| Chapter 2: | Research on Bilingual First Language Acquisition |
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However, in one of the domains (e.g., at home) in certain contexts (e.g., at storytelling time), the bilingual-to-be children are addressed by one of the parents in the dominant language. This model also involves code switching in parent-child dyads during topic changes as well as between parents’ dyads. To my knowledge, the nature of this type of context-bound input and its effect on young bilingual children’s language development have not been investigated.
In this study, the separation of the two languages in the bilingual child’s input in each home or community environment is context bound. As for the environment-bound bilingual exposure conditions, in a similar line, De Houwer proposed situation-bound factors that affect language use within the child’s individual social network. De Houwer pointed out that
Yet the latter is the most common situation among immigrant communities. As far as I am aware, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that any particular type of environment is more or less beneficial for bilingual upbringing. This study is an attempt to investigate early bilingual pronominal development within one bilingual child’s early word learning and general syntactic development in context-bound use of each language (context here refers to the conversational context of the interaction; Lanza, 1997, p. 10).
I share the view presented in Deuchar and Quay (2000) that the prime role of research is to describe rather than to prescribe the natural upbringing of a bilingual child in a normal immigrant family environment. Therefore this study focuses on describing what actually happens in bilingual acquisition. There are many types of bilingual upbringing, and in many of these, the parents or other interlocutors do not see the necessity or possibility of making decision about “methods” (Deuchar &