Monolingual 1.3 9
4 Monolingual to Multilingual wordnet W8.L15.T15.1.3 Wordnet 1 / 16. Contents 1 Motivation 2 Representation of wordnet 3 Uses of wordnet 4 Monolingual to Multilingual wordnet W8.L15.T15.1.3 Wordnet 2 / 16. Motivation Let us take a look at the following natural language processing problem. During the 12 years between 1986 and 1998, the number of U. Children who were identified as limited English proficient increased from 1.6 million to 9.9 million (see Tucker 1999). It is estimated that, by the year 2050, 40% of school-aged children in the United States will come from homes where English is not the first language. Monolingual 1.5.7 Download Now! Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X,in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space.It requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) and also works on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
Bilingualism in Children
A
One misguided legacy of over a hundred years of writing on bilingualism1 is that children’s . intelligence will suffer if they are bilingual. Some of the earliest research into bilingualism examined whether bilingual children were ahead or behind monolingual2 children on IQ tests. From the 1920s through to the 1960s, the tendency was to find monolingual children ahead of bilinguals on IQ tests. The conclusion was that bilingual children were mentally confused. Having two languages in the brain, it was said, disrupted effective thinking. It was argued that having one well-developed language was superior to having two half-developed languages.
B
The idea that bilinguals may have a lower IQ still exists among many people, particularly monolinguals. However, we now know that this early research was misconceived and incorrect. First, such research often gave bilinguals an IQ test in their weaker language – usually English. Had bilinguals been tested in Welsh or Spanish or Hebrew, a different result may have been found. The testing of bilinguals was thus unfair. Second, like was not compared with like. Bilinguals tended to come from, for example, impoverished New York or rural Welsh backgrounds. The monolinguals tended to come from more middle class, urban families. Working class bilinguals were often compared with middle class monolinguals. So the results were more likely to be due to social class differences than language differences. The comparison of monolinguals and bilinguals was unfair.
C
The most recent research from Canada, the United States and Wales suggests that bilinguals are, at least, equal to monolinguals on IQ tests. When bilinguals have two well- developed languages (in the research literature called balanced bilinguals), bilinguals tend to show a slight superiority in IQ tests compared with monolinguals. This is the received psychological wisdom of the moment and is good news for raising bilingual children. Take, for example, a child who can operate in either language in the curriculum in the school. That child is likely to be ahead on IQ tests compared with similar (same gender, social class and age) monolinguals. Far from making people mentally confused, bilingualism is now associated with a mild degree of intellectual superiority.
D
One note of caution needs to be sounded. IQ tests probably do not measure intelligence. IQ tests measure a small sample of the broadest concept of intelligence. IQ tests are simply paper and pencil tests where only ’right and wrong ’answers are allowed. Is all intelligence summed up in such right and wrong, pencil and paper tests? Isn’t there a wider variety of intelligences that are important in everyday functioning and everyday life?
E
Many questions need answering. Do wc only define an intelligent person as somebody who obtains a high score on an IQ test? Are the only intelligent people those who belong to high IQ organisations such as MENSA? Is there social intelligence, musical intelligence, military intelligence, marketing intelligence, motoring intelligence, political intelligence? Are all, or indeed any, of these forms of intelligence measured by a simple pencil and paper IQ test which demands a single, acceptable, correct solution to each question? Defining what constitutes intelligent behaviour requires a personal value judgement as to what type of behaviour, and what kind of person is of more worth.
F
The current state of psychological wisdom about bilingual children is that, where two languages are relatively well developed, bilinguals have thinking advantages over monolinguals.Take an example. A child is asked a simple question: How many uses can you think offer a brick? Some children give two or three answers only. They can think of building walls, building a house and perhaps that is all. Another child scribbles away, pouring out ideas one after the other: blocking up a rabbit hole, breaking a window, using as a bird bath, as a plumb line, as an abstract sculpture in an art exhibition.
G
Research across different continents of the world shows that bilinguals tend to be more fluent, flexible, original and elaborate in their answers to this type of open-ended question. The person who can think of a few answers tends to be termed a convergent thinker.They converge onto a few acceptable conventional answers. People who think of lots of different uses for unusual items (e.g. a brick, tin can, cardboard box) are called divergers. Divergers like a variety of answers to a question and are imaginative and fluent in their thinking.
H
There are other dimensions in thinking where approximately ’balanced’ bilinguals may have temporary and occasionally permanent advantages over monolinguals: increased sensitivity to communication, a slightly speedier movement through the stages of cognitive development, and being less fixed on the sounds of words and more centred on the meaning of words. Such ability to move away from the sound of words and fix on the meaning of words tends to be a (temporary) advantage for bilinguals around the ages four to six This advantage may mean an initial head start in learning to read and learning to think about language.
1 bilingualism: the ability to speak two languages
2 monolingual: using or speaking only one language
adjective
1(of a person or society) speaking only one language.
- ‘Children who acquire more than one language early can develop thinking skills that may elude monolingual children of the same age.’
- ‘She grew up in Soviet Moscow, a supposedly monolingual society, but she remembers noticing and being fascinated by the range of accents and speech patterns she heard.’
- ‘Very few people are now monolingual Welsh speakers, though I have met one or two in rural areas in central and northern Wales.’
- ‘This is true even for monolingual adults and young children who never learned any formal arithmetic.’
- ‘Most residents are more comfortable speaking local African languages; close to half the population is monolingual in a local language.’
- ‘Unlike their minority peers, most mainstream U.S. students grow up in a homogeneous monolingual family and in a community where their mother tongue and culture are the norms.’
