'Mami, lietadlo! Aeroplane, daddy!': a case study exploring bilingual first language aquisition in a mixed-lingual family.

Abstract

Family environment plays a crucial role in bilingual language socialization in early childhood. The bilingual family introduces the child not only to the languages-in-acquisition, but also to the preferred language use patterns. In recent years the discussion on how and when a bilingual child comes to use her two languages in contextually appropriate ways has become central to Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA). While evidence for language differentiation and sensitivity to interlocutor’s preferred language is available in the two-word stage, few studies consider the language learning environment and its impact on bilingual development in the one-word stage and early combinatorial speech. This longitudinal case study reports on linguistic developments from birth to 2;0 in a child who was acquiring Slovak and English simultaneously in the home. The effects of the child’s language learning environment on linguistic development from the onset of speech were considered, focusing on lexical development, word combinations, emerging morpho-syntax, and pragmatic aspects such as language choice and mixing. The child’s two languages developed separately in a side-by-side fashion, as shown by use of translation equivalents and language specific morphological markers from the beginning. She used the two languages in contextually sensitive ways from the one-word stage, relying on several pragmatic language choice strategies. Mixing was productive and accounted only for a small proportion of productions. It was explained by sociolinguistic as well as psycholinguistic factors. Language differentiation thus emerged as grammatical as well as pragmatic differentiation at the end of the one word stage.