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Operationalizing and measuring language dominance

Treffers-Daller, Jeanine

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Authors

Jeanine Treffers-Daller



Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how measures of lexical richness (Guiraud, 1954; Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Durán, 2004) can be used to operationalize and measure language dominance among bilinguals. A typology of bilinguals is proposed based on these measures of lexical richness, and the validity of the typology is then investigated in an empirical study among two groups of bilingual informants with different language dominance profiles (25 Dutch-French bilinguals from Brussels and 24 French-English bilinguals from Paris). The most important advantage of the proposed operationalization is that it allows researchers carry out precise measurements of bilingual ability in languages or language varieties for which no standardized tests exist and that these measures can be calculated on oral data that have been collected in an informal and unobtrusive way, in a naturalistic setting.© The Author(s) 2010.

Citation

Treffers-Daller, J. (2011). Operationalizing and measuring language dominance. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15(2), 147-163. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006910381186

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Jun 1, 2011
Deposit Date Apr 13, 2010
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal International Journal of Bilingualism
Print ISSN 1367-0069
Electronic ISSN 1756-6878
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 15
Issue 2
Pages 147-163
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006910381186
Keywords bilingualism, language dominance, lexical richness, measurement, lexicon, French
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/962230
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367006910381186

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