Language Acquisition of a Bilingual Child: A Sociolinguistic Perspective (To Age Ten). Multilingual Matters 17

This book is a sociolinguistic analysis of language acquisition based on the longitudinal observation of one child, bilingual in Spanish and English. An ongoing longitudinal study, 15 years old at the time of publication, is reported. It is a sociolinguistic, developmental study of the acquisition of two languages, Spanish and English, by a boy from birth, with data drawn from direct observation and occasional tape recordings of speech. An introductory chapter outlines the objectives and method of the study. The second chapter reviews relevant literature on simultaneous dual language acquisition, the nature of bilingualism, and language within a social context. Chapter 3 describes the subject and his environment, parents and other caregivers, and language contact and exposure patterns. In the fourth chapter, sociolinguistic aspects of language acquisition are examined, including language differentiation and bilingual behavior, social variables in language choice, the relationship of language and socialization, and language usage and styles. A linguistic profile of the child follows, with both general comments and more detailed notes on patterns of phonological development and mixing, lexical development and borrowing, emerging grammar and syntactic borrowing, and measures of proficiency used. The final chapter offers a summary and conclusions. Appended materials include notes of phonetic transcription and excerpts from the diary of the child's speech kept by the researcher. Contains over 100 references. (MSE) Alvino E. Fantini. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. 252-261.