| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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types of bilingual child will provide new perspectives from which to address these issues in bilingual first language acquisition—namely, the questions about separation of the bilingual child’s two languages and about the similarities or differences between bilingual and monolingual children’s speech production. (Appendix II provides a relevant account of typological differences between Mandarin and English).
The overall aim of this study, then, is threefold: first, to learn more about the process of bilingual first language acquisition in its own right; second, on the basis of this newly acquired knowledge, to contribute to a better understanding of child language acquisition processes in general; and third, to shed light on practical concerns about bringing up children bilingually.
1.6. Overview of the Book
A review of the relevant research on bilingual first language acquisition and a more detailed description of the research problem are provided in chapter 2. In chapter 3, the case study methodology is presented. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of the syntactic development of the child’s two languages, addressing the issue of subject realisation and word-order patterns and comparing monolingual data with bilingual data.
Chapter 5 investigates the transition from nominal person reference to pronominal person reference in early linguistic development within a discussion of the child’s whole early nominal systems.
Chapter 6 investigates the effect of bilingual context on the bilingual child’s acquisition of personal pronouns. I examine the process of pronominal reference to self, addressee, and nonparticipant in each language and compare it to that of Mandarin and English monolingual children. Pragmatic and semantic issues relating to pronoun usage are addressed in order to investigate the nature and extent of the early separation and interaction of the bilingual child’s linguistic systems in this area of acquisition.
Chapter 7 summarises the study’s main findings and discusses their implications for future research.