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Abstracts symposium 1 the weaker language of bilinguals: a case of second language acquisition in early childhood?.
| Content Provider | CiteSeerX |
|---|---|
| Author | Meisel, M. White, Lydia Schlyter, Suzanne Meisel, Jürgen M. Müller, Natascha Håkansson, Gisela Jürgen, Organizer |
| Abstract | Research on the simultaneous acquisition of two or more languages has demonstrated that children who are exposed to more than one language from birth develop several “fi rst ” languages. They are able to separate the language systems from early on, they proceed through the same developmental phases as monolingual children, and their grammatical competence is essentially identical to that of their monolingual counterparts. Yet the evidence leading to this conclusion stems mainly from children who perform equally well in both languages, i.e. from “balanced ” bilinguals. In some bilingual children, however, one of the languages appears to be signifi cantly weaker than the other, i.e. its development proceeds more slowly and/or the other language is strongly preferred. Currently, we do not know whether this implies that the course of acquisition in the weaker language is substantially different from that of monolinguals and balanced bilinguals and whether it ultimately leads to grammatical knowledge defi cits, or whether “weakness ” refl ects a particular usage pattern. The same questions arise when the age of onset of successively acquired languages occurs during the fi rst three years |
| File Format | |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Language System Bilingual Child Developmental Phase Particular Usage Pattern Second Language Acquisition Monolingual Child Development Proceeds Weaker Language Grammatical Knowledge Defi Cits Weakness Refl Several Fi Rst Language Simultaneous Acquisition Monolingual Counterpart Balanced Bilingual Abstract Symposium Early Childhood Grammatical Competence |
| Content Type | Text |
