<p>Author: Susan Wolfe Title: Bilingualism: One Or Two Conceptual Systems? Year: 1981</p><p>Committee Chair: Becky Loewy Committee member(s): Paul Eskildsen, Dorothy Piontkowski</p><p>Abstract</p><p>This study investigates whether bilinguals have one conceptual system based on meaning, or two independent conceptual systems based on the linguistic form of the input. Previous studies have provided contradictory interpretations. This study aims to rectify the discrepancy by postulating a definition of “bilingualism” which includes a consideration of the age of language acquisition. Fifty-five subjects listen to a series of short paragraphs, each followed by a test sentence to identify as “same” or “different” from the corresponding sentence in the paragraph. Paragraphs appear either all in French, all in English, or in a mixture of the two. Test sentences either appear in the same or a different language or have the same or a different meaning from their corresponding sentences. The data confirm the intuitive notion that bilinguals have but one conceptual system based on meaning and suggest that the discrepancy in the literature is due to prior criteria used in the definition of “bilingualism”. Subjects Info</p><p>Fifty-five students, from two French-English bilingual schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, served as subjects in the experiment. Thirty-two of these students attended one school (Ecole Bilingue), where permission was given to test all of the third through fifth grade students during school hours. The remaining twenty-three students attended the second school (French-American Bilingual School), where subjects participated on the basis of parental permission. Both schools are private and have a high reputation for bilingual education and overall academic standards. Prior to any statistical analyses, an assumption was made that the students are proficient in their non-native language. It was not feasible to create and administer a test to determine if subjects were proficient in both French and English. The lessons are taught either in one language or the other, so it can be assumed that the students must be relatively proficient in their non-native language. As subjects are in the third through seventh grades, they fit the criterion of acquiring the second language at a relatively young age. The second criterion, whether or not the subjects use both languages outside the school setting, was not met by all of the subjects. Consequently, on the basis of responses to a set of demographic questions, the twenty-six subjects who reported speaking both languages in the home were classified as fully bilingual, while the remaining twenty-nine subjects were classified as partially bilingual. Grade Form of 3 4 5 6 7 Bilingualism Full 10 7 6 1 2 Partial 8 9 8 3 1</p>