Changes in referential production among Japanese-English bilingual returnee children: a five-year longitudinal study

Abstract

This study tracked the referential production of 25 Japanese-English returnee children for 5 years upon their return to Japan from an English-dominant environment (Mean age = 9.72 at the time of return) and compared their referential strategies to 27 Japanese monolinguals and 27 English monolinguals, age-matched to the returnee’s age at time of return. Returnees used more redundant noun phrases (NPs) in both languages to maintain references compared to monolingual peers. In English, no changes in NP use were noted over time, but increased exposure to English led to fewer redundant NPs when maintaining references. In their native Japanese (L1), returnees used less NPs for maintaining references and more NPs for reintroducing references, indicating improved reference tracking longitudinally. In sum, returnees’ referential production is more sensitive to L1 re-exposure effects than second language (L2) attrition and crucially, increased L2 exposure minimizes redundant referent production among bilingual returnee children.