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Influences of bilingualism on metalinguistic development

Ellen Bialystok
Second Language Research 1987 3: 154
DOI: 10.1177/026765838700300205
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Influences of

bilingualism on
metalinguistic development
Ellen

Bialystok

York

University, Ontario

relationship between metalinguistic awareness and bilingualism is interpreted in terms of a framework which defines metalinguistic awareness as
consisting of two processing components: analysis of linguistic knowledge, and
control of linguistic processes. It is argued that bilingualism enhances only the
latter of these processing components, so global assessments of metalinguistic
ability by bilingual subjects are bound to lead to inconsistent results. Some
studies are reported in which these two processing components are separated.
Bilingual children are shown to be superior to monolingual children on
measures of control of linguistic processes.
The

The search for a relationship between metalinguistic development and

bilingualism has produced a variety of findings. Evidence has been
presented in support of the argument that bilingualism facilitates
metalinguistic development (as well as other language and academic

developments) (Ben-Zeev, 1977; Cummins, 1978; lanco-Worrall,

1972); that it is unrelated to metalinguistic development (Ben-Zeev,
1977; de Avila and Duncan, 1981; Rosenblum and Pinker, 1983) and
that it impedes progress in metalinguistic achievement (Macnamara,
1967; Palmer, 1972). Two possible interpretations of this lack of consistency are: (1) that the facilitating effects of bilingualism are
confined to certain types of metalinguistic problems; and (2) that the
facilitating effects of metalinguistic performance are confined to
certain types of bilingualism. An evaluation of these possible interpretations of the relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic
development requires a more precise definition for metalinguistic skill
that can be related to bilingualism in specific ways.
Consistent with current notions of intellectual functioning in which
minimally two components relating to executive processing and
declarative knowledge are identified (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, and
Campione, 1983; Sternberg and Powell, 1983), metalinguistic ability
correspondence: Ellen Bialystok, Department of Psychology, York University,
Downsview, Ontario, Canada.

Address for

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155

has been defined in terms of two underlying skill components

(Bialystok and Ryan, 1985). These skill components refer to separable
aspects of language processing which, we claim, are involved in all
aspects of language use. Different uses, however, depend on each skill
component to various extents. Metalinguistic problems are language
tasks expressly designed so that their solution depends upon relatively
high levels of one or the other of these skill components.
The two skill components are analysis of knowledge, which is the
ability to construct explicit representations of linguistic knowledge,
and control of processes, which is the ability to control linguistic
processes by intentionally selecting and applying knowledge to arrive
at a solution. The development of each is considered to be gradual and
can be characterized by values on a continuum. Moreover, the development of each is assumed to advance in response to different experiences. Bilingual children, it is argued, have an advantage only in the
second of these and should therefore demonstrate superior performance only on those metalinguistic tasks specifically designed to require
high levels of control.
Analysis of knowledge is the skill component responsible for
making explicit those representations that had previously been
implicit or intuitive. In cognitive development, Karmiloff-Smith
(1986) describes the childs development of a skill as being based on
three ordered phases of representation: implicit; explicit 1, in which
the implicit knowledge is structured but not accessible to consciousness ; and explicit 2, in which conscious access becomes possible.
During the process of language acquisition, children are constantly
analysing and structuring knowledge, moving it, in Karmiloff-Smiths
terms, through the three phases of representation. At any point in
time, different aspects of the childs linguistic knowledge will be represented in each of the three phases. The result is the appearance of a
continuum, with representations of linguistic knowledge occupying
all points. The reason for that continuum, however, is that discrete
aspects of linguistic knowledge are subjected to continual structuring
and analysis. It is the process responsible for this structuring that is
indicated by the skill component of analysis of knowledge.
The language uses encountered by children during various stages of
language acquisition require different levels of analysis of their
linguistic knowledge. To participate in conversations, children easily
produce and understand sentences for which they have no explicit
knowledge of structure (Bowerman, 1982). Explication of that
structure has been shown to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for writing coherent texts (Scardamalia and Paris, 1985) and for
the elaboration of new categories of knowledge required for learning
to read (Menyuk, 1981). Metalinguistic tasks are usually contrived so

