The Cross-Linguistic Study of Bilingual Development: (Vol 158 Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks)

In this volume, recent studies on bilingual development are presented. Previous studies on bilingual development give no reason to believe that the process of language acquisition in bilinguals and monolinguals is different in its basic features. The essential difference is that bilingual children are confronted with two sets of input and that they have the additional task of distinguishing the two language systems. However, the very complex process of learning to separate two different languages is still poorly understood. It remains unclear what sort of operating principles children use while acquiring two languages at the same time. It is also unclear under what conditions processes of language transfer and code mixing occur. Moreover, most of the studies that have been conducted so far were limited in their scope, given the fact that the languages under consideration were highly related. In the present volume, the simultaneous or successive acquisition of two unrelated languages are dealt with. In order to allow for crosslinguistic comparisons, different language varieties in various countries are taken into account. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 gives an overview of studies on early bilingual development. The focus of Part 2 is on bilingual development at school age and beyond. The analysis of learner data in two unrelated languages should give new perspectives on the role of structural properties of these languages in the process of acquisition.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Early bilingual development: retrospective on the study of early bilingualism, B. McLaughlin; the separate development hypothesis - method and implications, A. de Houwer; early bilingual development of Turkish children in the Netherlands, H. van der Heijden and L. Verhoeven; early bilingual development of Turkish children in Berlin, C. Pfaff; bilingual development of English preschool children in Turkey, O. Ekmekci; two languages, three varieties - code-switching patterns of bilingual children, A. Bentahila and E. Davies; the development of initial reading in a bilingual child, K. Wodala. Part 2 Bilingual development at school age and beyond: proficiency, choice and attitudes in bilingual Mexican-American children, K. Hakuta and L. Pease-Alvarez; Turkish and Moroccan children in the Netherlands - acquisition of complex syntax in a first and second language, J. Aarssen et al; bilingual development of school-age children in Sweden, A. Viberg; first language text cohesion in a Turkish-Dutch bilingual setting, A. Schaufeli; temporal reference and narrative structure in Italian and German by Italian migrant children in Germany, A. di Luzio; second language influence on first language acquisition - Turkish children in Germany, H. Boeschoten; first language influence on second language acquisition - Turkish and Moroccan adults in the Netherlands, P. Broeder et al.