Naslov
The acquisition of English as a second language at the age of three

Autori
Medved Krajnović, Marta

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
EUORSLA 13

Mjesto i datum
Edinburgh, Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo, 17.09.2003. - 20.09.2003

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
second language acquisition; bilingual dynamism; case study

Sažetak
The paper explores several aspects of Croatian – English bilingual development in the early childhood. The subject of our research is a boy who was born in Croatia and who acquired Croatian as his first language, both parents being native speakers of Croatian. His bilingual development started at the age of 2 ; 10 when the family temporarily moved to Ireland and the boy started acquiring English as his second language. Although, in terms of age, our subject’ s bilingual development might still be viewed as the acquisition of two first languages, on the basis of the child’ s linguistic and communicative competence in Croatian at the beginning of the study, we consider our case as an example of successive bilingual development. Extensive diary and audio-recorded data of the boy’ s spontaneous language performance in both bilingual and monolingual conversational contexts have been collected for 18 months, from the boy’ s first coming to Ireland until the stage when his bilingual development reached a state of relative balance and stability. During the course of these 18 months, the boy’ s bilingual development went through several distinct stages, each stage being closely connected to the change in the linguistic and extralinguistic context the boy was exposed to (i.e., to the periods of his life in Ireland or to his regular visits to Croatia). These changes are significant because their effect could be observed almost immediately in the boy’ s language performance, wich points at the fragile nature of the subject’ s first and second language systems. This fragility has probably also caused several changes in the power relations between different subsystems of the boy’ s two languages, making the initial L1-L2 distinction too simplistic. Furthermore, different subsystems of the subject’ s two languages moved independently along the language separation-integration continuum. To illustrate this bilingual dynamism, in our paper we focus on three aspects of the boy’ s language performance. In the realm of phonology, we look into the subject’ s production of sounds which are similar, but not identical in the two languages (i. e., ‘ r’ , ‘ l’ , ‘ t’ and ‘ d’ ). In the case of morphology, we will try to account for the complete loss and subsequent partial reestablishment of the Croatian complex nominal and verbal morphological system, alongside with the gradual establishmnent of the English morphological system. As for the syntax, examples of transfer of the Croatian syntactic structure into English and vice-versa will be provided and their explanation attempted. Tentative conclusion drawn from our data and analysis is that only a dynamic model which allows for the autonomy of different linguistic subsystems of a bilingual’ s two languages and takes account of the powerful influence of the context of acquisition can provide adequate frame for the description of the early stages of childhood acquisition of a second language.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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