The Cognate and False Cognate Knowledge of Emergent Bi-Literate Latino Preschoolers
Ashley Simpson Baird, Natalia Palacios, & Amanda Kibler
University of Virginia
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Abstract
To understand emergent bi-literate, second-generation preschoolers cognate knowledge this
study examined children’s (N = 80; M = 4 years, 7 months, SD = .86 years) cognate and false
cognate item scores and vocabulary outcomes on four early language assessments in English and
Spanish. Findings revealed that children who are just beginning to acquire literacy may also
posses a “bilingual advantage” when identifying cognate items like their older peers (e.g. August
et al., 2005; Carlo et al., 2004). However, in some cases, the relationships between cognate items
and vocabulary outcomes were contradictory to the researchers’ expectations thus reflecting the
complexity of the children’s emergent bilingualism.
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The Cognate and False Cognate Knowledge of Emergent Bi-Literate Latino Preschoolers
Introduction
Cognates, or words that are semantically, phonologically, and/or orthographically similar
between two languages, have been estimated to comprise between a third to as much as a half of
the average, educated person’s vocabulary (August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow, 2005). For
bilinguals—particularly speakers of languages that share etymological roots such as English and
Spanish—an understanding of cognates can prove beneficial. For instance, native Spanish
speakers possess a unique linguistic potential because many everyday words in Spanish are
considered academic words in English (e.g. acuerdo and accord; Bravo, Hiebert, & Person,
2005; Dressler, Carlo, Snow, August, & White, 2011). Moreover, an understanding of cognates
has been shown to facilitate word recognition (Hoshino & Kroll, 2007) as well as aural and
written comprehension (e.g. August et al., 2005; Carlo et al., 2004; Dressler et al., 2011;
Jiménez, Garcia, & Person, 1996) for English-Spanish bilinguals.
Yet the bulk of research on cognate transfer has been conducted with children and adults
who have already acquired print literacy and therefore are likely have developed knowledge
about the orthography of both their first and second languages as well as have more extensive
vocabularies—both of which aid in their comprehension of cognates. There are very few studies
that examine whether bilingual preschool age children—who are still building emergent literacy
skills—possess an implicit understanding of the phonological and semantic overlaps that exist
between certain words across languages. While it has been noted that literate bilingual children
use sound similarities to identify cognates (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Dressler et al., 2011), it is
not fully understood if younger, emergent literate children also possess this understanding. Yet,
the use of cognates in instruction is a frequently cited strategy for leveraging the linguistic
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resources of bilingual students (e.g. Echevarría, Vogt, & Short, 2013). Considering the rapidly
expanding population of preschool age children who grow up in homes where a language other
than, or in addition to, English is spoken (Hernandez, Takanishi, & Marotz, 2009; Russakoff,
2011) a more nuanced of children’s cognate knowledge will prove beneficial in their transition to
K-12 schooling. This paper details a study of the relationship between pre-school age Latino
children’s cognate and false cognate knowledge and their vocabulary outcomes in order to
understand whether or not young, emergent bi-literate children possess a cognate advantage in
orally understanding and producing cognates in English and Spanish.
Cognate Research: A “Bilingual Advantage”
Substantial research documents that bilingual children—both those that have received
formal instruction and those that have not—use cognate strategies to identify and understand
words in English that are cognates in their first language. In other words, these children have
access to a bilingual advantage or cognate facilitation effect that their monolingual peers do not
possess. For instance, Jimenez, Garcia, and Pearson (1996) found that middle school aged,
Latino bilingual students who were successful readers regularly used their Spanish language
abilities to understand words in English. While this was in the absence of explicit instruction on
the presence of cognates, research on teaching children about cognates has also proven
successful. In one study, 5th-grade Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) who had
been taught to look for Spanish cognates in English texts were able to apply this strategy when
inferring the meaning of an untaught cognate word more readily than a control group (Dressler,
2000). Yet the children were not always consistent in their application of this strategy, rather
they applied it more frequently to words that were phonologically similar across languages
(Dressler, 2000). Likewise, in an English academic vocabulary intervention study focused on
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increasing children’s word inference skills—which included looking for English cognates of
Spanish words—Carlo and colleagues (2004) found that 5th graders in the intervention group
showed greater vocabulary growth than their peers in the control group. Similarly, in an another
study of the relationship between first and second language reading skills—cognate transfer
among them—August and colleagues (2006) found that English-Spanish bilingual 4th graders,
receiving strategy instruction in Spanish, scored better on cognate items in English than their
English speaking and bilingual peers—who were both instructed in English—on a researcherdeveloped measure of cognate awareness. The authors interpret this finding as evidence of the
children’s ability to readily access their knowledge of vocabulary in Spanish to identify cognate
pairs in English, yet they stress that first language literacy was necessary in order to take
advantage of the cognate strategy (August et al., 2006).
