Language Input in the Home Environment and its Relationship with Vocabulary and Inflectional Morphology: A Multigroup Analysis on Three Immigrant Groups in the Netherlands

Abstract

While much research is conducted on language input and its relationship with vocabulary development, and some studies on general grammar measures, little is known about inflectional morphology development. The present study investigated the relationship between language input in the home environment and immigrants’ children (N = 129) vocabulary and inflectional morphology outcomes, in a sample of bilingual immigrant Polish-Dutch (n = 55), Berber-Dutch (n = 43), and Turkish-Dutch (n = 31) 6-to-7-year-old children in the Netherlands. By comparing three immigrant groups on monolingual Dutch norms of vocabulary and inflectional morphology, our results showed that most Polish children reached the norms, followed by Moroccan-Berber children, then Turkish children. Multigroup Structural Equation Modelling revealed positive relationships of Dutch language input in the home environment with children’s Dutch language outcomes and negative relationships of native language input in the home environment with children’s Dutch language outcomes. Relevance of these findings for theory and practice is discussed.