The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact)
Cambridge University Press, 8/30/2007
EAN 9780521544764, ISBN10: 0521544769
Paperback, 320 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
How does a child become bilingual? The answer to this intriguing question remains largely a mystery, not least because it has been far less extensively researched than the process of mastering a first language. Drawing on new studies of children exposed to two languages from birth (English and Cantonese), this book demonstrates how childhood bilingualism develops naturally in response to the two languages in the children's environment. While each bilingual child's profile is unique, the children studied are shown to develop quite differently from monolingual children. The authors demonstrate significant interactions between the children's developing grammars, as well as the important role played by language dominance in their bilingual development. Based on original research and using findings from the largest available multimedia bilingual corpus, the book will be welcomed by students and scholars working in child language acquisition, bilingualism and language contact.
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical framework
3. Methodology
4. Wh-interrogatives
to move or not to move?
5. Null objects
dual input and learnability
6. Relative clauses
transfer and universals
7. Vulnerable domains and the directionality of transfer
8. Bilingual development and contact-induced grammaticalization
9. Conclusions.
'One of the most striking strengths of this book can be found in Yip and Matthews's continued attempts to bridge theoretical frameworks and reconcile seemingly divergent approaches to the study of bilingualism ... this work will undoubtedly prove useful to students and researchers across many disciplines.' Studies in Second Language Acquisition