While Dressler’s (2000) findings hint at the potential for emergent literate children to rely
on words’ shared phonology to recognize cognates, very few studies have confirmed this
hypothesis, rather research has focused more on bilinguals who utilize the morphological and/or
orthographic similarities between words. However, one study of bilingual speakers of languages
that do not share orthography—in this case, English and Japanese—showed that children still use
languages’ shared phonology to accurately identify cognates in English (Hoshino & Kroll, 2007).
This bilingual advantage to recognize cognates can prove useful, especially for native
Spanish speakers, since many high-frequency words in Spanish are considered academic words
in English (Dressler et al., 2011; Lubliner & Heibert, 2011). For instance, an analysis of
vocabulary words in three elementary school science topics (terrarium investigations, shoreline
sciences, and designing mixtures) revealed that not only were 76% of the words English-Spanish
cognates, but half of those cognates were high-frequency words in Spanish whereas only 13% of
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the corpus were high-frequency words in English (Bravo, Hiebert, & Pearson, 2005). The
authors of this study highlight the potential for English-Spanish bilingual children in learning
science vocabulary and note that teachers should capitalize on this potential by explicitly
drawing their students’ attention to these overlaps. Use of this instructional strategy has proven
effective in increasing children’s growth in word knowledge, vocabulary, and reading
comprehension (Carlo et al., 2004; Dressler et al., 2011). These facilitating effects have also
been documented for school age children who are native English speakers in a Spanish
immersion program (Cunningham & Graham, 2000).
Most of the research on cognates has been conducted with elementary school age
children who have some literacy in one or both languages. While there is evidence that the
ability to accurately identify cognates develops with age and is facilitated by the acquisition of
more vocabulary and more developed literacy (August et al., 2005; Hancin-Bhatt & Nagy, 1994),
existing research begs the question of when children begin to leverage a potential bilingual
advantage. Since younger bilinguals are not able to rely upon their knowledge of words’ shared
orthography in recognizing cognates, they instead rely on cognate pairs’ overlapping phonology.
One study comparing bilingual (English-Spanish) and monolingual (English) preschoolers
revealed no differences in the identification of cognates and non-cognates in a receptive
language task (picture identification). However, on a productive language task (picture naming),
bilingual children demonstrated a higher accuracy for phonologically similar cognates than noncognates whereas their monolingual peers showed no differences (Leacox, 2011). Another study
of native Spanish-speaking bilingual children enrolled in a dual language Kindergarten showed
that students were able to infer the meaning of English cognate words and orally produce a
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definition for target words when they had been explicitly taught their Spanish equivalents
(Mulkern Ware, 2011).
The above research on bilingual children’s cognate knowledge reveals three substantial
gaps, all of which the present study strives to address. First, while there is evidence to suggest
that emergent literate children might rely on phonology—in the absence of cognate instruction or
more established literacy skills—to recognize cognate pairs, there is limited empirical evidence
to back up this assertion. Second, there is no research on bilingual children’s false cognate
knowledge, a more complex and cognitively demanding measure of bilingualism. Lastly, the
above research is unidirectional, in other words it considers cognate transfer from Spanish (or
another non-English language) to English. The present study conceptualizes language more
broadly to recognize that bi- and multilingual speakers are constantly moving between and
across languages in communication.
Common Underlying Proficiency and Translanguaging Practices
This study is informed by two theoretical frameworks that explicate how bilinguals
leverage their linguistic repertoires. The common underlying proficiency hypothesis (CUP;
Cummins, 1978, 1981, 1991, & 2000) explains how an individual accesses, processes, and stores
linguistic information across languages. Translanguaging (Gracia & Wei, 2014) conceptualizes a
bilingual speaker as being informed by the social practices that contribute to his or her linguistic
knowledge base. The CUP posits that a bilingual speaker possesses foundational knowledge
about language that is transferable across all of the languages that he or she speaks (Cummins
1978, 1981, 1991, & 2000). Specifically, Cummins (1991) notes that there are at least five types
of cross-linguistic transfer that occur. These are (1) conceptual knowledge, (2) metacognitive and
metalinguistic strategies, (3) pragmatics, (4) cross-linguistic elements, and (5) phonological
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awareness. In relation to cognates, a bilingual speaker can leverage these transfer skills to
decipher new and related words across languages.
