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compared to development in monolingual children. The study reveals that experiencing different types of input influences the speed and smoothness with which a child learns personal pronouns in language production. Different learning contexts provide an opportunity for the bilingual child to utilise language-processing strategies to reach the target form and function mapping of pronouns in both languages. This study also provides some exploration of the role of the weaker language in bilingual language development, as well as of the nature and extent of the early separation and interaction of two linguistic systems in a language environment that is fundamentally unlike the one parent/person, one language setting. The data set of the current study consists of over 65 tape-recorded sessions of naturalistic speech collected over 30 months in context-bound language use in both Mandarin and English, where Mandarin is the home (and ethnic-community) language spoken by both parents and other family members and where English is the (dominant) language of all other environments.
This work was inspired by Ronjat’s (1913), Leopold’s (1939–1949), and Sterns’s (1900–1918) classic case studies of their own children. It is grounded in a psychological framework in which the individual person serves as the basic unit. In this framework, development is a process of differentiating distinct domains out of a psychophysical uniformity. The research strategy employed in this study allows one to pay attention to the general and the particular developmental processes at the same time. The findings presented in this book will help bilingual families understand early language differentiation in bilinguals and manage possible interaction in language contact and will assist them in maximising bilingual experiences.
As a parent-researcher, I have had the privilege not only of accessing the child, James, throughout the period of research and beyond but also of witnessing the benefits of being bilingual and of sharing the excitement, wonder, and joy of the child’s healthy development in other aspects of his growth at various critical stages. James has become a bright, competent, responsible 17-year-old young man and is among the best students in his school, according to his teachers. I wish to share my discovery of the