Leiden University Student Repository

Spoolder, Yvette (2016)

Dialect Speakers in SLA Research: The Influence of Various Factors on Vocabulary

Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)

Aspects of the acquisition of one or more languages are influenced by many variables, e.g. age of acquisition, quality and quantity of input, social economic status, and the presence of older siblings. The influence of these factors has been investigated in monolingual learners, adult second language learners, less in child second language learners, and not at all in young bidialectal speakers. This study investigated how various factors influenced vocabulary scores of bidialectal children from Limburg, the Netherlands. Results show that input quantity and age of acquisition are significant predictors of vocabulary scores, but in a different manner than in traditional bilinguals. Other significant predictors are mother fluency and socioeconomic status. The specific situation of bidialectal speakers in the Netherlands might be of influence on their language acquisition, making it different from traditional bilingual language acquisition.

child second language acquisition

dialect

vocabulary

bidialectal acquisition

Author

Spoolder, Yvette

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Theoretical and experimental linguistics

Supervisors

Levelt, C.C.

ECTS Credits

30

Language

en