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Age of onset does not matter for bilingual children’s understanding of late-acquired phenomena

The case of temporal connectives

ORCiD logo with link | University of Hildesheim
ORCiD logo with link | Goethe University Frankfurt
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Goethe University Frankfurt.

Published online: 5 August 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.24096.mak
Abstract
The Timing Hypothesis predicts that age of onset and L2 input in bilingual acquisition interact with timing in monolingual acquisition: early-acquired phenomena, mastered before age four by monolingual children, are subject to age of onset effects, whereas late-acquired phenomena, mastered after age four by monolinguals, are not affected by age of onset but by L2 input. The current study evaluates the prediction regarding late-acquired phenomena in the area of sentential semantics by examining how bilingual children understand sentences with temporal connectives in their L2 as a function of age of onset and length of L2 exposure. A group of six- to twelve-year-old children with L1 Greek and L2 German, varying widely in age of onset and length of L2 exposure, was tested on their comprehension of sentences with the connectives before and after in iconic and non-iconic order, using a picture-sequence selection task. Baseline data from monolingual German-speaking children showed that temporal connectives are a late-acquired phenomenon, still not mastered by age seven. Bilingual children’s L2 performance was not influenced by age of onset, despite its wide range, but by length of L2 exposure. This finding provides novel support for the Timing Hypothesis from temporal semantics.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The interaction between timing in acquisition and AoO
    • 2.2Comprehension of sentences with temporal connectives in monolingual children
  • 3.The present study
    • 3.1Baseline study
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Materials
      • 3.1.3Procedure
      • 3.1.4Results
      • 3.1.5Summary of the baseline study
    • 3.2Main study
      • 3.2.1Participants
      • 3.2.2Materials
      • 3.2.3Procedure
      • 3.2.4Results for German
        • Question 1a: Effects of AoO on L2 performance
        • Question 1b: Effects of LoE on L2 performance
        • Question 2: Effects of short-term memory, general L2 ability, and comprehension of sentences with temporal connectives in children’s L1
      • 3.2.5Summary of the main study
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1The role of AoO in the acquisition of late phenomena
    • 4.2The role of LoE in the acquisition of late phenomena
    • 4.3Beyond the role of input: Short term memory, general ability in the L2, and comprehension of temporal connectives in the L1
  • 5.Limitations and outlook
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Ethics statement
  • Data availability statement
  • CRediT statement
  • Notes
  • References
References (42)
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