Like CUP, translanguaging recognizes that knowledge of any language is not an
autonomous skill (Gracia, 2009). Yet, translanguaging goes beyond CUP to recognize that
bilingual children appropriate language through their interactions with other bi- and monolingual
speakers. Unlike CUP, translanguaging does not refer to a synthesis of knowledge across
languages, but rather identifies new language practices that “make visible the complexity of
language exchanges” (Garcia & Wei, 2014, p. 21). As participant researchers in the bilingual
communities studied, the researchers regularly observe children’s translanguaging practices
through their mixing of languages, code switching, and hybridizing of English and Spanish.
While the present study examines only cognate and false cognate knowledge, the researchers
have documented that the language abilities of the children from this sample have been shaped
through the bilingual interactions in their homes and communities (reference withheld).
Present Study
This study analyzes the cognate and false cognate knowledge of native Spanish-speaking
preschoolers living in the United States through answering the following questions:
1. Does emergent literate dual language learners’ cognate and false cognate understanding
vary by language (English versus Spanish) and/or vocabulary type (receptive language
versus productive language)?
2. Does cognate knowledge relate to receptive and/or productive language vocabulary
outcomes in English or Spanish?
3. Does false cognate knowledge relate to receptive and/or productive language vocabulary
outcomes in English or Spanish?
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Through answering these questions, this study extends the extant literature on bilinguals’ cognate
knowledge in that it (1) focuses on preschoolers—a growing population that has not been readily
examined in terms of cognate knowledge, (2) examines potential bidirectional influence between
English and Spanish, and (3) analyses children’s cognate as well as false cognate knowledge, the
latter being a construct that is not documented in cognate research. Moreover, this study has
several methodological strengths; first, the analyses include the use of nuanced controls that
allow for the examination of each control variable’s influence upon the variable of interest.
Second, this study is innovative for the way that it draws from several widely used vocabulary
assessments as proxies for measuring bilingual children’s cognate and false cognate knowledge.
Method
Sample
The data for this study come from a multi-phase, mixed methods study of 80 Latino
families living in a new immigrant community in a South-Atlantic state. This community is
located in a suburban area outside a small city, surrounded by rural, agricultural areas. Due to the
small size of this community, the sample was one of convenience. The researchers recruited
families through local preschool programs, social services agencies, and churches. On average,
the families in this study had been in the U.S. for less than 9 years (M = 8.5 years, SD = 2.8,
range = 1-14). At the time of data collection, no public bilingual educational services were
offered, thus all children attended or will attend preschools where instruction is monolingual
(English). Of the 80 children in the study, 28.4% attended pre-school. Given the monolingual
orientation of education in and around this city, it is safe to assume that these children are not
receiving substantial instruction that might help them to leverage a bilingual advantage as it
relates to cognate knowledge.
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However, these children (M = 4 years, 7 months, SD = .86 years), even those that have
not yet entered school, are regularly exposed to both English and Spanish, but have a tendency
towards speaking more Spanish than English in the homes. In the first phase of this study,
families reported on their home language practices. Analyses of these data paired with in-home
observations of children interacting with family members revealed that they are growing up in
multilingual homes. For example, a child may use Spanish to speak to their mother, English to
speak to an older brother, or a mix of the two when speaking to a younger sister. In this way, the
term “emergent” refers to both the children’s emergent literacy skills as well as their emergent
language abilities in both languages. On average, the children in this sample preformed below
norms for their age-level in both the English and Spanish assessments used in the study (see
Table 1).
This study uses data from language assessments conducted with the preschool age
children during the second of a three-phase study examining home language and literacy
practices. Bilingual research assistants administered the language assessments orally in the
children’s homes during 2012 and 2013.
Measures and Procedures
The assessments include measures in both Spanish and English: Test de Vocabulario de
Imagenes Peabody (TVIP; Dunn, Padilla, Lugo, & Dunn 1986), Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test-4 (PPVT; Dunn & Dunn, 2007), and the picture vocabulary sub-tests of the WoodcockMuñoz Language Survey-Revised in English (W-ME; Woodcock, Muñoz-Sandoval, Ruef, &
Alvarado, 2005a) and Spanish (W-MS; Woodcock, Muñoz-Sandoval, Ruef, & Alvarado, 2005b).
As detailed in Table 2, the TVIP and PPVT examined children’s receptive language in
Spanish and English, respectively. The picture vocabulary sub-test of the W-ME and W-MS
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begin with receptive language questions, but switched to productive language tasks after the first
or second question. For the purposes of this study, the PPVT and TVIP are considered measures
of receptive language, whereas the W-ME and W-MS are measures of productive language.
