Bilingualism and L2 Acquisition

Bilingualism and L2 Acquisition

1. Child L2 accquisition: language introduced after age 3.

   • L2 quicker to acquire than L1 language. If learnt between 3-7 years takes 1 year to reach same level as monlingual peers.
     • HAZNEDAR (1997) - Suggested that children, like adults, originally transfer their L1 language grammar then develop and switch to correct L2 grammar. Studied a 4 year old child learning English (L1 Language: Turkish) over time. Switch takes place in stage 6.
       • Difference between L2 acquisition and L1 acquisition: HAZNEDAR & SCHWARTZ (1997) - Looked again at Erdem. Case of RIs. Longer sentences produced in L2 acquisition before RI's appear. Up until stage 18, 88% of inflection missing. Whereas in L1 acquisition children have passed through the RI stage before such long sentences are produced.

2. Simultaneous bilingual development. Before age 2/3.

   • Language mixing: recent studies lean towards idea that mixing is a type of code switching used for pragmatic reasons. Eg. clarification or attention getting.
     • UNITARY SYSTEMS HYPOTHESIS: Child constructs one grammar, one lexicon originally. Second stage: two lexicons, one set of syntactic rules. Seperate lexicons and seperate rules for each language. VOLTERRA AND TAESCHNER 1978 - Studied Spanish-German bilingual children between 1 and 2 years. Found possible evidence for a single system based on the errors made by the children in the studies which are NOT seen in monolingual children. HOWEVER, children studied were not old enough to be producing long enough sentences to properly investigate word order additionally the children spoke only to a GERMAN interlocutor.
       • SEPERATE SYSTEMS HYPOTHESIS: Children have two seperate lexicons and seperate grammars from the beginnings. MEISEL 1989 - Studied French and German bilinguals from 1-4 years old. Children showed signs of being two monolinguals in one head, expected if two systems are developing. For example - Used SOV word order only in German with infinitives, and VOS order only in French.

3. GENERAL SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES: Blingual and monolingual children construct grammars in the same way and seem to follow the same developmental sequences. No significant delay in acquiring 2 languages in terms of lexicon than learning 1 language. Total words across 2 languages is similar to that of monolinguals.