Bilingualism across the lifespan - A cross linguistic and cross cultural approach (PDF)

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Graz (Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: The present thesis deals with the lives and languages of twenty-five adolescent
and adult bilinguals. All of them have acquired their languages
consecutively. Through an extensive research programme the subjects
are tested from a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural approach for the quality
of L1 - L2 proximity.
The main research question in the thesis is in what ways do L1 and L2 of
adolescent and adult bilinguals differ regarding the results of verbal
screening tests and selected aspects of written narrative competence?
How and to what extent can the findings be associated to the results of the
analysis of influencing socio-psychological factors?
It is assumed that biological constraints are not the single crucial factors
for high levels of attainment but rather socio-psychological variables such
as culture, identity, perception and attitudes.
The verbal screening tests, namely the PPVT-III (Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test - III) and EVT (Expressive Vocabulary Test), used to determine
a person's passive and active vocabulary knowledge of a language
will show that the results of L1 and L2 will not differ significantly of each
other in individuals showing positive affective variables in their bilingualism.
The level of language proficiency and the quality of L1 - L2 proximity is
further investigated through a detailed analysis of written narratives composed
in ScriptLog, a research programme for the online process of writing.
This involves the analysis of five major linguistic variables: productivity,
lexical diversity, the construction of complex motion events, and the
use of evaluative devices. The last two variables give information on the
amount of granularity and the condensation of information and can be
classified between textual structure and the lexicon. Additionally, the time
data of the written narratives recorded by ScriptLog will be evaluated and
discussed.
The question is whether qualitative and quantitative differences between
the five variables of investigation mentioned above are in line with sociopsychological variables, possibly influencing the development of late L2
learners.