ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Lang. Sci.
Sec. Bilingualism
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/flang.2025.1671807
Investigating patterns of language dominance and mixed dominance among Farsi-German bilingual children in Germany
Provisionally accepted
- Technische Universitat Dortmund Fakultat Rehabilitationswissenschaften, Dortmund, Germany
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Abstract Introduction: This study aimed to operationalize language dominance based on relative language proficiency across vocabulary and morphosyntax and to classify children into dominant and balanced groups. These language dominance classifications were compared with those based on relative language experience, which is characterized by two child-external factors: relative language exposure and use in Farsi. This study further explored child-internal and -external factors contributing to mixed language dominance, defined as a divergence in dominance classification across linguistic domains. Methods: Thirty-two Farsi-German bilingual children (age range: 3;10-8;9 years, mean = 6;9 years, SD = 16.8), who speak Farsi as their heritage language (HL) in Germany, participated in the study. All children were tested on vocabulary and morphosyntax in both Farsi and German using the LITMUS-Crosslinguistic Lexical Tasks (CLTs) and Sentence Repetition Tasks (SRTs). Children's relative language experience was documented based on parental ratings. Results: The findings indicated that the 0.5 SD-based classification is a reliable method for identifying language dominance. In contrast, relative language experience in the HL only partially predicted Farsi-dominant status when compared to German-dominant and balanced children across domains. Mixed dominance was observed in 45% of the children and was influenced by relative language use in the HL and length of exposure (LoE) to German. Discussion: Overall, this study highlighted that using a 0.5 SD threshold provides a more consistent approach to determining relative language proficiency and that mixed dominance is a characteristic feature of bilingualism. Recognizing this feature and its contributing factors may help reduce the risk of misdiagnosing developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children.
Keywords: language dominance1, mixed dominance2, HL children3, HL exposure4, HL use5, vocabulary6, morphosyntax7
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 15 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ghaemi, Thillmann and Scherger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tina Ghaemi, tina.ghaemi@tu-dortmund.de
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