Bilingualism: Language Acquisition

Child language development
Chapter 2: children bilingualism * Introduction Language acquisition is among the main topics that intrigued psychologists, linguists and philosophers over time. In their efforts to define this complex phenomena, researchers have kept records of how children in advance from babbling, to words, to complex utterances. Since the 1960s, they have paid deep attention to the acquisition of different languages (SLOBIN 1985-19991) and the stages children go through.
Children’s exposure to two languages often from their families or from the community they belong to resulted what is known by: children bilingualism. Many scholars were preoccupied by this complex task and debated on it. They focused on the simultaneous acquisition of two languages from birth, or what is generally referred to as bilingual first language acquisition.
Some major hypothesis were done; whether the young child initially forms one linguistic system, which he or she gradually differentiates into separated linguistic systems or whether the child actually forms two separated linguistic systems from the onset of development. In addition to that hypothesis, other theories were the focus of that study: does the contact between the two languages give birth to language mixing in children at the word level, the utterance level, and across utterances with single conversation? However , studying children bilingualism needs to analyze speech of parents input ,as well as the community the child belongs to in order to define whether bilingualism is individual or extends to the society. Also we have to mention effects of bilingualism on child language development
To response to this study, we experiment one case of some Algerian children (infant) precisely in TLEMCEN at some specific neighborhood (KIFFENE and BIR WANA)by referring to bilingualism in Algeria, the factors that influence it and if bilingualism in Algeria belong to a specific category of people. But before dealing with those outlines, we first have to define the word “bilingualism” * What is bilingualism?

The result of powerful countries expansion, the fact of leaving country home for specific purposes such as political or religious one and the fact of immigration gives birth to what is known by “bilingualism” in terms of sociolinguistics studies.

Bilingualism can be defined as the ability to speak two languages colloquially, however this concept has a brooding definition concerning sociolinguistics field, that is :bilingualism is a language situation where two languages are used by the individual or the whole community to communicate. The contact between the two languages was the interest of many scholars like Bloomfield’s (1933-56) would specify “native-like control of two languages” as the criterion for bilingualism. By contrast Haugen (1969-6) states” the definition of bilingualism is actually dependant on our definition of language” he also draws attention to the other end when he observes that bilingualism begins when the speaker of one language can produce complete meaningful utterances in the other language (1953-7).
DIEBOLD (1964) however gives what might be called a minimal definition of bilingualism when he uses the term «incipient bilingualism” to characterize the initial stages of contact between two languages. His definition to bilingualism is related to the degree of bilingual person .i.e. his capacity to understand utterances even if he is not able to produce complete meaningful utterances.
From those tree point s of view, we notice that each scholar regards the concept of bilingualism according to different degree, context and domains.
Talking about bilingualism lead us to mention two important points that is CODE –SWITCHING and LANGUAGE MIXING (or code mixing).those two concept interested several scholars and tried to define them ,among them are AMUDA(1989), ATYOE(1994) and BELLY(1976), for instance Bokamba (1989) defines both concepts by:
“Code-switching is the mixing of words, phrases and sentences from two distinct grammatical (sub) systems across sentence boundaries within the same speech event… code-mixing is the embedding of various linguistic units such as affixes (bound morphemes), words (unbound morphemes), phrases and clauses from a co-operative activity where the participants, in order to infer what is intended, must reconcile what they hear with what they understand.”
However, the term language mixing is seen by ELIZABETH LANZA (1997)* by
“…it may be argued that the actual expression language mixing presupposes the existence of two separate systems. After all the term mixing means the combination or putting together of two or more separated entities.”
Also KOPPE AND MEISEL (1995:277) in their work on early bilingualism pointed out:
” to any utterance or conversation constraining features of both languages…irrespective of the reasons which cause this to happen”.
Pfaff (1979) too had applied the term language mixing as a generic for all types of language contact. On the other hand, code-switching refers to the use of some words from one language and others from the second language in the same utterance. And there exist several types in code switching: * Tag-switching: “ tag switching involves the insertion of a tag in one language into an utterance which is otherwise entirely in the other language” ROMAINE(1988:112) * Intersential switching:” involves a switch at a clause or sentence boundary ,where each clause is in one language or other” ROMAINE(1988:112) * Intrasential switching :” involves gradually, the greatest systematic risks and maybe avoided by all but the most fluent bilinguals” ROMAINE(1988:113)