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that the solution is achieved only if the relevant structure is known
explicitly. Some aspects of structure which emerge are knowledge of
the units of speech (words, syllables, phonemes; see Ehri, 1979),
understanding of the relationship between forms and meanings (e.g.
the sun-moon problem studied by Piaget, 1929; Scribner and Cole,
1981; Vygotsky, 1962), and awareness of syntax (e.g. grammaticality
judgement and correction problems, de Villiers & de Villiers, 1974).
Accordingly, although children appear to possess a relatively sophisticated command of linguistic concepts, their explicit knowledge of
these concepts is inadequate for solving most metalinguistic tasks.
High levels of analysis of knowledge are associated with constructs
such as conscious or explicit knowledge.
The development of control of linguistic processes reflects the
childs ability to apply operations intentionally in the solution to a
problem. Solving a conservation of liquid problem, for example,
requires that the child directs attention to both the height and width of
the beaker, in spite of the compelling perceptual impression that only
the height is relevant. In language use, attention is usually focussed on
the meanings, a strategy that is effective for ordinary conversation
(Hakes, 1980). But certain uses of language require control over that
attention so that it can be directed to specific aspects of the language.
The ability to switch back and forth between forms and meanings,
between graphemes and phonemes, between words and intentions, for
example, is a crucial part of fluent reading (Lesgold and Perfetti,
1981). Metalinguistic tasks typically require children to focus on form
and sometimes ignore or suppress meaning. Deliberately controlling
attention in this way requires control of processing. Just as children
gradually acquire this skill in other cognitive domains, so do they
acquire it in using language. The knowledge of procedures for solving
a variety of language problems and the ability to execute those
solutions through appropriate attentional focus is the function of
control of linguistic processing. High levels of control of processing
are associated with constructs such as intentionality.
It is the development of this second skill component that seems to be
most affected by bilingualism. Vygotsky (1962) suggested that
bilingual children should be more advanced than monolingual
children in solving Piagets (1929) sun-moon problem. Because
bilingual children have the experience of two linguistic systems
labelling the same conceptual system, the arbitrary connection
between forms and meanings is more readily apparent. Moreover,
these children have more experience attending to formal linguistic
features that may change even though meanings are constant, as in
deciding between languages, attending to different phonological
systems and choosing the correct label for an object. In addition, their

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representation of linguistic and conceptual information as

separate structures makes problems involving selective attention to
linguistic features less difficult for bilingual children. It is the clear
concepts of word meaning and word form and their relation that
enable the child to solve metalinguistic problems based on the separation of forms and meanings. And it is these problems for which
bilingual children are claimed to be advantaged.
The general hypothesis, then, is that bilingual children should be
more advanced in solving metalinguistic problems requiring high
levels of control of processes than are monolingual children, but
equivalent to monolingual children in solving metalinguistic problems
requiring high levels of analysis of linguistic knowledge. Comparisons
are difficult, however, because many factors conspire to make subject
groups unequal in any global comparison. Social class and language
background are known to be relevant in determining performance on
metalinguistic tasks, irrespective of differences in bilingualism (e.g.
Cummins, 1976). The more important factor, however, may be levels
and types of literacy. Our claim is that literacy is a significant factor in
the growth of analysis of linguistic knowledge (Bialystok and Ryan,
1985; Ehri, 1979). Accordingly, different experiences with literacy
may influence childrens levels of analysis of knowledge, thus intervening in a simple comparison of the way in which children with
different bilingual experiences solve metalinguistic problems (since in
spite of efforts to control for differences, metalinguistic problems are
certain to involve analysis of knowledge as well as control of
processing). Nonetheless, the assumption underlying this research has
been that attention to experimental controls and cautious interpretation of findings reveals important patterns that contribute to an
understanding of the relation between bilingualism and metalinguistic
clearer

awareness.

