| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
|
|
bilingual communicative competence entails the ability to adapt one’s language use on-line in accordance with relevant characteristics of the situation, including the preferred or more proficient language of one’s interlocutor (Genesee, 2003, p. 216).
The study of bilingual children’s personal pronoun development promises to be a fruitful area for investigating the development of bilingual individuals’ form and function mapping process.
1.3. Bilingual first Language Acquisition
McLaughlin (1978) made an oft-cited distinction between simultaneous acquisition and successive acquisition of two languages. He wrote that the simultaneous acquisition of two languages takes place when a child has been introduced to two languages before his or her third birthday and applied the term successive acquisition to situations in which this criterion is not met. McLaughlin readily admitted that the third-birthday stipulation represents an arbitrary cut-off point. De Houwer (1995, p. 223), however, found McLaughlin’s first category too broad and preferred to reserve the term bilingual first language acquisition (a term that she attributed to Meisel) for situations in which the child is regularly exposed to two languages from within the first month after birth. As Deuchar and Quay (2000, p. 1) put it, De Houwer was right to argue that the age of first exposure to each language may have an effect on the course of acquisition. However, because little is known so far about the precise effect at each age, De Houwer’s suggestions about terminology are probably less important than her advice that researchers should “specify exactly when their bilingual subjects were first regularly exposed to more than one language” (De Houwer, 1995, p. 223).
With this advice in mind, in this book I use the term bilingual first language acquisition to refer to the situation in which the child, James, was regularly exposed to both languages from birth until he was 5 years old. In relation to the case study, I give details of timing and exposure, and in relation to other cases, I give as much information as I can.