Comprehension and production of (non-)reflexive possessive constructions in Abui by Alor Malay–Abui bilingual children

Abstract

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:

We investigate how Alor Malay–Abui child bilinguals, a non-WEIRD and underrepresented population in the field, comprehend and produce reflexive and non-reflexive possessive constructions in Abui. Their profiles of language development are explored through functionalist accounts that highlight the close connection between language and domain-general learning capacities, with special emphasis on three models: Competition Model, usage-based approach, and processing determinism.

Design/methodology/approach:

A total of 17 children (experimental group) and 17 adults (comparison group) complete a forced-choice sentence comprehension task (where they listen to two sentences following a short video prompt and verbally select the sentence that best describes the clip) and an elicited production task (where they watch a series of video clips and describe what is happening in each clip in a semi-spontaneous way).

Data and analysis:

This study employs mixed-effects modelling for data analysis. The global model per experiment includes Condition (reflexive; non-reflexive) and Group (child; adult) as fixed effects and Participant and Item as random effects, with the maximal random-effects structure allowed by the model.

Findings/conclusions:

Results show asymmetric performance by bilingual children on the two construction types across both experiments. Our findings provide insight into the developing processor in bilingual children, influenced by various factors such as usage frequency, cognitive skills, and task effects, within the functionalist framework.

Originality and significance/implications:

The findings of this study align with functionalist accounts for language development, illuminating the intricate deployment of linguistic knowledge in the minds of bilingual children interfacing with language-usage experience and domain-general factors. By combining the three models of functionalism, our findings are more properly understood, highlighting their complementary nature in addressing developmental trajectories of linguistic knowledge for child bilinguals. Importantly, our study shifts our attention to a unique bilingual context that has not been explored – lesser-studied languages and learning environments, contributing to offsetting the sampling bias persistent in the field.