De invloed van het mixen van talen op woordenschat

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to add to the existing knowledge about the influence of mixing languages on the language proficiency and vocabulary size of bilingual children. The influence of mixing on the Dutch vocabulary of bilingual children, and the difference between bilingual children whose parents both speak two languages and bilingual children whose parents both only speak one language will be explored. Method: Data of the second wave of the Pre-COOL cohort study was used. Participants were 865 monolingual and 303 bilingual children with a mean age of 41.66 months (SD = 2.92). The parents filled out a questionnaire about the language spoken at home during certain activities. Dutch receptive vocabulary has been measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III-NL (PPVT-III-NL). Results: The Dutch vocabulary of monolingual children is bigger than that of bilingual children. Children whose parents use mixing have a smaller Dutch vocabulary than monolingual children but not smaller than that of bilingual children whose parents use the “one parent, one language” principle. There is no difference between the Dutch vocabularies of monolingual children and bilingual children whose parents use the “one parent, one language” principle. Conclusion: Bilingual children may receive less Dutch language input, which could cause their vocabularies to be smaller than those of monolingual Dutch children. Mixing seems to have a detrimental effect on Dutch vocabulary size, whereas the “one parent, one language” principle has not. More research is needed to discover the exact mechanisms that influence vocabulary size.