trilingualism

[Barbara Z. Pearson]

Dear Leher,
I just looked at some interesting, more recent, work looking at criteria for amounts of exposure (although not necessarily minimal amounts) by Ann Fernald's lab, and I recently cited Hoff et al. (2012), Gathercole (2002), Thordardottir (2006), Peña et al. (many), and Barreña et al. (2008) on this question. How old are your participants?! None of these studies touch the very unresolved issue of what levels of functional use and fluency count as speaking a language at a given time in a person's life.

For a rule of thumb, I thought Janet Werker for many years used 30% as a minimum for inclusion in her studies.  That, at least, has the practical advantage that one could divide 100% by three and still come out with a reasonable number.

We're very interested in what you decide, and as Erika suggests, how you decide to calculate it.

Cheers,

Barbara Pearson


On Sep 25, 2013, at 9:02 AM, Erika Hoff wrote:

Good luck. Barbara Pearson's number of 20 or 25 percent input is often cited as necessary to be bilingual, but she only claimed that children with less input than that were reluctant to use the language--not that they didn't know anything. We find that children with only 20 percent input do start to learn vocabulary, but continuing progress may not be sustainable--nobody really knows. Just to make life difficult, I would add that if you are classifying the children you should do it on what they know--bilingual or trilingual input does not guarantee bilingual or trilingual development.

Erika Hoff


On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 8:27 AM, Leher Singh <leher.singh at gmail.com<mailto:leher.singh at gmail.com>> wrote:
Dear all,

I am trying to differentiate participants in terms of being bilingual with some 3rd language exposure and trilingualism. Unfortunately, the data I have are confined to percent breakdown of exposure to each language. Could anyone point me to references as to what kind of language input a child would have to have to each language at a minimum to be considered trilingual? Suggestions or criteria currently adopted by others would be appreciated!

Best wishes,
Leher


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com<mailto:info-childes%2Bunsubscribe at googlegroups.com>.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com<mailto:info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAFLtzDcJbx%2BfbQvsoEr3i9Mq3zUa_HVSHNix3ap6XurSgMZ7EA%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.



--
Erika Hoff, Professor
Department of Psychology
Florida Atlantic University
3200 College Ave.
Davie, FL 33314

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com<mailto:info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com<mailto:info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAAhHXzWgaVY4OaZzKumiEv7dETPB4aiq2SYXodx%3DMJQt-Os41g%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/8BD4392F-A633-4AF4-8A78-DF08E0D9A6C7%40ads.umass.edu.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.