A case study on the acquisition of plurality in a bilingual Malay-English context-bound child
The early development of simultaneous bilinguals has been at the core of heated controversy since the mid-seventies. The Unitary Language System Hypothesis by Volterra and Taeschner saw early development as a single language system gradually diverging into two systems. On the contrary, Meisel (19...
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Main Authors: | , , |
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2019
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Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14087/1/29302-107974-1-PB.pdf http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14087/ http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1212 |
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Summary: | The early development of simultaneous bilinguals has been at the core of heated controversy
since the mid-seventies. The Unitary Language System Hypothesis by Volterra and
Taeschner saw early development as a single language system gradually diverging into two
systems. On the contrary, Meisel (1989), De Houwer (1990) and Paradis and Genesee (1996)
suggested the early separation of two linguistic systems. Neither position, however,
considered language environmental conditions constraining development as key variables.
This paper aims to show that the predominant environmental languages to which the Malay-
English bilingual child in the current study was alternately exposed might have played an
important role in shaping the child’s acquisition of plurality in each language. Throughout the
period of investigation (from age 3;4 to 3;10 and at 4;8) the child’s interactions were
regularly audio and video recorded. The current study focuses on the development of plural
marking in a simultaneous Malay-English bilingual child. Interestingly, at a point when
English was environmentally predominant, the child would occasionally use the English
plural suffix -s on Malay nouns. After moving back to Malaysia, the child used reduplication
to mark plurals in both languages. The findings of this study indicate that the predominant
linguistic environment in which the child grows and develops plays an important role in
shaping the child’s language production. |
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