Introduction

Abstract

This special issue of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition is devoted to syntactic aspects of bilingual acquisition. For the purposes of this issue, bilingual acquisition is defined as the acquisition of two languages during the period of primary language development, extending from birth onward. Bilingual acquisition can entail the acquisition of more than two languages (see Cenoz and Jessner, 2000) as well as the acquisition of a spoken and signed language (e.g., Richmond-Welty and Siple, 1999) or of two spoken languages; only studies of the simultaneous acquisition of two spoken languages are reported in this volume. An ideal definition of bilingual acquisition would include not only reference to the age of first exposure to two languages, but also reference to the regularity and extent of exposure to each language. While such stipulations are not necessary in defining the context for monolingual acquisition since virtually all children receive sufficient language exposure to fully acquire one language, they are important considerations in cases of bilingual acquisition since some children have insufficient exposure to two languages, either in terms of amount or continuity, to attain full bilingual proficiency.

Character introduction in two languages: Its development in the stories of a Spanish-English bilingual child age 6;11–10;11

“…The aim has been to establish the degree of autonomy or interdependence of the two developing systems and also to identify those aspects that develop more interdependently. Although evidence points overwhelmingly in the direction that the human mind has the capacity to represent and use two (or more) languages simultaneously (Genesee, 2001), nevertheless bilingual children are sometimes temporarily challenged when making sense of the grammar and the lexicon of the two languages. This may result in the production of crosslinguistic structures or in the slow development of one of the two languages, but eventually most bilingual children who are sufficiently exposed to the two languages 12 attain full grammatical competence in the two languages (Meisel, 2001).…”

Acquisition of Prepositions by ESL Learners through Dictation Tasks

“…It is thus distinct from childhood bilingualism, or simultaneous language acquisition, which refers to the child language acquisition of two languages simultaneously, with exposure to both languages beginning in infancy or soon after (Genesee 2000;Meisel 2001Meisel , 2004. Child second language acquisition, also known as sequential bilingualism, refers to the acquisition of a second language after age three or four, when much of the first language is already in place (McLaughlin 1978;Lakshmanan 1994;Gass & Selinker 2001).…”

The language, memory and vocabulary studies

“…Beyin ile ilgili gerçekleştirilen çalışmalardan elde edilen bulguların belki de en önemlilerinden biri, beynin daha önce düşünülenden çok daha fazla 'uyarlanabilir' bir anatomik yapıya sahip olmasıdır. Nitekim son bulgular beynin belirli bölgelerindeki özel fonksiyonların doğum esnasında belirlenmediğini, aksine deneyim ve öğrenme yolu ile şekil kazandığını göstermektedir (Genesee, 2000).…”