Research assistants administered all assessments according to their recommended protocols and
in the language being assessed (PPVT and W-ME in English, TVIP and W-MS in Spanish). Each
test began with four practice questions to assure that children understood the procedures. The
PPVT and TVIP required that the research assistants read a word aloud while the child points to
one of four pictures to indicate which picture goes with the stated word. In the WM-E and WM-S
the researcher shows the child a picture and reads a scripted prompt such as, “What is this?” or
“What is this called?”
After the assessments were administered, individual items on the assessments were
identified as cognates or false cognates using the Cross-linguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology
(COSP; Kohnert, Windsor, & Miller, 2004; Kelley & Kohnert, 2012). The COSP is a tool used
to assess a cognate or false cognate pair’s phonological overlap based upon the similarity of the
two words’ initial sounds, syllables, consonants, and vowel sounds. For example, using the
COSP, the pair circle-circulo is considered a phonological cognate where as airplane-avión is
not. The circle-circulo pair would receive a score of 8 because the two words share an initial
sound (3 points, out of 3), differ in number of syllables by one (1 point, out of 2), have a
consonant overlap that is 70% or greater (3 points, out of 3), and have a vowel overlap that is
between 50-80% (1 point, out of 2). Words with a COSP score of six or higher (out of ten) are
considered to be phonological cognates or false cognates. Pairs that score 10 points are often
orthographically the same word with only a slight difference in pronunciation, for example
muffin-muffin and tornado-tornado would both receive 10 points on the COSP. In the instance
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that a tested word had more than one equivalent in the other language (e.g. bola, pelota, or balón
for ball) the word that was most phonologically similar—in other words, the word that would
score highest in COSP analyses—was considered the tested word’s pair (e.g. balón). Table 3
contains examples of cognate and false cognate pairs from the administered assessments.
Since this sample was composed of emergent bi-literate children, the COSP’s emphasis
on words’ shared phonology—rather than orthography—proved an adequate fit for identifying
words that children might recognize because they sound similar to words that they are familiar
with in Spanish or English. The researchers calculated individual cognate and false cognate
scores for each of the four assessments. These scores were a percentage of the number of cognate
(or false cognate) items that a child answered correctly out of the number of cognate (or false
cognate) items contained within the range of questions upon which each child was assessed.
As outlined in further detail below, three variables were introduced into the analyses to
control for other factors potentially influencing the children’s language exposure and
development. The control variables included children’s gender, age, and number of older
siblings. The third being a variable shown to influence English language exposure and
development (e.g. Pérez-Granados, 2003; Baker, 2007; reference withheld). Both the children’s
age and number of older siblings were continuous variables. Income was not used as a control
due to a lack of variability among sampled families.
Data Analyses
The researchers conducted t-tests between the children’s cognate and false cognate scores
in order to determine statistical significance in the differences between children’s cognate
knowledge. Additionally, to understand if emergent dual language learners’ cognate knowledge
was associated with receptive and/or productive language outcomes, the researchers analyzed
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each cognate score’s relationship with each of the other vocabulary outcome scores save for the
outcome score from which the variable of interest was derived. For example, TVIP cognate
knowledge was not used to predict TVIP vocabulary knowledge, as the two variables are not
independent. The researchers first used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to model the
association between the independent variable, children’s cognate knowledge, and their
vocabulary score (vocabulary score on the PPVT, TVIP, W-ME, or W-MS). In subsequent
models, the researchers included the statistical control variables (i.e., age, gender, and number of
older siblings) in order to understand the relationship that each of these controls had on the
association between cognate score and children’s vocabulary.
In order to understand if emergent dual language learners’ false cognate knowledge was
associated with receptive and/or productive language outcomes, the researchers conducted
similar analyses examining the relationship between children’s false cognate knowledge and
their scores on the vocabulary assessments. For example, the researchers examined the
relationship between the children’s TVIP false cognate scores and their vocabulary outcomes on
the PPVT, W-ME, and the W-MS, but not the TVIP.
Missing data. Twenty-two percent of children were missing Woodcock-Muñoz picture
vocabulary and letter-word identification scores in English and Spanish, assessed in phase 2 of
the study, due to child attrition. Therefore the researchers used multiple imputation to address the
missing data. Multiple imputation provides several benefits over single imputation techniques,
such as mean imputation of missing data, as it provides better estimates of standard errors
(Allison, 2000, 2001; Little & Rubin, 1989). However, for multiple imputation to be a useful tool
for missing data, one must verify that data are missing at random (MAR), conditional on the
additional covariates. Inspection of the data used for this analysis yields no clear pattern of
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missingness (i.e., missingness on vocabulary was not positively related to other variables in the
sample), thus satisfying the criteria for analysis. Multiple imputation with chained equations,
particularly the “ice” command in Stata (v. 12 for Mac), was used to handle missing data (ICE;
Royston, 2005). The resulting five imputed datasets were analyzed using the models described
above.
