A cross-linguistic and bilingual evaluation of the interdependence between lexical and grammatical domains

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine within and across language relationships between lexical and grammatical domains by focusing on measures of lexical diversity and grammatical complexity in Spanish and English. One hundred and ninety-six preschool and school-aged Latino children with different levels of English and Spanish proficiencies and different language abilities produced narratives in Spanish, English, or both. Analyses revealed strong associations between lexical (number of different words and number of different verbs) and grammatical measures (mean length of utterances in words and use of ditransitive predicates), supporting the domain interdependence hypothesis within a language. Cross-linguistic comparisons indicate a greater diversity of verbs and ditransitive predicates in Spanish compared to English for this population. In the language samples of children who produced narratives in the two languages, there was no relationship between the two domains across languages. The lack of cross-language correlations may be related to other variables influencing lexical and semantic development in bilingual learners. Methodological issues to be considered in future studies with bilingual speakers are discussed.