topics: |  language-acquisition | cognitive | psychology

Part 7: Bilingualism and cross-cultural comparisons

from Introduction:
Slobin, on the basis of Miket 1967, saw the possibility of
conceptual understanding prior to linguistic structure.  Miket studied
some young children learning Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian.  S-C has a lot of
irregularities in its locative postposition (e.g. translated as "in the
drawer").  The children's Hungarian descriptions were correct but they would
make errors in S-C in similar situations.  This seemed to imply that the
"cognition could develop ahead of lg, and children's learning of how to put
their thoughts into words then depended on the simplicity or complexity of
the ways offered by the lg..." - p. 279

sequential bilingualism - of great interest in Second Lg Acq SLA.  Fear that
early exposure to second lg may delay onset of lg acq.  Also, debate on
whether bilinguals have a fused system or separate systems for the two lgs. 

Simultaneous bilinguals: Barbara Pearson estimated that less than 20%
exposure to L2 in Y0-Y3 did not result in bilingual speech; but > 25%
did. 280

code-switching within a single sentence is sometimes called code-mixing or
just mixing. 

de Houwer's biling daughter - spoke simple past in English (jumped, fell) but
not present perfect (have jumped, have fallen), whereas in Dutch she used
present perfects most of the time.  Contrary to Slobin's analysis of Miket's
results, in both situations pres perf is more complex (extra morpheme) - but
in dutch its frequency is v high - it's the common way of speaking.  Thus,
frequency effects dominate here.  284

Suzanne Romaine 1999: Bilingual lg development
Alison Gopnik 2001: Theories, Lg and Culture: Whorf without wincing
   Child's cognitive functions are like theories - they are modified in ways
   that are analogous to processes of theory formation and revision in
   science. 
   English speaking children more advanced in cattegorization; korean
   learners more adv on success/failure words and means/ends insight.
   suggests that this is relatable to Korean parents talking more about
   actions, and Engl parents more about objects.  
   but all children eventually converge to similar "theories", but possibly
   via differing sequences