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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847691484 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Channel View Publications |
| Publication date: | 02/17/2009 |
| Series: | MM Textbooks , #2 |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Sales rank: | 424,917 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.80(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Introducing Bilingual First Language Acquisition
What is Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA)?
The term
The process
BFLA, MFLA and ESLA
The family as the primary socialization unit for BFLA
Is BFLA a common phenomenon?
A brief history of the study of BFLA
More than 50 years ago
Renewed interest after a fairly quiet time
Interest from the public at large
The foundations laid in the 1980s
An explosion of research interest
BFLA research today
Summary box
Suggestions for study activities
Recommended reading
What is Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA)?
The term
Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA) is the development of language in young children who hear two languages spoken to them from birth. BFLA children are learning two first languages. There is no chronological difference between the two languages in terms of when the children started to hear them. This is why in referring to these languages it is best to use a notation that does not imply a notion of 'first' and 'second'. Following Wölck (1987/88) I will refer to BFLA children's two languages as Language A and Language Alpha.
Although many processes of the acquisition of three languages from birth may be very similar to what happens when a child is learning just two, empirical research on trilingual acquisition is just starting to receive serious research consideration. It is too early to make any generalizations based on the few existing studies so far. This book, then, will use the term 'bilingual' to refer just to the use of two languages, rather than to also more than two.
It appears that Merrill Swain was the first to introduce the term Bilingual First Language Acquisition. Swain used this term in a brief summary of her dissertation work (Swain, 1976). As far as I have been able to determine, however, the term did not appear in print again until Jürgen Meisel briefly used it in his much cited chapter published in 1989. I took up his lead and proposed a definition for this 'new' term in my case study of a Dutch – English bilingual child (De Houwer, 1990). Prior to this, various terms were used to cover the concept of BFLA, but many of these also referred to more than just BFLA. It was often impossible to really know what scholars meant when they wrote of 'incipient bilingualism', 'childhood bilingualism' or 'simultaneous bilingualism'. The term BFLA is now widely accepted and has the advantage of having a clear definition.
The process
The fact that BFLA children hear Language A and Language Alpha from birth does not necessarily mean that they will actually learn to speak these two languages. It is not uncommon for BFLA children to speak just one of the languages they have been addressed in since birth. When BFLA children understand two languages but speak only one, they may be called 'passive' bilinguals, although there is nothing passive about understanding two languages and speaking one. If BFLA children do not learn to understand and/or speak either of the languages spoken to them, this is a cause for concern: maybe they have a hearing problem, or maybe there are neurological problems. Just as in children raised with just one language who do not understand much language and/or do not speak, the lack of comprehension and/or speech in any language in BFLA children is a severe problem and needs to be discussed with a speech and language pathologist. InBox 1.1 I outline four main patterns of language use in BFLA children and briefly evaluate them.
The expectation for normally developing BFLA children, then, is that they will learn to understand two languages from early on and speak both languages, or just one of them (Patterns 1 and 2 in Box 1.1). In Box 1.2 I give an example for Pattern 1 and Pattern 2. Chapter 2 gives a more in-depth overview of bilingual children's linguistic skills.
People often assume that BFLA children know each of their languages equally well. This is not always the case, though. When we look at children's skills in a language we need to distinguish between comprehension and production.
For language comprehension, there could be large differences between a child's two languages in how well they are understood. However, because of the small number of studies on comprehension in BFLA children we don't really know just how large these differences can be and whether it is possible that a child understands very little of one language but a whole lot of another, even though he or she has heard both of them frequently from birth. What little empirical research is available, however, suggests that there is a lot of variation between children in how many words they understand in each of their languages. This research is reviewed in Chapter 6 on the lexicon, which summarizes the research on the kinds and numbers of words that bilingual children know.
For language production or speaking, there is ample evidence for large, and quite normal, differences between BFLA children's two languages: there are children who do not speak Language A at all but who are fluent in Language Alpha. At the other end of the continuum there are children who are more or less equally fluent in Language A and Language Alpha, and then there are all the variations between these two extremes, with children speaking one language better than the other to various degrees.