As we are concerned with child language acquisition, our main focus is based on infant bilingualism and its importance for the child language development:

* Childhood bilingualism:

Despite the existence of several and various languages over Earth, and despite the predominance of bilingualism in world’s population, almost researchers have attempted to describe and explain children’s language acquisition based on monolingualism rather than bilingualism. However by the coming of SLOBIN (1985-19992) children’s bilingualism was a great interest in cross-linguistic studies ,and FANTINI (1989:10) has point out that SLOBIN’s updated publication of LEOPOLD’s (1952)BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHILD LANGUAGE, only 3 out of 50studies mentioned were concerned with bilingual children case i.e.( RANJOT1913, LEOPOLD1939, and PAVLOVITCH 1920)
Later on, other researchers have focused on that kind of studies among them: SUZANNE ROMAINE (1989,1995) in her “bilingualism” and ELIZABETH LANZA (1997) in “ language mixing in infant bilingualism: a sociolinguistic perspective”.

Returning to the discussion of children’s bilingualism, we noticed that bilingual acquisition is on two sorts: * Children may acquire more than one language more or less simultaneously or * They may acquire one of the languages before the other i.e. consecutively or successively.
The first possibility is referred to SWAIN (1972) by the idea of “bilingualism as first language” and to MEISEL (1990) by “bilingual first language acquisition “. While the second possibility is related to the second language acquisition as SUSZANNE ROMAINE states:
“I will have less to say about “consecutive” or successive” bilingualism since I consider that to belong to the field of second language acquisition”
From those two possibilities we conclude that children bilingualism involves two routes: bilingual first language acquisition and bilingual second language acquisition as HAUGEN believes( p73)” usually means the establishment of a second language during the early school years ,after the first has been learned in the family”.
This means that HAUGEN refers to infant bilingualism (in their early age) by first language acquisition while to children bilingualism(in their 2nd stage of life) by 2nd language. 1) Bilingual first language acquisition:

It is the simultaneous acquisition of two languages from birth. This concept is proved by PADILLA AND LINDHOLM (1984) when they argue that:
“We should speak of simultaneous acquisition of two languages when a child has been exposed to two languages from birth onwards”.
The study of bilingual first language acquisition has had an intensive long story. It was with RONJAT 1913 who introduced the «one person_ one language “’s principle (later referred by “one environment-one language” by PENFIELD and ROBERT 1959). He detailed description of his son Louis’s simultaneous acquisition of French and German, and his remarkable progress in both his languages and little confusion.
LEOPOLD and many others follow the same approach such as swain and WESCHE (1975), REDLINGER and PARK (1980) and of course VIHMAN (1985).

2) Bilingual second language acquisition:
This concept of bilingualism has not various research, indeed less attention has been paid to what happens to the first language acquisition in the process of acquisition of another because bilingual second language acquisition is mainly studied with adult rather than children. However some scholars such as JENNIFER PHILIP, RHONDA OLIVER and ALISON MACKEY (2008) in their” 2nd language acquisition and the younger learners” have brought some notions about children bilingual second language acquisition by affirming this later is distinctive from adult second language acquisition: “In this chapter, child second language acquisition is defined as a distinct from both adult ‘second language acquisition or either from monolingual or simultaneous bilingual development in childhood”. Moreover, Voltaire and Tauscher (1978, p. 312) states:
“In the first stage the child has one lexical system which includes words from both languages. …, in this stage the language development of the bilingual child seems to be like the language development of the monolingual child. …In the second stage, the child distinguishes two different lexicons, but applies the same syntactic rules to both languages.
In the third stage the child speaks two languages differentiated both in lexicon and syntax…” From this passage , VOLTERRA and TAESCHNER tried to explain that the child in his first years exposed to two languages starts to acquire only one language (the same path as the monolinguals), while in his second age he /she begins to differentiate between the two languages , and during the third stage he /she is able to speak both language i.e. . Consecutive and successive acquisition.

After mentioning the two points in childhood bilingualism, we move to another point that is:

Bibliography: LEOPOLD and many others follow the same approach such as swain and WESCHE (1975), REDLINGER and PARK (1980) and of course VIHMAN (1985). Moreover, Voltaire and Tauscher (1978, p. 312) states: “In the first stage the child has one lexical system which includes words from both languages