Rothman Jason, Long Drew, Iverson Michael, Judy Tiffany, Lingwall Anne, Chakravarty Tushar
University of Reading, and UiT,the Arctic University of Norway.
Duval County Public Schools,Florida.
J Child Lang. 2016 May;43(3):662-86. doi: 10.1017/S0305000915000549. Epub 2016 Feb 26.
We report a longitudinal comprehension study of (long) passive constructions in two native-Spanish child groups differing by age of initial exposure to L2 English (young group: 3;0-4;0; older group: 6;0-7;0), where amount of input, L2 exposure environment, and socioeconomic status are controlled. Data from a forced-choice task show that both groups comprehend active sentences, not passives, initially (after 3·6 years of exposure). One year later, both groups improve, but only the older group reaches ceiling on both actives and passives. Two years from initial testing, the younger group catches up. Input alone cannot explain why the younger group takes five years to accomplish what the older group does in four. We claim that some properties take longer to acquire at certain ages because language development is partially constrained by general cognitive and linguistic development (e.g. de Villiers, 2007; Long & Rothman, 2014; Paradis, 2008, 2010, 2011; Tsimpli, 2014).
我们报告了一项针对两组以西班牙语为母语的儿童进行的纵向理解研究，研究对象是（长）被动结构。这两组儿童在初次接触第二语言英语的年龄上有所不同（较小组：3岁0个月至4岁0个月；较大组：6岁0个月至7岁0个月），研究中控制了输入量、第二语言接触环境和社会经济地位。来自强制选择任务的数据表明，两组儿童最初（在接触3.6年后）都能理解主动句，但不能理解被动句。一年后，两组儿童都有进步，但只有较大组在主动句和被动句理解上达到了上限。从初次测试开始两年后，较小组赶了上来。仅输入因素无法解释为什么较小组需要五年时间才能完成较大组在四年内完成的事情。我们认为，某些语言特性在特定年龄需要更长时间才能习得，因为语言发展部分受到一般认知和语言发展的限制（例如，德维利尔斯，2007；朗和罗斯曼，2014；帕拉迪斯，2008、2010、2011；齐姆普利，2014）。
