LING1003 Language, Thought and Culture:
Bilingual first language acquisition
S.Matthews
Two first languages?
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How do children acquire two first languages
simultaneously?
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Doibilingual children acquire each of the two
languages like their monolingual counterparts?
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What are the environments under which
childhood bilingualism can develop?
Children with two languages
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Is learning two
languages a burden to
the child?
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Will the child mix up
the two languages?
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Do bilingual children
develop the languages
slower or faster than
their monolingual
counterparts?
The bilingual instinct?
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Defining bilingual first language
acquisition
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Simultaneous acquisition
of two (or more)
languages in childhood
The child’s exposure to
two languages begins in
the first year of life
(Deuchar and Quay 2000)
or in the first month of
life (De Houwer 2007)
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Language acquisition is instinctive: children are
born with an innate capacity to acquire language
without conscious effort or formal instruction.
(Pinker 1994)
No reason to believe that the language instinct is
limited to a single language.
It seems natural for the bilingual child to acquire
both languages in response to the dual input in
their environment.
Types of child bilingualism
(Romaine 1995)
1.
2.
3.
One parent-one language (e.g. Cantonesespeaking mother and English-speaking
father)
One environment – one language (e.g.
English at home, Cantonese outside of home)
One parent-two languages: both parents use
both languages in speaking to the child
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The Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus
香港双语儿童语料库
Language dominance
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If one of the two languages develops faster or
shows greater complexity at a given age, this
language is said be dominant.
A Cantonese-English bilingual child may be
dominant in Cantonese and weaker in English or
vice versa. Typically when the input is not
balanced.
Patterns of language dominance may vary over
time.
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6 children exposed to Cantonese-English from
birth in one parent-one language families
longitudinal data for six subjects aged 1;03-4;06
available at the CHILDES website
total of 340 tagged files in 2 languages
multimedia features: transcripts linked to
digitalised audio and video files
New kids on the block
Subject Information
Subjects
(Name)
Native language of parents
Age span during
study
Mother
Father
Timmy
Cantonese
English
1;05.20-3;06.25
Kathryn
English
Cantonese
2;09.23-4;06.07
Llywelyn
Cantonese
English
1;06.00-3;05.28
Sophie
Cantonese
English
1;06.00-4;00.00
Charlotte
Cantonese
English
1;05.10-3;06.14
Alicia
Cantonese
English
1;03.00-3;00;24
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Syntactic transfer 1:
Interaction of two languages
in bilingual development
1. Code-mixing: insertion of English words in
Cantonese sentences or vice versa:
Kathryn: You bump into my fei toulaam
Kasen (2;04-4;00) and Darren (1;07-3;11)
Both parents use both languages
More representative of Hong Kong children than
one parent—one language children studied in Yip
& Matthews (2007)
English wh-in-situ interrogatives
•
All 4 Cantonese-dominant children passed
through a stage whereby wh-phrases are
left ‘in situ’ following Cantonese grammar:
This on the what (Timmy 2;04)
Kasen: I don't like the pei.
Alicia: But the pei is the skin!
2. Syntactic transfer: e.g. transfer of grammatical
structures from Cantonese to English or vice versa
This what colour? (Timmy 2;10)
(Yip & Matthews 2000, 2007)
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Syntactic transfer 2:
Null objects in English
Syntactic transfer 3: Influence of
English on Cantonese
Timmy: You get, I eat…(2;02;03)
[father takes chocolates off shelf]
1. Placement of prepositional phrases:
我 食 咗 嘢 [喺 屋 企]
Ngo5 sik6-zo2 je5 [hai2 uk1kei2]
I
eat-PFV thing at home
‘I ate at home’
2. Order of double object constructions:
Bei2 keoi5 zyu1gwu1lik1 laa1 (Timmy 2;07;13)
俾 佢 朱古力
喇
give her chocolate PRT
“Give her some chocolate.”
Sophie: Don’t break! (3;06.06)
[warning adult not to break a toy cup]
Summary
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Children can develop two first languages simultaneously
One parent—one language is an effective way to bring up
bilingual children, but not the only way: one parent – two
languages works too
Often one language is dominant, but this can change
overtime
Interaction between the two languages is common in both
types of children, e.g. code-mixing, syntactic transfer
Next lecture: second and third language acquisition
References
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De Houwer, Annick. 2007. An Introduction to Bilingual
Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Deuchar, Margaret, and Suzanne Quay. 2000. "Bilingual
acquisition: Theoretical implications of a case study.
Oxford University Press.
Grosjean, Francois. 1982. Life with Two Languages.
Harvard University Press.
Romaine, Suzanne. 1995. (2nd ed.) Bilingualism. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Yip, Virginia & Stephen Matthews. 2000. Syntactic transfer
in a bilingual child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
3, 193-208
Yip, Virginia & Stephen Matthews. 2007. The Bilingual
Child. Cambridge University Press.
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