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Lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in bilingual children reading Italian as a second language*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2014

STÉPHANIE BELLOCCHI ,
PAOLA BONIFACCI  and
CRISTINA BURANI
STÉPHANIE BELLOCCHI*
Affiliation:
Aix Marseille University, Aix en Provence
PAOLA BONIFACCI
Affiliation:
University of Bologna, Bologna
CRISTINA BURANI
Affiliation:
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Rome & Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste
*
Address for correspondence: Stéphanie Bellocchi, Paul Valéry University, Route de Mende, 34199, Montpellier, Francestephanie.bellocchi@univ-montp3.fr
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Abstract

In Italian, developing readers exhibit lexicality and frequency effects, and are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. But how do bilingual children with different ages of first L2 (Italian) exposure and L2 vocabulary sizes read L2 words and pseudowords? Two reading aloud experiments investigated lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in fourth- and fifth-grade bilinguals and monolinguals. Naming latencies and pronunciation accuracy were analyzed. In Experiment 1, effects of lexicality and frequency and between-group differences emerged. In Experiment 2, the word frequency effect was confirmed. Late bilinguals, characterized by a smaller L2 vocabulary size, were less accurate than early bilinguals and monolinguals in assigning non-dominant stress. As with monolinguals, lexical information seems to be employed when reading Italian as a second language. Furthermore, bilingual readers are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. Stress assignment is affected by the L2 lexicon size of second-language learners.

Keywords

lexicalityreadingstress assignmentage of L2 exposurebilingualismsecond-language learners
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 89 - 105
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This work is dedicated to Silvana Contento, formerly Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Bologna. The authors are very grateful to Silvana for sharing her interest in bilingualism and second-language learning with them, and for starting this scientific collaboration.

The authors also thank Ilaria Ceccarelli for her help with the data collection, and Silvia Primativo, Pasquale Rinaldi, and three anonymous referees for their useful comments. Finally, we are very grateful to Bruno Dauvier for his precious assistance with the data analysis.

Since this paper was accepted for publication, the first author's affiliation has changed from Aix Marseille University, Aix en Provence, to Paul Valéry University, Montpellier.

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