dominant language

[Conny Opitz]

 The point about the importance of spelling out how one conceives of
dominance/balance relative to proficiency is very well made. As you point
out, they are often treated as one and the same, i.e. dominance is
established on the basis of the relative proficiency of the relevant
languages to one another. It seems to me that this is a question both of
terminology - "dominance" as "higher proficiency of one language compared to
another" vs. "the most active/accessible language" (cf. the lay person's
"Litmus test" for establishing language dominance by asking "What language
do you dream in?"), and possibly of merging co-occurring phenomena. Treating
dominance as proficiency may be appropriate in child acquisition studies
(which is not my area) if it is the case that the language in which more
input is received ends up being the more dominant (as in "active" ) AND ALSO
the more proficient ("better", more complete/developed) (be that overall or
in a specific domain). This makes sense theoretically and practically (given
relatively fixed linguistic environments during acquisition).

However, from my studying first-language attrition in post-maturational
language users (apologies if you feel introducing adults into this debate is
misplaced), it would seem that the distinction between dominance (as level
of activation/speed of access) and proficiency is a real one (thank you for
the Birdsong reference), because dominance patterns in this sense can and do
change, while proficiency in a mature L1 seems to be relatively stable. (Of
course, this raises the question of how one defines "proficiency", and
whether this concept includes the requirement for fluency.) The situation
you describe in which a person becomes dominant in L2 (in the sense of being
more fluent, having readier access to the language) but remains more
proficient in L1 (in the sense of having a greater stock of vocabulary and
of using the language more accurately and idiomatically) is fairly common
for adults who post-puberty have gone to live in another country/area with a
different language. Adult migrants who have a lot of contact with the second
language find that although their knowledge of their first language is there
somewhere, they may experience difficulty in accessing it, particularly
lexical knowledge, so there is a mismatch between proficiency (they are
relatively ok on accuracy and complexity of language use) and dominance
(speed of access is reduced).

In preparing a paper for the 2010 EuroSLA Yearbook (ref below), I have
grappled with the proficiency vs. dominance problem, and found that
disentangling knowledge of a language and the ability to use that knowledge
(proficiency) on the one hand from the facility or speed with which the
knowledge is accessed (dominance) on the other made sense for my
participants. Although there are few (no?) pure proficiency tests, different
measures focus more on one or the other dimension and thus make possible the
separation of proficiency and dominance in the above senses. Bilingual
profiles for adult bilinguals established on the basis of two tests
completed in German and English - a C-test (which is a global proficiency
test) and several verbal fluency tasks (which tap lexical access and have
been used as dominance tests) - turned out to be different for most
participants - while L1 is stronger for many participants on the C-test
(higher L1 proficiency score), the fluency tasks show a greater incidence of
L1-L2 balance or L2 dominance (higher L2 verbal fluency scores). This would
seem to indicate that there really are two different phenomena at play - but
in children this may not be as obvious.

Children are also affected by L1 attrition - in fact, it proceeds much more
rapidly and completely than in adults, though it is unclear whether they
simply lose access to their L1 (which may stop developing altogether), or
whether the knowledge is in fact altered and/or replaced by the new L2.
(This is debated in relation to adults, too, and some would claim that being
able to access the language is all that counts.) Of course, in these
situations, the developing L1, having been acquired to a lower level and
being less fixed in the mind, has a different standing to begin with. The
inverse pattern of ultimate L1 and L2 "dominance" (defined as relative
proficiency) found by Jia and Aaronson referred to previously are a function
of age-related factors (level of L1 acquisition at AOA, and different
linguistic environments/preferences). So younger arrivals tend to achieve a
lower level of L1 proficiency - and that L1 is presumably also not terribly
active. So it is possible that in children - in stable linguistic
environments - the two dimensions of proficiency and dominance (as fluent
access) develop in tandem and therefore can be treated as synonymous for
practical purposes, while in adults this would not seem warranted (unless
one deals with people living in their original linguistic environment) ...
Over to the experts!


Conny


Opitz, C. (forthc.). L1 Attrition and L2 Acquisition: Global Language
Proficiency and Language Dominance in Adult Bilinguals. *EUROSLA Yearbook *L.
Roberts. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. *10*.




On 27 March 2010 01:09, Ekaterina Smyk <ekaterina.smyk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, it seems to me that a speaker can be considered as “always” more
> proficient in the dominant language only if dominance is defined based on a
> relative proficiency in two languages. However, if language proficiency is
> considered as a distinct construct (e.g., as a level of linguistic
> attainment), then the relations between dominance and proficiency can vary.
> For example, a speaker may be dominant in L2, but be more proficient in L1.
> There are numerous operational definitions of language dominance and
> proficiency so I am sure some people may disagree with me. I would be very
> interested in hearing other opinions as well.
> Katya
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Bruno Estigarribia <brunilda at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Forgive the silly question. This is not my field but the following struck
>> me as counterintuitive so I want to make sure this is what was intended:
>>
>> "For example, in order to be a highly proficient in a certain language a
>> speaker does have to be dominant in that language."
>> Isn't the converse more intuitively sensible? You can, I guess, be highly
>> proficient in two languages but (I want to say, by definition almost), only
>> dominant in one of them. Am I missing something (perhaps in the literature)
>> that contradicts this?
>> Just curious.
>> Bruno
>> --
>> Bruno Estigarribia
>> Research Assistant Professor
>> 364A Davie Hall, CB #3270
>> Department of Psychology - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>> Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270
>> USA
>>
>>  The first question here is how language dominance is defined. Sometimes
>>> language dominance is used interchangeably with language proficiency due to
>>> a definition of language dominance in terms of the relative proficiency in
>>> two languages. However, these two constructs can be distinguished in terms
>>> of psycholinguistic properties (See Birdsong (2006) Dominance, proficiency,
>>> and second language grammatical processing in /Applied Psycholinguistics/).
>>> Often language dominance implies the superior performance on measures of
>>> fluency, speed, automaticity, and accuracy in processing. For example, in
>>> order to be a highly proficient in a certain language a speaker does have to
>>> be dominant in that language. In addition, assessment of language dominance
>>> is frequently based on the underlying assumption of uniform superior
>>> performance in the dominant language. However, dominance in one aspect of
>>> the language does not necessarily imply dominance in others.
>>>  Katya
>>>
>>
>


-- 
Conny Opitz
Russian and Slavonic Studies
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2
Ireland

Email: opitzc at tcd.ie
Tel: +353-1-8961108/8500906

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20100329/d3614e50/attachment.htm>