Bilingual acquisition data: cross-sectional corpus_soraUVALAL dataset

Abstract

This corpus contains oral and written experimental production data from a total of 106 sequential bilingual children for whom English was their L2. These children belong to three groups depending on whether their L1 was Spanish (n=33), Bosnian (n=39) or Danish (n=34). Within each language group, two subgroups appear depending on the time of exposure the children have had to the L2 (either 2 or 4 years). The data were collected in the schools the participants attended in the country where they lived (i.e., Spain, Denmark, and Bosnia).

The criteria applied when selecting the participants were the following: - both parents and the child had to share the same L1 (Spanish, Bosnian or Danish depending on the group); - the L2 of the participants had to be English (if the participants had an L3 which they started learning as part of the curricula during the 3rd or the 4th year of instruction of the L2, they were not excluded from the study; otherwise, they were excluded); - the participants had only received instruction in the L2 in educational settings; - the participants had received instruction for either 2 or 4 years at their primary school; - the participants who took part in any exchange programs or lived in an English-speaking country for longer than two weeks were excluded from the study.