Minority language exposure predicts multilingual receptive abilities in Catalan-Spanish bilingual children

Abstract

Bilingual profiles may be used to capture the absolute (i.e. not relative) levels of bilinguals’ abilities across their two languages. This study investigates the profiles of 146 early Catalan-Spanish bilingual children at the beginning of primary schooling with three goals: (1) to investigate what subgroups of bilinguals exist based on their receptive lexical and grammatical abilities in the two languages, (2) to find the background and linguistic characteristics that distinguish the profiles, and (3) to determine whether or how their profile may relate to their abilities in L3-English. Results showed two main profiles in the sample: a high-abilities group, whose receptive vocabulary and grammar abilities were above the sample mean in both languages, and a low-abilities group, whose results were at or below the mean. The former profile was characterized by more frequent exposure to the minority language Catalan than the latter. In addition, the two profiles exhibited differential performance in their receptive abilities in L3-English, with the high-performing participants scoring significantly higher. Taken together, results demonstrate substantial variation in multilingual skills at the early stages of schooling, and that engaging with the minority language may result in overall multilingual gains due to the benefits conferred by balanced bilingual exposure.