Language and the mind Prof. R. Hickey SS 2006

Language and the mindProf. R. HickeySS 2006

Types of Bilingual Acquisition in Childhood

Sabine Rubach Hauptstudium LN

Types of Bilingual Acquisition in Childhood

Type 1: “One Person – One Language”

Type 2: “Non-dominant Home Language” / “One Language – One Environment”

Type 3: “Non – dominant Home Language without Community Support”

Type 4: “Double Non-dominant Home Language without Community Support”

Type 5: ‘‘Non – native Parents’’

Type 6: “Mixed languages”


Parents: have different native languages with each having some degree of competence in the other’s language

Community: the language of one of the parents is the dominant language of the community

Strategy: the parents each speak their own language to the child from birth


Study: Author: Leopold (1939-49) Language: mother (English ) Language: father (German) Community: English


Leopold studied the acqusition of English and German by his daughter Hildegard

Leopold spoke only German to his wife and to Hildegard

Mrs Leopold (American of German descent) spoke only English

The family lived in the US


Leopold made a complete record of Hildegard’s speech in a diary

H did not seperate the two languages in her vocabulary, and she did not associate the languages with specific persons

during the first 2 years H had a vocabulary of 377 words


of her active verbs, 19 percent had both English and German prototypes

she acquired most of them during a three-month visit in Germany when she was 1.0

In her third year H treated the two languages as a separate linguistic system and was able to translate between them


After she returned to the US, she attended school and English became her dominant language

Leopold observed more evidence of interference, mostly at the level of vocabulary

eg: “But manchmal I make mistakes , in German and in English”

“ Foolish Kinder have to go to school”


Leopold believed that bilingualism has positive advantages

he said that H came to seperate word from referent at an early stage and was aware of the arbitrary nature of the relationship between word and meaning through using two languages.

Monolingual children aren’t aware of this in such an early stage of development


Parents: the parents have different native languages

Community: the language of one of the parents is the dominant language of the community

Strategy: both parents speak the non – dominant language to the child, who is fully exposed to the dominant language only when outside the home, and in particular in nursery school


Study: Author: Fantini (1985) Language: mother (Spanish) Language: father (English) Community: English


Fantini examined his son Mario, who spoke Spanish with his mother and English with his father

Only Spanish was spoken at home, by both, father and mother

Mario learned English when he was 2.6 and Spanish when he was 1.4


Comparing to Hildegard, who used at the end of her second year 337 words Mario used only 21 words

By the age of 3.0 he had a productive lexicon of 503 words

at age 3.6 Mario became aware of the names of the two languages

at the age of 5.0 Mario was bilingual and bicultural with full awareness on these facts

Type 3: “Non – dominant Home Language

without Community Support” Parents: they share the same native

language

Community: the dominant language is not that of the parents

Strategy: the parents speak their own language to their child


without Community Support”

Study: Author: Oskaar (1977) Language: mother (Estonian) Language: father (Estonian) Community: Swedish/ German


without Community Support”

The study of Oskaar (1977) shows that children can learn three languages simultaneously

Oskaar’s son was 3.11 when he came to Germany and he was raised bilingually in Swedish and Estonian

German became his third language

Type 4: „Double Non-dominant Home Language without Community Support“

Parents: have different native languages

Community: the dominant language is different from either of the parents’ languages

Strategy: the parents each speak their own language to the child

Non-dominant Type 4: „Double Home Language without Community Support“

Study: Author: Elwert (1959) Language: mother (English) Language: father (German) Community: Italian

Type 4: „Double Non-dominant Home Language without Community Support“

Elwert was brought up in Italy and addressed in three languages from birth

He doesn’t remember at what stage he became aware that he spoke different languages

it is difficult for him to say which of the languages is his mother tongue


Parents : share the same native language

Community: the dominant language is the same as that of the parents

Strategy: One of the parents always addresses the child in a language which is not his/her native language


Study: Author: Saunders (1982) Language: mother (English) Language: father (English) (German) Community: English


Saunders divides the child’s learning process into a three stage developmental sequence

Stage 1 : lasts from the onset of speech until about age 2.0. the majority of the child’s utterances consists of one word until about 1.6.


Stage 2: the child uses utterances which contain words from both languages, but will increasingly differentiate the languages according to person and context

Stage 3: the child differentiates the two linguistic systems


Parents: are bilingual

Community: Sectors of community may also be bilingual

Strategy: Parents code-switch and mix languages


Study: Author: Tabouret-Keller (1962) Language: mother (French/German) Language: father (French/German) Community: French/German


both parents mixed both languages in speaking to their child

at 2.0 the child had a much larger French than German vocabulary and about 60 percent of the sentences were mixed

more code-switching than the other bilingual children

Language and the mind Prof. R. Hickey SS 2006

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