Studies in Romance Bilingual Acquisition : Age of Onset and Development of French and Spanish

Redaktör

Jonas Granfeldt

Summary, in English

This volume of PERLES brings together two studies on bilingual acquisition of Romance languages. Both studies focus in different ways on the age of onset as a factor for development and subsequent mastery of a second language. In the past, the age of onset or the age factor has been studied from a variety of perspectives and often in connection with the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) (for a recent overview see Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003).

The first study by Jonas Granfeldt, Suzanne Schlyter & Maria Kihlstedt compares the morphosyntactic development of French in child L2 learners (cL2), bilingual first language acquirers (2L1), monolingual controls (L1) and previously studied adult L2 learners (aL2). The study, however, is only indirectly concerned with the CPH since it is not the eventual attainment that is under scrutiny but rather the route of (early) development. These authors ask the question if the low age of onset in the cL2 learners makes their development more similar to L1 development. A particularly interesting comparison in this respect is between the cL2 children and the 2L1 children since, in this study, they both have the same two languages (French and Swedish), the same kind of input situation and only differ with respect to age of onset (birth vs. 4-6 years). Granfeldt, Schlyter & Kilhstedt applied a set of four well-studied morphosyntactic features for which the developmental trajectories are known and found that the cL2 learners seem to follow the developmental path of adult L2 learners. In their conclusion, they sketch a new structural account for determining the difference between L1 and L2-like development.

The second study by Pascal Granfeldt-Saavedra is an exam paper at the undergraduate level. It looks at advanced learners of Spanish with different linguistic backgrounds. A group of post-puberty aL2 learners is contrasted with a group of 2L1 acquirers of Spanish and L1 controls. Looking at the levels of pronunciation and vocabulary, the results show an advantage for the bilinguals with respect to pronunciation but not necessarily with respect to vocabulary. These and other results are discussed in terms of multiple factors model where the amount and quality of input is put forward as an important factor for vocabulary growth but less so for pronunciation.

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