Results
Cognate and False Cognate Knowledge
In order to understand emergent biliterate preschoolers’ cognate knowledge, children’s
cognate and false cognate scores were compared by language and task type (e.g., receptive and
expressive vocabulary) (Table 4).
Cognate knowledge.
In comparing children’s cognate knowledge scores, t-tests indicated that in crosslanguage, within-task comparisons children more often identified cognates in English than in
Spanish on receptive language tasks (t(79) = 2.51, p < .01), but showed no difference in
identifying cognates in English and Spanish on productive language tasks. In within-language,
cross-task comparisons children more often identified cognates on English receptive language
tasks than on English productive language tasks (t(79) = 3.83, p < .001), but showed no
difference in the frequency with which they identified cognates on Spanish receptive and
productive language tasks.
False cognate knowledge.
In comparing children’s false cognate knowledge scores, t-tests indicate that in crosslanguage, within-task comparisons children more often identified false cognates in Spanish than
English on receptive language tasks (t(79) = 2.98, p < .05), but children showed no difference in
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the frequency with which they identified false cognates on productive language tasks in either
language. In within-language, cross-task comparisons children showed no difference in the
frequency with which they identified false cognates on either receptive or productive language
tasks in both English and Spanish.
Cognate versus false cognate knowledge.
In comparing children’s cognate and false cognate knowledge scores, there were no
differences in the frequency with which children identified receptive language cognate and false
cognate items in neither English nor Spanish. Additionally, there was no difference in the
frequency with which children identified cognate and false cognate items on Spanish productive
language tasks. However, children more often identified false cognates than cognates on English
productive language tasks (t(79) = 4.67, p < .001).
Cognates and Vocabulary Outcomes
In order to understand if emergent dual language learners’ cognate knowledge was
associated with receptive and/or productive language outcomes, the researchers analyzed each
cognate score’s relationship with each of the other vocabulary outcome scores. Table 5 reports
the findings for each relationship both with and without statistical controls (age, gender, and
older siblings). The only significant relationship in these analyses was found between the TVIP
cognate score and vocabulary outcomes on the W-MS (B = 80.21, SE = 36.49, p < .05), and only
after including the control variables, particularly controlling for older siblings.
False Cognates and Vocabulary Outcomes
In order to understand if emergent dual language learners’ false cognate knowledge was
associated with receptive and/or productive language outcomes, the researchers analyzed each
false cognate score’s relationship with each of the other vocabulary outcome scores. Table 6
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reports the findings of each model, both with and without statistical controls. Results indicated
that four relationships were significant. These relationships existed both between and across
languages. First, examining the within language relationships, the W-ME false cognate score was
a significant predictor of vocabulary outcomes on the PPVT (B = 28.59, SE = 9.38, p < .05). The
predictor variable was significant in the initial model and continued to be significant when
controlling for both the children’s gender and age. Likewise, in Spanish, the TVIP false cognate
score was a significant predictor of vocabulary scores on the W-MS picture vocabulary test (B =
74.20, SE = 28.74, p < .05). Again the predictor variable was significant in the initial model and
continued to be significant when controlling for the children’s gender and their number of older
siblings.
Second, in examining the cross-language relationships, the W-MS false cognate score
was a significant negative predictor of vocabulary outcomes on the PPVT (B = -33.69, SD =
15.86, p < .05). The predictor variable was significant only when controlling for the children’s
age. It is also important to note that the coefficient of the predictor variable is negative in every
model. Lastly, the PPVT false cognate score was a significant predictor of vocabulary scores on
the TVIP (B = 10.63, SD = 5.16, p < .05). Again, the predictor variable was significant only once
controlling for the children’s age.
Conclusions
Q1: Does emergent literate dual language learners’ cognate and false cognate
understanding vary by language (English versus Spanish) and/or vocabulary type
(receptive language versus productive language)?
