Project MultiDiskurs
Reference management in bilingual narratives
The project aims to account for patterns of variation in the processing of linguistic structures in discourse. In particular, we investigate how bilingual children ranging in age from 8 to 12 integrate morphosyntactic and discourse information, for example by using eye-tracking experiments. Among the factors that contribute to individual variation, we explore the role of cross-linguistic influence, differences in bilingual profiles in terms of language and literacy exposure, individual cognitive skills and bilinguals’ ability to share discourse strategies across their two languages.
- This project investigates how bilingual children select information in dialogues and stories in order to make important characters and events easy to identify. Children between eight and twelve years of age often use several languages in their daily lives and switch flexibly between them. We aim to understand how they draw on these languages to highlight key characters and events and how they avoid misunderstandings. To do this, we use child friendly dialogue and storytelling tasks and also observe how accompanying gestures help to highlight referents.A central goal is to determine how both languages of a bilingual child contribute to the construction of referential structures. For example, we examine whether children deal with challenging scenarios differently when two languages are active compared to when only one is used. We also analyse how well children recognise unclear or unsuitable linguistic forms and how consciously they can reflect on language at a metalevel. The findings will show how bilingual children process information and which abilities are most relevant in this process. This will offer valuable insights for educational settings as well as clinical language support in multilingual settings.
Selected publications
- Torregrossa, J., Andreou, M., Bongartz, C., & Tsimpli, I. M. (2021). Bilingual acquisition of reference: The role of language experience, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 24(4), 694-706.
- Torregrossa, J., Eisenbeiß, S., & Bongartz, C. (2023). Boosting bilingual metalinguistic awareness under dual language activation: Some implications for bilingual education. Language Learning, 73(3), 683-722.
- Vogelzang, M. & Torregrossa, J. (2024). Identifying bilingual reference profiles: A cluster analysis approach to reference production among Greek-Italian bilingual children. Language and Cognition. doi:10.1017/langcog.2024.48
Individual Development
Funding
