SLS 380 Quiz 1 Chapter 5

children exposed to two languages at birth initially operate like a monolingual with a single, united language system.

• Logical Problems:
• Uncontroversial: adult bilinguals distinguish their two languages
• How do you ever differentiate two languages out of one system???
• Code-mixing: adults do it too! Are they confused?

can choose appropriate language when speaking to different people

children speak and associate a particular language to one parent and another to another parent

children speak and associate one setting with a particular language, e.g. English at school, French at home

• non-specialist = yes
• see as sign of lack of mastery of either or both languages
• prevailing ideologies of linguistic purity make it a disparaged practice in most bilingual communities

• specialists = no
• recognize as a functional practice and a sign of bilingual competence.

• Appropriate language matching: can choose appropriate language when speaking to different people
• Phonological: Bilingual babies babble bilingually
• Lexical: at earliest stage, children reject cross-language
• synonyms; in second stage, begin learning translation equivalents (or 'doublets')
• Syntactic: ALL children keep syntactic systems separate for all dimensions studied
• One Parent(or Person) One Language (OPOL): children speak and associate a particular language to one parent and another to another parent
• Consistency