Initial Bilingual Development: One Language or Two?

Abstract

It is claimed that bilingual children have two separate linguistic systems from early ages. Over the past decades, linguists carried out a number of studies to test the validity of the claim. They explored bilingual children's code-mixing in correlation with a variety of linguistic elements, such as lexicon, syntax, phonology in different contexts, concluding that bilingual children had separate linguistic system for each language. Although there were certain limitations in these studies, most of their results supported the statement.

Bilingual exposure enhances left IFG specialization for language in children

“…The Dual Language System Hypothesis of early bilingual acquisition holds that children exposed to two languages from birth undergo parallel and language-specific courses for each of their languages in the first years of life (Genesee, 1989; De Houwer, 1995; Du, 2010). Early language acquisition in many of the world's languages (e.g., English, German, Russian, Hebrew) is marked by an extended period of mastering verb finiteness, stemming from young children's inability to compute tense and agreement simultaneously (Wexler, 1998; Schütze & Wexler, 1996), or from the ambiguity of the finite forms (Tomasello, 2000).…”

Omani Young Children’s Language Proficiencies: The Outcomes of a Bilingual Education Program

“…The resulting language learning potential to engage in bilingual education offers a significant opportunity to take full advantage of this situation (Andersson, 1974). Bilingual children claim to have separate linguistic systems for L1 and L2 (Du, 2010). Bilaystok (2009) said that young bilingual minds resembled an intriguing set of puzzles and argued that bilingual language acquisition would be efficient, effortless, and successful in the early stages of life compared to monolingual education.…”

H Ανάπτυξη Του Δεκτικού Λεξιλογίου Στην Ελληνική Γλώσσα Αλλοδαπών Παιδιών Προσχολικής Ηλικίας (4-6 Ετών) Μέσω Της Ανάγνωσης Των Ιστοριών

“…Ένα χαρακτηριστικό γνώρισµα των παιδιών αυτών αποτελεί και η πρώιµη ανάπτυξη της µεταγλωσσικής επίγνωσης, λόγω του ότι τα παιδιά αυτά, από τα πρώτα στάδια της γλωσσικής τους ανάπτυξης, αρχίζουν να συγκρίνουν και να διαφοροποιούν τους δύο γλωσσικούς κώδικες (Τριάρχη-Herrmann, 2000). Ωστόσο, η επανεξέταση της εµπειρικής βάσης που αφορά στις παραπάνω τοποθετήσεις και τα µεταγενέστερα ερευνητικά δεδοµένα υποστηρίζουν την υπόθεση του δυαδικού γλωσσικού κώδικα (dual language system hypothesis) (Du, 2010).…”