A variety of evidence has shown a bilingual superiority on metalinguistic problems demanding high levels of control of processes.
Vygotskys prediction, for example, that a bilingual advantage would
appear for the sun-moon problem has been demonstrated by Scribner
and Cole (1981) and lanco-Worrall (1972). Further, lanco-Worrall
(1972) found that bilingual children were more sensitive than monolingual children to semantic relations between words when the meanings competed with phonetic similarity. Finally, middle class bilingual
children were more successful in solving a metalinguistic problem in
which words needed to be substituted into a sentence creating nonsense, requiring that the child ignore the meaning (Ben-Zeev, 1977).
Working class children showed no advantage relative to their monolingual peers on the same problem.
The tasks used in these studies all depend on levels of control to a

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158
on levels of analysis. Comparisons are
the tasks are still different from each
because
difficult, however,
difficult
to
so
it
is
other,
interpret results in terms of these skill combeen to construct versions of a metaOur
has
approach
ponents.
version (task) differentially requires
so
that
each
linguistic problem
of
levels
of
analysis linguistic knowledge or control of linguisgreater
tic processes for its solution. It is no doubt the case that each task
somehow requires both skill components; the argument is simply that
the primary component can be determined. Comparisons can then be
made among the tasks both in terms of their relative difficulty for a
specific group of children and for the relative difficulty of a single
version by different groups of children.
Judgement of sentence acceptability is one problem that we have
adapted in this manner (Bialystok, 1986a). Judging grammaticality
has often been reported to be easier than correcting deviant sentences
(de Villiers and de Villiers, 1972; Gleitman, Gleitman and Shipley,
1972; Hakes, 1980; Scribner and Cole, 1981). This difference we
attribute to the greater demands for analysis of knowledge given by
the correction task. Similarly, manipulating the formal structure of
sentences that contain semantic anomaly has been shown to be more
difficult than applying similar manipulations to meaningful sentences
(e.g. Ben-Zeev, 1977). The anomalous sentences, in our terms,
distract the child from attending to form.
Three studies, each involving about 120 children, were conducted.
In Studies 1 and 2, children were in Junior Kindergarten (5 years old),
Grade 1 (7 years old), and Grade 3 (9 years old). In addition,
approximately half of the children in each grade were bilingual. In
Study 1, the bilingual children came from homes in which English was
not spoken at all; in Study 2, the bilingual children were Englishspeaking students enrolled in French immersion programmes. In
Study 3, children were in Grade 2 and Grade 3, and half the children in
each grade were bilingual in that they spoke a language other than
English at home (c.f. Study 1). In all cases, testing was conducted in

greater extent than they do

English.
Children were asked to judge or correct sentences for their syntactic
acceptability, irrespective of meaningfulness. This instruction was
explained to the children through a series of example sentences which
varied in their grammaticality and meaningfulness. A puppet
character was used to present each sentence and children were told to
tell the puppet if he said the sentence the right way and that it was
fun to be silly, so only grammaticality was to be judged. A high
demand for analysis of knowledge was operationalized in terms of
correcting, as opposed to judging, grammatical structure and of

detecting ungrammatical,

as

opposed

to

grammatical,

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sentences

159

(Bialystok, 1979). A high demand for control of processing was operationalized in terms of solving the problem under conflicting conditions, namely when the value of the grammaticality was incongruent
with the value of the meaningfulness. There were four types of
judgment tasks. Meaningful sentences could be grammatical (Why is
the dog barking so loudly?) (GM) or not (Why the dog is barking so
loudly?) (gM); and anomalous sentences could be grammatical
(Why is the cat barking so loudly?) (Gm) or not (Why the cat is
barking so loudly?) (gm). The two conflicting sentences (gM,Gm) are
not equivalent in their demands. For gM, the intact meaning does not
create much distraction, and so the problem is to have sufficiently
analysed knowledge to recognize the grammatical error. Thus, these
sentences test the level of analysis of linguistic knowledge. For Gm,
the anomalous meaning is a compelling distraction, and the instruction to focus only on form requires intentional effort to separate the
form and meaning, ignoring the latter. Once this separation is
achieved, there is little burden on analysed knowledge, since the
sentence is grammatical. Thus, these sentences test the level of control
of processing.
Across the three studies, the manipulation of the control and
analysis requirements in the different versions of the grammaticality
judgement task was reflected in problem difficulty. The correction
task was more difficult than the judgement task and the incongruent
items in the judgement task were more difficult than their congruent
counterparts. Similarly, ignoring the anomalous meanings in the correction task according to the instructions, in order to receive the score
for meaning corrections, was more difficult than repairing the
grammar. The interpretation is that these two factors, analysis of
knowledge and control of processes, constitute an important aspect of
the structure of this metalinguistic task, and ability in these two skill
components is prerequisite to solving the problems.
The effects of bilingualism in the solution to these problems are
evidenced as interactions between language and the ability to solve
certain of the items. Changes in control demands were studied in
differences among the four types of sentences in the judgement task as
a function of the different language groups. The data obtained from
Studies 1 and 2 are shown in Figure 1; Study 3 replicated the patterns
in Study 1.
The sentence judgements requiring the greatest levels of control are
the Gm items in which the meaning is made salient by means of
anomaly, but the task requires attending to the intact grammaticality.
The bilingual children in all three studies consistently judged these Gm
items more accurately than did monolingual children, at all ages tested
and for all types of bilingualism.

