Bilingual children’s repair strategies during dyadic communication

The Development of Recipient Design in Bilingual Child-Parent Interaction

“…However, the use of the microanalytic methods of CA, which allows a focus on interaction as co-constructed, local and in situ, has also shown that the child is able to make the correct selection by self-repairing before the age of 2. This is in fact a skill developed much earlier than the age of 2;7 reported by Commeau and Genesee (2001) for bilingual children. Indeed, the pervasiveness of the questioning repeat or candidate hearing in the sequences analyzed provides strong evidence that there is a preference for self-repair in interactions with the very young, particularly once they are starting to produce more language.…”

“…For example, in infant bilingualism, preoccupations are premised on how old children are when they become capable of making language choices and therefore can be truly said to be alternating languages. In this regard, studies have increasingly shown that bilingual children start to differentiate according to the languages of their parents before the age of 2 (Genesee & Nicoladis, 2007), and that between the ages of 2;7 and 3;1 they repair their own utterances by translating in response to requests for clarification or nonspecific repair initiations (Commeau & Genesee, 2001). These findings indicate that young children are aware of the need to make an appropriate choice by designing their turns in linguistically fitted ways for their addressees.…”

The influence of child-directed speech in early trilingualism

“…Comeau and Genesee (2001) and Döpke (1992) examine the response of bilingual children to requests for clarification, which result in bilingual feedback involving language switches. Only De Houwer (1990) and Pérez-Vidal (1995) describe the formal acquisition of questions in English in relation to input to bilingual children, but they do not focus on interlocutor speech.…”

Defining Criteria for Evaluating Cultural and Dialogic Development of Bilingual Preschoolers

“…It is rational to appeal to the concept of "verbal behavior", which is understood as preschooler's bilingual experience of bilingual communications, based on the willingness and ability to choose the language of communication, to use the stereotypical expressions, speech clichés, and to observe the speech etiquette. Comeau and Genesee (2001) emphasized differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in their verbal behavior: "children who grow up learning two languages learn more than two linguistic codes; they acquire the same communication skills as monolingual children and, in addition, those skills that are specific to bilingual communication" (p. 231). The quality of a child's knowledge and understanding of national features and ethnic and cultural characteristics of persons is important for bilingual communication skills.…”