- ‘Easier is to put all your languages on one blog, but then you risk confusing and possibly annoying monolingual readers, or of reducing one language to minority status.’
- ‘All the monolingual students, who comprised about 50% of the students, were placed in that class, with permission from their parents.’
- ‘The monolingual reader, free from vocabulary and prior knowledge demands, was able to concentrate on the interpretation and comprehension of the text as a whole.’
- ‘Many of us complain that most college students are monolingual.’
- ‘He said it once in English, then translated it for his monolingual mate.’
- ‘The bilingual children scored twice as high on this test as the monolingual children.’
- ‘As a monolingual traveler in a foreign land carrying only a bilingual dictionary knows, a fluent traveling companion would be a much more valuable aid.’
- ‘This is very important for a nation like ours, which still has a tendency to be monolingual.’
- ‘The monolingual Spanish minority still constitute much of the elite, and Spanish is used more widely than Guaraní in urban areas.’
- ‘How did a boy belonging to monolingual Britain get interested in a foreign language?’
- ‘Participants were all monolingual Japanese speakers from predominantly middle class families and attended school in a metropolitan region west of Tokyo.’
- ‘Saying ‘Minchuan East Road Section 1’ to a monolingual taxi driver is likely to result in a blank stare, even if ‘Minchuan’ is pronounced perfectly.’
- ‘Over 90% of Paraguayans are estimated to speak Guaraní, with about 40% of the population monolingual in Guaraní.’
- ‘As a country we are in danger of becoming monolingual.’
- 1.1(of a text or conversation) written or conducted in only one language.
- ‘Both monolingual dictionaries and bilingual dictionaries intended for speakers of languages other than English usually indicate the pronunciation of words.’
- ‘Earlier monolingual dictionaries were mainly concerned with ‘hard’ words: the bookish, Latinate, and technical vocabulary of Renaissance English.’
- ‘The market for spellcheckers and monolingual dictionaries would be greatly reduced.’
- ‘The bulk of the research has been centered on the benefits of bilingual education vis-a-vis monolingual education.’
- ‘This section examines how recent and traditional models guide reading comprehension instruction in monolingual and in bilingual contexts.’
- ‘Students in the monolingual program receive handwriting books while my students get copies of the page to be done.’
- ‘The comparison group was composed of 118 English-dominant Mexican American students who had participated in a monolingual English curriculum in Grades 1-3.’
- ‘That feeling of isolation was exacerbated by geography and by the fact that I was a learner-turned-teacher who wasn't completely fluent and couldn't take part in monolingual Welsh discussions.’
- ‘Group 3 read the short story with the tested vocabulary and used the monolingual English dictionary while taking the same multiple-choice test.’
- ‘Indeed, a major focus of the act is to assist to acquire a second language and eventually be mainstreamed into a monolingual program.’
- ‘In an effort to prop up the use of Irish, the government in the region in which Irish is still in common use has replaced the previously bilingual road signs with monolingual signs.’
- ‘This supports various other studies showing that children in bilingual education tend to acquire higher levels of both languages than children experiencing monolingual education.’
noun
Monolingual 1.3 9 Meters
A person who speaks only one language.
‘In all multilingual communities speakers switch among languages or varieties as monolinguals switch among styles.’- ‘On the one hand, the country was encouraging the study of foreign languages for English monolinguals, at great cost and with great inefficiency.’
- ‘Such a mindset sees everything in terms of monolingualism as the norm, even though there are more bilinguals and multilinguals in the world than monolinguals.’
- ‘‘When speaking to bilinguals and monolinguals in Council sessions, the speaker has a far better chance of accomplishing his objectives if he speaks first in Navajo’.’
- ‘Furthermore, bilinguals may develop a more analytic orientation toward language than do monolinguals as a means of overcoming interference between languages.’
- ‘Current practices for assessment of language in bilinguals frequently involve the use of tests that are designed for and normed on monolinguals.’
- ‘By the mid-19c, few Irish monolinguals were left and bilingualism had become a way-station on the road to English alone.’
- ‘Thus, lower performance of bilingual children on tests normed on monolinguals could imply a distribution of knowledge across the two languages rather than a general linguistic deficiency.’
- ‘They particularly shined in their average rate of memorization, which was 56.9 percent higher than monolinguals.’
- ‘Developmentally speaking, bilinguals are unique listener-speakers and not simply byproducts of two or more monolinguals.’
- ‘Furthermore, the student translator is burdened with an extra workload which is rarely delegated to students who are English monolinguals.’
- ‘All the teachers participating in this study were English monolinguals, and English was the medium of instruction.’
- ‘They also entered high-skill occupations at twice the rate of English monolinguals.’
- ‘In fact, it has been argued that a monolingual bias exists in bilingual research, using monolinguals as a yardstick to assess bilinguals' cognitive abilities.’
- ‘The bilingual subjects performed more slowly than the monolinguals, and for addition and subtraction this difference increased with the number of operations.’
- ‘A number of studies have been carried out to determine how the academic achievement of bilinguals compares with that of monolinguals.’
- ‘Research comparing bilinguals to monolinguals necessarily uses between-subjects designs.’
- ‘Despite his own proficient bilingualism, Sr. Verdugo represented himself to children as a Spanish monolingual.’
- ‘This analogy suggests that comparing the language proficiency of a monolingual with a bilingual's dual language or multilingual proficiency is similarly unjust.’
- ‘Yet I find that it's not the bilingual who criticise people like me but the Mandarin monolingual.’
Monolingual 1.3 9 Equals
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