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Figure

Mean number correct

judgements

The difference between

out of six for

judgement task by

group

monolingual and bilingual children for the

gM items is a measure of analysis of linguistic knowledge. Here the

difference depended on the childs type of bilingual experience. In
Studies 1 and 3, the monolingual children judged these items better
than did

bilingual children. These were the studies in which children

were bilingual by speaking one language at home while being educated
(and socialized) in English. These children were weaker than
monolingual children for problems requiring richer levels of analysis
of linguistic knowledge. The children who were bilingual through
French immersion programmes performed equivalently to their
monolingual peers on these gM items, indicating no relative weakness
in their level of analysis of linguistic knowledge.
In general, the bilingual children in Study 2 performed more
impressively than did the bilingual children in Studies 1 and 3. There
are two differences between the bilingual groups in these studies. The
first, and most salient, is that the bilingual children in Studies 1 and 3
were being tested in their second language, while the monolingual
children in those studies and the bilingual children in Study 2, were

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161

tested in their native language. While this is no doubt a relevant difference, it must be noted that it did not serve uniformly to suppress the
scores of these children relative to their monolingual peers; the
bilingual children scored higher than the others on the tasks considered to involve control of processing.
The second difference between the groups is that the children in
Study 2 were also biliterate, reading in both English and French. This
biliteracy, coupled with the fact of being native speakers of English,
would have the effect of increasing their level of analysis of knowledge
of English relative to the bilingual children in Studies 1 and 3. Thus
their advantage is specific: these bilingual children perform better
than the other two groups of bilingual children (and possibly better
than some monolingual children) on tasks demanding high levels of
analysis of knowledge. But children who were bilingual in any sense,
uniformly performed better than monolingual children on tasks
demanding high levels of control of processing. Thus a facilitating
effect of bilingualism may be mediated by specific levels of mastery of
analysis of knowledge achieved through other means. For this reason
it appears that on some tasks, e.g. high control tasks, bilingualism
exerted a facilitating effect while on other tasks, e.g. high analysis of
knowledge tasks, bilingualism created some disadvantage.
Another problem examined in this paradigm is counting or
segmenting words in sentences (Bialystok, 1986b). Childrens failure
on these problems has been interpreted as evidence of their lack of
understanding the concept of word (Ehri, 1979; Fox and Routh, 1980;
Papandropoulou and Sinclair, 1974). Such a concept, however, is
critical to metalinguistic notions of language structure. In terms of the
current conception of metalinguistic ability, the difficulty with these
word concept tasks can be traced to the two skill components of
analysis and control. Thus, removing the barriers imposed on the
problem by excessive levels of analysis and control should allow access
to the solution by younger children who, in more holistic definitions
of metalinguistic ability, would be excluded. Moreover, those aspects
of the solution most governed by control of processing should be
solved more readily by bilingual children than by monolingual ones.
Four versions of a word concept task were constructed which varied
in their demands on the two skill components. A more analysed
concept of word is one in which the boundaries that isolate words are
clear. In a less analysed concept of word, the child may realize that a
word is some unit of language but be uncertain as to the defining
properties. Hence one difficulty in counting the number of words in a
sentence is in deciding on the appropriate boundaries: is a syllable a
word; is a morpheme a word? Mehler (1982) has shown that a strategy
of syllabic segmentation is primary, even among infants, so an early

