Lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in bilingual children reading Italian as a second language.

In Italian, developing readers exhibit lexicality and frequency effects, and are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. But how do bilingual children with different ages of first L2 (Italian) exposure and L2 vocabulary sizes read L2 words and pseudowords? Two reading aloud experiments investigated lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in fourth- and fifth-grade bilinguals and monolinguals. Naming latencies and pronunciation accuracy were analyzed. In Experiment 1, effects of lexicality and frequency and between-group differences emerged. In Experiment 2, the word frequency effect was confirmed. Late bilinguals, characterized by a smaller L2 vocabulary size, were less accurate than early bilinguals and monolinguals in assigning non-dominant stress. As with monolinguals, lexical information seems to be employed when reading Italian as a second language. Furthermore, bilingual readers are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. Stress assignment is affected by the L2 lexicon size of second-language learners.

Publication type: 
Articolo
Author or Creator: 
Bellocchi
S.
Bonifacci
P.
Burani
C.
Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press., Cambridge, Regno Unito
Source: 
Bilingualism (Camb., Print) 19 (2016). doi:10.1017/S1366728914000297
info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Bellocchi, S., Bonifacci, P., & Burani, C./titolo:Lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in bilingual children reading Italian as a second language./doi:10.1017/S1366728914000297/rivista:Bilingualism (Camb., Print)/
Date: 
2016
Resource Identifier: 
http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/317060
https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728914000297
info:doi:10.1017/S1366728914000297
Language: 
Eng