In summary, this study reveals that emergent bi-literate preschoolers’ cognate knowledge
follows somewhat predictable patterns in that their Spanish receptive cognate knowledge was
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about the same as their Spanish productive cognate knowledge—perhaps indicating a more
extensive vocabulary in Spanish more than transfer from English to Spanish. As well, children’s
English receptive cognate knowledge exceeded their English productive cognate knowledge
indicating a normal trend in language development where receptive language exceeds productive
language (Gibson, Oller, Jarmulowicz, & Ethington, 2012). Additionally, the children’s English
receptive cognate knowledge exceeds their Spanish receptive cognate knowledge indicating that
children may be transferring Spanish word knowledge to English more readily than from English
to Spanish. Yet, somewhat surprising is that their English and Spanish productive cognate
knowledge is about the same.
Predictable patterns also emerged in the children’s false cognate knowledge in that their
Spanish receptive knowledge was about the same as their productive knowledge, their English
receptive knowledge was about the same as their English productive knowledge, and their
Spanish receptive knowledge exceeded their English receptive knowledge. Yet surprisingly,
Spanish productive knowledge was about the same as English productive knowledge—a finding
that the researchers did not expect given the children’s higher proficiency in and greater
exposure to Spanish.
Q2: Does cognate knowledge relate to receptive and/or productive language vocabulary
outcomes in English or Spanish?
In examining the relationships between children’s cognate knowledge and their
vocabulary outcomes, this study found that cognate scores on receptive language tasks in
Spanish were significant predictors of children’s productive language outcomes in Spanish.
Again this association reflects a natural developmental progression where comprehension of
language exceeds the ability to produce it (Gibson et al., 2012).
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Q3: Does false cognate knowledge relate to receptive and/or productive language
vocabulary outcomes in English or Spanish?
While there was only one significant relationship between cognate scores and vocabulary
outcomes, children’s false cognate scores turned out to more readily predict their vocabulary
outcomes. Table 7 contains a summary of the findings for false cognate knowledge as predictors
of vocabulary outcomes. When examining the relationships within languages, this study revealed
that in Spanish—the language most commonly spoken in the children’s homes—receptive false
cognate knowledge was a significant predictor of productive language vocabulary outcomes.
Similar to our finding for cognate knowledge, this result follows a typical course of language
development (Gibson et al., 2012). However, given the above findings of the children’s cognate
and false cognate knowledge across receptive and productive language tasks, one might expect
the children’s productive false cognate knowledge in Spanish to predict their Spanish receptive
language vocabulary outcomes, yet this relationship was not found to be significant.
However, examining the within language relationships in English—the language most
commonly spoken outside of the children’s homes—productive false cognate knowledge predicts
receptive vocabulary outcomes. Given this finding, the researchers expected that the children’s
English false cognate knowledge on receptive language tasks would predict their English
productive language vocabulary outcomes, yet this relationship was not found to be significant.
In examining the children’s cross-language relationships between false cognate
knowledge and vocabulary outcomes, this study’s findings revealed first that English false
cognate knowledge on receptive language tasks was a significant predictor of Spanish receptive
language vocabulary outcomes. These findings also revealed that children’s Spanish false
cognate knowledge on productive language tasks was a significant negative predictor of English
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receptive language vocabulary outcomes. These two findings are evidence to suggest that
children might be using their more dominant language (Spanish) to effectively to understand
their less dominant language (English), but not vice versa.
Discussion
Taken collectively, the above findings reveal interesting patterns in emergent bilingual
children’s language development. These analyses show that emergent literate bilingual children
are able to identify cognates and false cognates in both English and Spanish and that this
knowledge is associated with both within- and cross- language vocabulary outcomes. Moreover,
these findings are evidence in support of the notion that bilingual children who are in the process
of acquiring print literacy may also possess a bilingual advantage in recognizing and producing
cognate words in both languages like their older, literate peers (e.g. August et al., 2005; Dressler
et al., 2011; Carlo et al., 2004; Jiménez et al., 1996).
Yet, results indicate that children’s cognate and false knowledge was somewhat
inconsistent and perhaps not what one might anticipate. First, it is interesting that the children’s
cognate knowledge was not as predictive of their vocabulary outcomes as was their false cognate
knowledge. This is striking because of the differential cognitive demands that cognates and false
cognates make upon a language user, with the recall of cognates being a less cognitively
demanding task than that of false cognates. Perhaps the reason that false cognate knowledge was
found to be more predictive of vocabulary outcomes is because of the authentic feedback that
children receive from using false cognates in interactions. For instance, if a child says, “I want to
go in the bark,” when he means that he wants to go in a boat (barco being a false cognate for
boat), it might result in correction of the error and therefore an opportunity for authentic
learning. The same could not be said for the children’s use of cognates because they would not
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be considered errors and therefore would not be reinforced nor corrected.
