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Parent report data on input and experience reliably predict bilingual development and this is not trivial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2016

JOHANNE PARADIS
JOHANNE PARADIS*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
Address for correspondence: Johanne Paradis, Professor of Linguistics, 4–57 Assiniboia Hall, Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6C 3A2, Canada[email protected]
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Extract

Carroll (Carroll) takes issue with the use of parent report to obtain quantity of language exposure measures in research on bilingual development. When discussing parent questionnaires, Carroll writes “Temporal units are crude measures of exposure and they tell us nothing about input”. While I agree that temporal units do not tell us much about the fine-grained details of the input within the temporal units, importantly, parent-report-based measures of input quantity have predicted variation in bilingual development of phonology, vocabulary and morphosyntax. These are robust and reliable findings across numerous studies, and yet, Carroll skates over them as if they did not matter, or dismisses them as trivial. Furthermore, Carroll seems to lead readers to believe that only coarse-grained, language-use temporal units have been obtained through this method; on the contrary, researchers have obtained fine-grained input quality details via parent report that also predict bilingual children's development. Finally, in some circumstances, parent report data is the only feasible method for obtaining language exposure information.

Keywords

parent reportbilingual developmentinput
Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 27 - 28
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

Carroll, S.E. (2015). Exposure and input in bilingual development. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. doi:10.1017/S1366728915000863.Google Scholar
Grüter, T., & Paradis, J. (2014). Input and experience in bilingual development. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2011). Individual differences in child English second language acquisition: Comparing child-internal and child-external factors. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1, 213–237.Google Scholar
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