Assessing Language Dominance in Bilingual Acquisition: A Case for Mean Length Utterance Differentials

• Published in: Language assessment quarterly Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 97 - 116
• Main Authors: Yip, Virginia, Matthews, Stephen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc 01.04.2006; Routledge; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Cantonese; Case Studies; Child Development; Children & youth; Code Switching (Language); Comparative Analysis; Complements; Ellipsis; English; English (Second Language); Foreign Countries; Hong Kong; Language Acquisition; Language Dominance; Language Proficiency; Language Tests; Mean Length of Utterance; Measures; Measures (Individuals); Prediction; Second Language Learning; Sino Tibetan Languages; Test methods; Transfer; Transfer of Training; Hong Kong

The notion of language dominance is often defined in terms of proficiency. We distinguish dominance, as a property of the bilingual mind and a concept of language knowledge, from proficiency, as a concept of language use. We discuss ways in which language dominance may be assessed, with a focus on m...