A 17-yera longitudinal study on two early Japanese-English bilinguals

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26370518
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Setsunan University
• Principal Investigator: TAURA Amanda 摂南大学, 外国語学部, 准教授 (60388642)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 田浦 秀幸 立命館大学, 言語教育情報研究科, 教授 (40313738)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: bilingualism / narrative / longitudinal study / Japanese-English / language distance

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Longitudinal narrative data were collected over a period of 17 years from two early Japanese-English siblings. The data were firstly transcribed to be analyzed in terms of accuracy (based on Myers-Scotton's 4-M model), fluency, vocabulary, and narrative styles. Our previous two government grants allowed us to finish 60% of the whole data set, and we finished analyzing the rest this time. The results show that the two siblings displayed no change in the last 7 years linguistically. However, they markedly differ in their narrative styles: The older sibling employs detailed descriptions of each scene which makes the storytelling sound like a script from a fictional movie whereas the younger sibling's narrative is abundant with emotional words such as 'scared' and 'surprised' which are also effective in capturing the listener's attention.

Free Research Field

bilingualism