It is not easy, however, to measure differences in how well children speak a particular language (I discuss this in more detail in Chapter 3). But there is a consensus in the field that BFLA children who actively speak two languages do not necessarily speak them equally well. A possible reason for this may be that children do not hear each of their languages to the same extent. I will return to this issue of variable knowledge throughout the book.
BFLA, MFLA and ESLA
Note that BFLA is defined in terms of a particular learning context. Certainly, it is a different context from Monolingual First Language Acquisition (MFLA), in which children hear just one language from birth (their Language 1), and Early Second Language Acquisition (ESLA), where monolingual children's language environments change in such a way that they start to hear a second language (Language 2) with some regularity over and above their Language 1. Often this happens through day care or preschool.
The language learning contexts MFLA, BFLA and ESLA have in common that they are contexts in which very young children acquire language without formal instruction. I outline these three main different learning contexts for children under age six in Box 1.3.
In Box 1.3 you will see the word input. I will be using this term a lot throughout this book, and will use it to refer to the speech that children hear, whether it is addressed to them or not (see Chapter 4 for further explanation). Note that in Box 1.3 reference is made not just to 'input' but to 'regular input'. Regular input here refers to daily or almost daily contact with a language through interpersonal interaction or overhearing a language (see further, Chapter 4).
Box 1.3 indicates the age range of 1;6–4 years of age as the typical time of first regular exposure to a second language in ESLA. This age range indication is not meant to be exclusive: ESLA contexts might well exist before age one and a half, or after age four. The younger cut-off age of one and a half is meant to reflect the fact that in toddlerhood many hitherto monolingually raised children gain access to various group settings outside the home, such as playschools and nurseries, through which they are introduced to a second language. The older cut-off point was chosen because in many societies children start to learn to read at preschool at age five, including children for whom the school language is a second language. If children's introduction to a second language coincides with literacy programs, even if children are only five years old, we can speak of formal second language acquisition rather than ESLA.
Each of the three main language learning contexts (MFLA, BFLA and ESLA) has quite distinct effects on early language development. MFLA children learn to understand and speak only one language. BFLA children learn to understand two languages concurrently, and when they start to speak, they usually say words and sentences in each of their two languages. ESLA children learn first to understand one language and start speaking in one language only, their Language 1 (in fact, then, ESLA children start off as monolingual children). Subsequently, they learn to understand a second language, their Language 2, which they may also start to speak at some point.
Box 1.4 summarizes the main developmental trajectories for the three major language learning contexts that young children may find themselves in. In Box 1.4, language comprehension is assumed to start at age one, but children may start to understand language prior to that. It is usually not until around the age of one, however, that we can start to reliably measure lexical comprehension using commonly available methods such as parental rating instruments (I discuss these at length in Chapters 3 and 6).
Box 1.4 gives the age of two as a starting age for language production. This again is a fairly conservative indication. There are many children who start to speak well before the age of two. However, the second birthday usually coincides with children's production of short sentences, and certainly, if children are not speaking at all by the age of two, this is cause for concern.
So far, there is no terminology to refer to early language learning contexts in which children start out hearing just one language but very soon, in the first year of life, are confronted with a second language. Is this context more like a BFLA context, or more like an ESLA context? And, more importantly, does these children's language development look more like that of BFLA children with input in two languages from birth, or does it look more like the development of children who started hearing a second language at age one and a half? The answers to these questions are not clear and studies have yet to systematically investigate this issue. Since there are major differences between 'clearly' MFLA, BFLA and ESLA children in the early language skills they develop and in the timing of their overall linguistic development, it is to be expected that children with initial monolingual input but very early input in a second language will, in fact, exhibit some important differences in their initial acquisition stages compared to the language development of BFLA children and to that of ESLA children.
Even though there are quite major differences between MFLA, BFLA and ESLA children in the number of languages they know and in the timing of their initial knowledge of these languages, there are also many similarities between these three types of early language development. The emphasis in this book is not on comparing these three types. However, where relevant and appropriate I will note similarities and differences in so far as they are known.
The family as the primary socialization unit for BFLA
If children hear two languages spoken to them from birth, they will most likely hear them within the (extended) family. As such, the family is the primary socializing agent for the development of BFLA. There are, of course, many different kinds of families, and children grow up in many different kinds of family settings (see the end of this section and also Chapter 4).