Moreover, the findings of this study are evidence of the variable nature of the children’s
developing bilingual language proficiency, whose linguistic knowledge—when measured at any
single time point—is reflective of a complex and continuously adapting system. Complexity
theory conceptualizes these shifts in language and a language learner’s developing repertories in
the following way:
language as a complex adaptive system, which emerges bottom-up from interactions of
multiple agents in speech communities, rather than a static system composed of top-down
grammatical rules or principles. The system is adaptive because it changes to fit new
circumstances, which are also themselves continually changing. (Larsen-Freeman, 2011,
p. 49)
From the standpoint of complexity theory, one would not expect emergent bilingual children to
progress through lockstep, measureable stages of language acquisition where the entirety of
linguistic knowledge can be captured. Rather, these children’s knowledge is both unique to each
individual and also constantly changing. As mentioned above, the children in this study operate
in environments that are marked by translingual interactions, or as Garcia (2009) describes, “the
fluid language practices of bilinguals” (p. 1) that do not give up the social construction of
language and bilingualism under which speakers operate. In working with this population, the
researchers have noticed that the children’s fluidity—between and across languages—is a
characteristic trait of the families in the study. In this way, it is not surprising that children’s
bilingual knowledge may also be fluid. Moreover, these children exist in a community whose
language practices are continually shifting and expanding. For instance, in the past year one of
the local elementary schools that many children in this sample will attend implemented a
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21
bilingual education program in their Kindergarten classes with the intention of expanding it to
upper grades in the coming years. While this study examines one time point of language
assessments, it is safe to assume that as these children age and enter school, the entirety of their
linguistic knowledge will grow and therefore the relationships between their cognate knowledge
and vocabulary outcomes will continue to shift.
Limitations
A limitation of this study is that the vocabulary assessments utilized were not designed to
specifically measure cognate knowledge. However, to the knowledge of the researchers, a valid,
norm-referenced measure of emergent literate children’s cognate knowledge does not yet exist,
therefore a proxy was required. Additionally, the small size of this new immigrant community
limited the number of children in the sample.
Practical Implications
Using cognates to instruct school-age English language learners is often recommended as
a strategy for teachers, even those who are not fluent speakers of their students’ first languages.
The findings of this study demonstrate that preschool age children may already be applying
cognate strategies in the absence of instruction. Comparing this finding against evidence in
support of the use of cognate strategy instruction for pre-school age children (Leacox, 2011;
Mulkern Ware, 2011), suggests that children may already have an awareness of cognates prior to
instruction. Additionally, children’s false cognate knowledge may also be an untapped resource
for facilitating vocabulary development as these findings have shown that bilingual children are
not confused by words that sound the same in in two languages.
Moreover, this study reveals that there can be potential cross-linguistic benefits for
children in that both cognate and false cognate instruction can support vocabulary development
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22
across languages. To support young children’s language development, teachers and caregivers
should make children aware of the similarities as well as the distinctions between words in each
of the languages that children speak.
Future Research
The work of understanding emergent bilingual children’s linguistic knowledge is far from
complete. This study brings up more questions about how children growing up in bi- and
multilingual communities acquire multiple languages and what relationships exist within the
entirety of their linguistic repertoires. Yet the need for this knowledge has never been more
pressing. The growing the population of children in American public schools who speak home
languages in addition to English demands an understanding of how to instruct and support biand multilingual learners. Future research with this population should continue to document
relationships between and across languages. More specifically, future cognate research with this
population should strive to explain relationships between children’s false cognate knowledge and
their vocabulary outcomes and the processes that facilitate these relationships. While the
researchers were able to document these trends and speculate about their meanings, it would be
helpful for future studies to address why they exist and how they might be leveraged in
instruction. Future research should examine whether or not these findings hold for children
growing up in speech communities where other languages, besides Spanish, are spoken. Finally,
future research should examine children’s cognate and false cognate knowledge as well as the
relationship that each of these has to vocabulary development over time.
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23
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Table 1
Descriptive sample characteristics
Percent
Mean (SD)
Range
Age Equivalence
Score
Dependent variables:
PPVT vocabulary scores
TVIP vocabulary scores
W-ME vocabulary scores
44.12 (26.90)
24.90 (16.11)
415.40 (26.80)
3 years, 2 months
4 years, 3 months
2 years, 6 months
W-MS vocabulary scores
435.241 (32.67)
0-118.76
0-68.29
356.98481.33
341.50502.47
Control variables:
FC age (months)
Female
Number of older siblings
55.89 (10.30)
27.51-77.49
1.27 (1.05)
0-4
58%
2 years, 11 months
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Table 2
Measures of receptive and productive language in English and Spanish
English
Spanish
Receptive language measure
Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test de vocabulario de
Test-4 (PPVT)
imágenes Peabody (TVIP)
Productive language measure
Woodcock-Muñoz Language
Survey-Revised, Picture
Vocabulary (W-ME)
Woodcock-Muñoz Language
Survey-Revised, Picture
Vocabulary (W-MS)
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Table 3
Examples of cognate and false cognate pairs from COSP analyses.
