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Part of
Multilingual Acquisition and Learning: An ecosystemic view to diversity
Edited by Elena Babatsouli
[Studies in Bilingualism 67] 2024
► pp. 500–528

Chapter 19
Morphological awareness in L2 Italian children with a migrant background

| University of Verona
| University of Verona
Research on morphological awareness in bilingual children has generated conflicting evidence, with studies reporting bilingual gains and others finding poorer performance relative to monolinguals. In this study, we explored further this issue by testing 54 school-aged children speaking Italian as an L2 on a broad domain of morphology and by means of nonword tasks, with the aim to reduce potential vocabulary effects on morphological abilities. One group of monolingual Italian-speaking children and two groups of bilingual L2 Italian children (with Romanian and Albanian as L1s) took part in the experiment. Results evidenced similar performances in most tasks, but limited underachievement was found in bilinguals, especially in the Albanian-Italian speaking children. This bilingual gap can be explained by the genealogical and typological distance between the L1 and the target language. Crucially, it disappears once vocabulary and exposure factors are taken into account.
Keywords: morphological awareness, Wug Test, vocabulary, bilingualism, L2 Italian children
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Metalinguistic awareness in bilingualism: Advantages in MA?
    • 1.2Bilingualism and vocabulary: Disadvantages in MA?
  • 2.The current study
    • 2.1The empirical focus: Italian morphology
    • 2.2Some notes on Albanian and Romanian morphology
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials
    • 3.3Procedure and scoring system
    • 3.4Data analysis plan
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Preliminary measures
    • 4.2Analysis 1: Group accuracy in each task
    • 4.3Analysis 2: Comparing noun- vs. verb-based morphology
    • 4.4Analysis 3: Comparing conjugation classes
    • 4.5Analysis 4: Addressing the role of vocabulary
    • 4.6Analysis 5: The role of exposure to L2 Italian
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • 7.Author Contribution
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 May 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.67.19mel
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