagers without DLD are still consolidating their neurocognitive processing of morpho‐syntactic number agreement and generally display ERP profiles typical of lower language proficiency than adult native speakers. Second, differences in morphosyntactic processing between teenagers with and without DLD seem to be limited to rule‐based (regular) number agreement. Third, there is little evidence for corresponding differences in lexico‐semantic processing.
We elicited verbs in 169 children (aged 67 to 92 months) attending preschool (n = 105) or first grade (n = 64), who were L1 or MUL learners of Québec French, using 24 verbs with regular, sub-regular, and irregular participle forms (6 of each, ending in /e/, /i/, /y/ or IDiosyncratic) in the passé composé (perfect past). Using our Android application Jeu de verbes, verbs were presented with images (see Figure 1) to each child in an infinitival form (infinitival complements or the periphrastic future, e.g., Marie va cacher ses poupées ‘Mary will hide her dolls’) and present tense contexts (e.g., Marie cache toujours ses poupées ‘Mary always hides her dolls’). Children were prompted to produce the passé composé by answering the question ‘What did she do yesterday, Marie?’.
Preliminary analyses (n = 94, 70 in preschool, 31 L1 and 39 MUL; 24 in first grade, 13 L1 and 11 MUL) reveal a Verb conjugation group effect, F(3, 88) = 52.31, p < .001 as well as a Verb conjugation group*Language group*Age group interaction, F(3, 88) = 3.35, p < .05. Moreover, trends toward significant effects were found for Age group, F(1, 90) = 3.07, p = .08, and for the interaction of factors Verb conjugation group*Language group, F(3, 88) = 2.36, p = .08. These results indicate that responses to verb conjugation groups differ according to verb conjugation, age and language group (see Figure 1).
Overall, children’s responses to verb conjugation groups highlight morphological productivity and reliability effects on mastery of French conjugation. Results also show higher target productions in the first grade than in preschool and varying response patterns depending on language background. In depth analyses comparing all 169 children including language group analyses (L1 vs MUL) will further inform us on children’s mastery of French passé composé, while non-parametric analyses on frequency of response types should reveal a clearer picture of children’s response strategies by verb or language group. These data will show that MUL children who have lesser exposure to oral French language, rapidly master verb conjugation patterns to the same level as L1 children (and might even do better) in immersive (school) contexts.
major changes in the last two decades. New methodologies have been
developed for the investigation of psycholinguistic processes that are
complementary to more traditional approaches to the study of language. In
particular, neuroimaging using fine-grained temporal tracking of brain
signatures is possible now with electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings
that are time-locked to specific linguistic events. These result in eventrelated
brain potentials (ERPs) that allow us to tease apart the processing of
semantics, morphology and orthography, for example. We present here an
example of how the issue of morphological access during written word
recognition (French verbs in a visual lexical decision task) can be
investigated using ERP techniques.
Certains soutiennent qu’il existe deux groupes de verbes en français : réguliers et irréguliers (Kresh, 2008; Nicoladis, et al. 2007). D’autres les décrivent avec une distinction tripartite (Royle et al., 2012) : les verbes du premier groupe (se terminant en -er à l’infinitif), du second groupe (se terminant en -ir) et les verbes irréguliers. Des groupes de régularité se manifestent parmi ces trois groupes. Certains présentent des schèmes de conjugaison sous-réguliers (ex. les irréguliers en -i, prendre – pris), tandis que d’autres se conjuguent de façon irrégulière (ex., ouvrir – ouvert). De plus, le sous-groupe des verbes en -u (ex. voir – vu) contient des verbes parmi les plus fréquents de la langue tels que voir, boire et vouloir. Il s’avère important d’étudier la connaissance des différents schèmes qui apparaissent fréquemment dans la langue. De plus, nous voulons savoir si les enfants apprenant le français comme langue seconde (L2) démontrent les mêmes schèmes que les enfants apprenant le français comme première langue (L1).
Méthode
Nous avons évalué 35 enfants français québécois L1 et 25 enfants L2 (de types variés) sur la conjugaison de verbes fréquents réguliers, sous-réguliers et irréguliers au passé composé (en -é, -i, -u ou autres). Une tâche de production induite a été administrée à des enfants fréquentant la maternelle ou la première année d’une même école de la ville de Laval. Les verbes ont été présentés, avec des images les représentant, dans des contextes à l’infinitif (ex. Marie va cacher ses poupées) et au présent (ex. Marie cache toujours ses poupées), afin d’amorcer leur paradigme de conjugaison. Les enfants devaient répondre à la question ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il/elle a fait hier?’
Les résultats indiquent peu de différences entre les groupes d’enfants (F(1,56), 3,68 p = 0.06), en dépit du fait que le groupe L2 s’améliore en première année. Les deux groupes montrent le schéma de réussite suivant : é > i = u > autre. Tous présentent des résultats significativement moins bons sur les verbes en u en maternelle versus la première année ((F(1,58), 9,94 p = 0.003).
Cette étude suggère une distinction tripartite des schèmes réguliers, sous-réguliers et irréguliers des verbes fréquents en français. Les enfants L2 semblent s’approprier ces schèmes de façon similaire aux enfants L1, et ce malgré le fait qu’ils doivent apprendre deux langues. Ces données sont importantes pour les modèles d’apprentissage de la L2 ainsi que l’enseignement de la conscience morphologique des verbes chez tous les enfants.
Researchers and clinicians have occasionally used puzzles to elicit specific structures from children. These are especially useful for the evaluation of phonological and syllabic inventories (Bulle, xxxx), and even more complex structures such as verbs and their complements with case marking in German or Japanese (see Eisenbeiss, 2011). Our experiment was designed to elicit agreement in the French noun phrase and the more complex structures of the determiner phrase (DP). French speaking children seem to master agreement at very young ages. However, their productive use of adjectives is difficult to ascertain form the corpus (Royle & Valois, 2010). Our experimental technique was to develop puzzle boards of growing complexity, with puzzle pieces having minimal differences along one or two dimensions at a time (color or size). The participants are asked to name the piece they want to insert on the puzzle, and have to produce the appropriate adjectives in order to do this. This task is quite easy to use with children as young as three years old, and has proven useful in distinguishing children with SLI from normally developing children (Royle et al, 2010), as well as identifying specific difficulties in the acquisition of French L2 by Spanish-speakers (Bergeron et al, 2011) and in tracking normal development of the DP structure. These tasks are easily adaptable to other languages with similar linguistic features (here gender agreement). A Spanish version has been with Spanish-speaking children in New York (Royle et al, in preparation). The data from NYC is quite interesting as children evidence code-switching in these controlled settings, whereas Spanish-speaking children from Montreal do not (Bergeron et al, 2011). Thus the puzzles seem to tap into sociolinguistic styles in addition to morpho-syntactic structures. We will present a review of our findings for these different groups of children.
Finally, in order to understand the cognitive processes underlying agreement, we have adapted our design to event related potential (ERP) methodology, presenting children with images of colorful objects concurrently with concordant or discordant auditory stimuli, while recording their brain activity (Royle et al, 2009-20012). We have established that typical ERPs related to agreement errors (LAN, P600) can be elicited without asking for grammaticality judgments form participants (Gascon et al, 2011) and that is will be useful for evaluating the emergence of agreement in young children. We will report on ongoing child data collection on this task.