The typical BFLA situation is one where a child's parents are speakers of different languages and speak those languages when addressing the baby. The chances are that during pregnancy the unborn infant was hearing two languages, both as spoken by the mother and as spoken by people in close proximity to the mother (see Chapter 5). But it is equally possible that up until the child's birth only one language was used, and that the birth of the child brought with it a change in the patterns of language choice (see further Chapter 4).
Childless monolingual couples often become instant bilingual families upon the birth of their first child. This is most often the case when children are born to couples where the spouses have different language backgrounds but speak only one language between them. After the birth of the baby one of the spouses then starts speaking another language to the infant, and continues using the other language in addressing the other parent. Such changes in home language use patterns can have profound effects on the couple's relationship (for a book that addresses such issues for bilingual couples in the French – German-speaking town of Freiburg/Fribourg in Switzerland see Brohy, 1992).
Alternatively, parents-to-be may both be bilingual and speak two languages at home. When the baby arrives, this pattern is just continued. There are also situations where bilingual couples decide to address their infant in just one language, thereby effectively blocking the possibility of BFLA (see Chapter 4). At the other end of the spectrum, monolingual parents may hire a nanny or 'au pair' out of the desire to raise their child with two languages from the very beginning. Box 1.5 shows two 'real-life' examples of couples-turned-parents and their language choices.
It depends very much, then, on whether parents start speaking two languages to their baby whether a child will be raised in a BFLA setting or not. For some parents, it is a conscious decision to raise their child with two languages. For many, however, speaking two languages at home is just a matter of course and not a matter of choice, very much the way that it is not a real 'choice' for completely monolingual parents to address their newborn child just in the one language they happen to know.
Not all children are born into a family that has at its core a parent pair. Their mother may be single and raise the new child on her own. Children may be given up for adoption and be institutionalized immediately after birth. BFLA is also possible in these exceptional circumstances. However, the bilingual acquisition literature almost exclusively looks at children who are born to a set of biological parents and who live with their families. Thus, this scenario will also be the focus in this book.
Parents may transfer part of the care for their young children to other people such as grandparents or nannies. Nevertheless, parents remain a central part of children's lives, whether directly or indirectly. In most societies, parents decide about their children's residence and education, even if such decisions are implicit, for instance, when parents do not change their residence once a child is born. Of course, children usually meet up with other individuals besides their parents, and are influenced by these people as well. In Chapter 4 I discuss in more detail the various bilingual first language acquisition learning contexts and the role that families play in the creation and perpetuation of bilingual development.
Is BFLA a common phenomenon?
We do not know much at all about the history of BFLA in centuries past, nor about how widespread the phenomenon was or is. Census and survey data can only indirectly reveal anything about children's linguistic environments. There are most likely large differences between societies in the proportion of BFLA children, depending on how common bi- and multilingualism is in the society as a whole.
However, a survey on 'hidden' bilingualism that I conducted in Flanders, Belgium in the 1990s shows that in around 8% of the over 18,000 families with school-aged children sampled, the parents speak two languages at home (De Houwer, 2003). This means that when mothers' and fathers' home language use is combined, two languages are spoken by the parent pair. Given that the sample did not include families with children at international schools or at schools with a large proportion of immigrant children, the actual figure for parental home bilingual language use in Flanders is probably well above 10%.
Because of a lack of information generally on the languages that young children hear at home, it is impossible to provide reliable estimates for other areas or countries. However, if you consider that Belgium has seen a lot of immigration since the 1960s and is demographically similar to many Western and Northern European countries, the situation in such other countries in Europe is probably quite similar. Studies in France and the Netherlands that have looked at home language use by children and teens confirm this general idea (Deprez, 1995; Extra et al., 2002).
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Bilingual First Language Acquisition"
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Copyright © 2009 Annick De Houwer.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introducing Bilingual First Language AcquisitionChapter 2 Bilingual Children's Language Development: An Overview
Chapter 3 Research Methods in BFLA
Chapter 4 Socializing Environments and BLFA
Chapter 5 Sounds in BFLA
Chapter 6 Words in BFLA
Chapter 7 Sentences in BFLA
Chapter 8 Harmonious Bilingual Development