Language forms that adults use variably shed light on bilingual child language acquisition
What is it about?
This study looks at one grammatical structure in Spanish where adult speakers always (100%), sometimes (e.g., 50%), or never (0%) use a grammatical marker preceding directs objects depending on context. Previous studies examining monolingual and bilingual children treated the variable contexts inconsistently, rendering a picture of bilingual children fail to acquire the marker by the time monolingual children have already mastered it. The present study, however, uses the same methodology to analyze the speech of monolingual and bilingual children as well as their caregivers. The results suggest that monolingual and bilingual children acquire obligatory and variable uses of the marker as they appear in their caregivers' speech. This includes some innovative uses by children that would have been considered erroneous without appropriately documenting their presence in the caregivers' speech.
Why is it important?
This is the first study of bilingual child language acquisition to isolate contexts where adult speakers of Spanish use the grammatical marker categorically (e.g., 100% or 0%) vs. variably (e.g., 50%). Also, this study considers transcriptions of recorded naturalistic conversations between caregivers and children being raised both monolingually and bilingually. By comparing bilingual children being raised in different configurations of home and community language use, the study also looks at the presence of innovative forms in the child's environment and how this may impact child language development.