The Bilingual Acquisition of English and Mandarin: Chinese Childr ...

a bilingual, the number of possibly influential variables is reduced to a minimum (De Houwer, 1990, p. 1): The bilingual child comes the closest to being the “perfect matched pair.” As Meisel put it, “one has to do with one personality, one mind, etc., but with two grammars” (1990, p. 17). Bilingual children are their own controls on a number of cognitive, social, economic, and psychological variables that can confound studies of monolingual children. The practical importance attached to the study of bilingual first language acquisition includes informing parents and educators about what to expect in relation to the developmental pathways of bilingual children’s two languages and how families can ensure their children’s successful acquisition of both.

Current work on bilingual acquisition is broad in scope and encompasses most facets of language development, including phonology (Deuchar & Quay, 2000; Paradis, 2001), early lexical development (David & Li, 2008; Quay, 1995), syntax (see De Houwer, 2005, for a review), and sociopragmatic or communication skills (Genesee, Boivin, & Nicoladis, 1996; Lanza, 1997). These studies examine the processes and representational systems that underlie bilingual acquisition and the possible interaction between a bilingual child’s two languages—for example, speech errors in phonology (Zhu & Dodd, 2004), parental input (Lanza, 1997, 2001), and syntactic transfer (Yip & Matthews, 2000, 2007).

Studies of bilingual children’s person identification and pronominal acquisition, however, are scarce and limited. Studies on bilingual first language acquisition mainly concern the formal aspects of bilingual children’s language development. The dimension of real language use in context is underinvestigated; particularly neglected is the interplay between formal and functional aspects of language acquisition—aspects that are of importance for both bilingual and monolingual acquisition (Lanza, 1997, p. 318). Bilingual input, language context, dominance, and acquisition strategies are all linked to the child’s success in moving to target form and function mapping in order to become a competent bilingual communicator. Study of bilingual children’s language acquisition and use should not overlook the development of bilingual children’s communicative competence. True