Open AccessAdapting MAIN to Irish (Gaeilge)
Author(s) -
Mary-Pat O’Malley,
Stanislava Antonijević
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.64.2020.565
Subject(s) - irish , context (archaeology) , neuroscience of multilingualism , linguistics , narrative , history , psychology , sociology , philosophy , archaeology
Irish (Gaeilge) is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland. It is a fast-changing, endangered language. Almost universal bilingualism (i.e. almost all Irish speakers also speak English), frequent code-switching to English, and loan words are features of the sociolinguistic context in which the language is spoken. This paper describes the adaptation of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings - Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN, Gagarina et al., 2019) to Irish. Data was collected using the retell mode (Cat story) and the comprehension questions. Eighteen children participated ranging in age from 5;3 to 8;7 (six female and 12 male). Results suggest that story structure is not sensitive to exposure to Irish at home and indicate that MAIN Gaeilge (Irish) is a promising tool for assessing language in Irish- speaking children from a range of Irish language backgrounds.