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relatively unanalysed concept of word may tie the boundaries to

syllables. The simplest problem, then, would be to count the number
of words in a sentence in which all the words were monosyllabic. Here
a correct solution could be achieved through the application of a
vague and possibly slightly incorrect hypothesis of word boundaries.
Counting tasks can be made progressively more difficulty for the
childs analysis of knowledge by gradually including sentences that
contain polysyllabic words (alligator) for which a syllable hypothesis
must be abandoned, and double morpheme words (rainbow,
sunshine) for which a meaning unit hypothesis must be abandoned.
The difficulty for control of processing in the word count problems
is again in keeping attention fixed on forms, in spite of the temptation
to examine meanings. It is difficult to see the formal constituent structure of a sentence when there is an integrating and overriding
meaning. Problems could be made simpler for their control demands,
then, by removing the meaning, removing therefore the linguistic
feature competing for the childs attention. This was achieved by
scrambling the words in the sentences produced in the various analysis
of knowledge conditions. If children could successfully count the
various kinds of words in the different analysis of knowledge conditions when the sentence had been scrambled, then their failure on the
and

traditional sentence conditions could not be attributed to their

lack of (analysed) knowledge of words. If children could count the
words equally in both sentence and scrambled conditions, then the
meanings were not presenting an inordinate challenge to their capacities for selective attention.
A study was conducted with 62 children in Junior Kindergarten and
Grade 1, the latter group being divided between English programme
and French immersion and, therefore, somewhat bilingual. Children
were individually tested and orally presented with a series of eight
sentences and eight scrambled strings. Following each sentence or
string, they were asked how many words it contained. (Children had a
set of markers to help them count while they listened to the sentence or
string.) The results in Figure 2 are collapsed across the different
analysis of knowledge conditions and show the effects of the control
manipulation of sentence versus string on the three groups. The
bilingual children could count the words with equivalent accuracy
whether they were in real sentences or in scrambled strings. The
monolingual children, even in Grade 1, counted better when the words
were arranged in strings. Their performance in the high control
sentence condition was inferior to that of their bilingual peers in the
French immersion programme.
These two problems, grammaticality judgment and word concept,
are examples of the way in which metalinguistic tasks can be made
more

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163

Figure 2

Mean number correct

judgements

out of

eight for sentences and strings by

group

precise to examine separable components of metalinguistic

ability. The results obtained from these and other tasks permit a
number of generalizations about the relationship between linguistic
awareness and bilingualism. The tasks themselves were made
systematically more difficult by the experimental manipulations.
These manipulations have been interpreted as increasing the demands
on control and analysis. Metalinguistic problems are difficult, then,
because they demand particularly high levels of mastery of these skill
more

components.
The effect of bilingualism was seen primarily on the development of
control of processes. This effect, however, was mediated by a number
of factors, possibly including biliteracy. In this sense, it may be that
the additional boost to analysis of knowledge offered by biliteracy is
either a catalyst or even a precondition for the potentially facilitating
effects of bilingualism to be demonstrated.
The relation between metalinguistic ability and bilingualism, then,
is construed as a set of conditions that hold between the childs
mastery of the skill components of analysis of knowledge and control
of processes and the demands posed by specific metalinguistic tasks.

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164
These skill components are considered to be the basis of language proficiency, and it is through mastery of these components that advanced
forms of language use become possible. Through their common
reliance upon this underlying set of skill components, different
aspects of language proficiency have important relationships to each
other. Thus literacy, with its special connection to analysis of
knowledge, is an important constraint on the relationship between
bilingualism and metalinguistic development. Learning to read in two
languages has often been shown to be easy for children who have
advanced (in our terms, analysed), conceptions of language. This relation, too, may be interpreted in terms of the way in which individual
children recruit their ability to analyse linguistic knowledge and
control attentional processes to master new problems that impose
specific demands on these abilities. These relationships are examined
in other studies in this research programme using different metalinguistic tasks, different operationalizations of the constructs and
different subject samples. It is in the synthesis of all these studies that,
it is hoped, a clearer understanding of the cognitive basis of language
proficiency and its reflection in special language skills will be

discovered.

Acknowledgementt

This article is based on a paper presented at the Language Acquisition

Research Seminar, Utrecht, The Netherlands, in September 1985. The
research reported in this paper was funded by Grant A2559 from the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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