Cognate pairs
False cognate pairs
lamp
lámpara
bark
barco
penguin
pingüino
code
codo
tunnel
túnel
goat
gota
diamond
diamante
root
ruta
calendar
calendario
red
red
30
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Table 4
Descriptive data on cognate and false cognate scores
Language domain
Cognate scores
English Receptive
PPVTa
M
SD
Range
65%
22%
0-100%
English Productive
Spanish Receptive
W-MEb
TVIPc
50%
57%
34%
17%
0-100%
0-93%
Spanish Productive
56%
19%
0-100%
English Receptive
English Productive
W-MSd
False cognate scores
PPVTe
W-MEf
68%
64%
36%
36%
0-100%
0-100%
Spanish Receptive
TVIPg
57%
22%
0-100%
Spanish Productive
*p < .05, **p < .001
W-MSh
58%
20%
0-95%
T-score comparisons
a > b, t(79) = 3.83**
a > c, t(79) = 2.51*
a > e, t(79) = .68
b > d, t(79) = 2.21
c > d, t(79) = .28
c > g, t(79) = .64
d > h, t(79) = .74
e > f, t(79) = .61
f > b, t(79) = 4.67**
f > h, t(79) = 1.18
g > e, t(79) = 2.98*
g > h, t(79) = .61
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Table 5
Cognate scores predicting vocabulary outcomes on the PPVT, TVIP, W-ME, & W-MS.
Outcome:
PPVT
TVIP
W-M English
W-M Spanish
PPVT cognate
-4.88 (8.48)
-14.94 (21.21)
7.97 (19.48)
PPVT cognate +
controls
TVIP cognate
--
3.43 (8.34)
-19.25 (20.39)
4.34 (18.63)
21.03 (24.03)
--
-24.48 (20.02)
81.20 (34.65)
TVIP cognate +
controls
W-ME cognate
3.90 (21.26)
--
-37.42 (20.84)
80.21 (36.49)*
11.09 (11.10)
-2.44 (7.21)
--
-6.93 (16.06)
W-ME cognate +
controls
W-MS cognate
11.81 (9.14)
-4.10 (6.51)
--
-9.84 (14.90)
11.46 (20.88)
16.98 (11.12)
-14.71 (18.98)
--
-12.97 (19.57)
--
W-MS cognate + 13.62 (18.18)
19.92 (11.48)
controls
*p < .05
Note. Controls = age, gender, number of older siblings
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Table 6
False cognate scores predicting vocabulary outcomes on the PPVT, TVIP, W-ME, & W-MS.
Outcome:
PPVT
TVIP
W-M English
W-M Spanish
PPVT false
-9.84 (5.18)
-8.21 (12.62)
17.56 (15.84)
cognate
PPVT false
cognate +
controls
TVIP false
cognate
--
10.63 (5.16)*
-6.36 (13.16)
16.81 (14.84)
-.21 (17.98)
--
.45 (19.34)
72.83 (27.42)*
TVIP false
cognate +
controls
W-ME false
cognate
-16.53 (16.23)
--
-9.39 (17.24)
74.20 (28.74)*
36.10 (8.95)**
2.70 (5.53)
--
4.31 (11.73)
W-ME false
cognate +
controls
W-MS false
cognate
28.59 (9.38)*
-3.66 (6.31)
--
-4.77 (12.32)
-31.59 (19.89)
19.80 (10.98)
-9.35 (27.94)
--
-11.63 (26.27)
--
W-MS false
-33.69 (15.86)*
18.98 (9.26)
cognate +
controls
*p < .05, **p < .001
Note. Controls = age, gender, number of older siblings
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Table 7
Summary of false cognate knowledge as a predictor of vocabulary outcomes.
Receptive language
Productive language
vocabulary
vocabulary
English
Spanish
English
Spanish
False cognate
English
-+
0
0
receptive
Spanish
0
-0
+
False cognate
English
+
0
-+
productive
Spanish
0
0
-Key: + positive significant relationship; - negative significant relationship; 0 no relationship; 0 expected relationship.
34