The Bilingual Child
Early Development and Language Contact

Examines the early linguistic development of children bilingual in English and Cantonese.

Virginia Yip (Author), Stephen Matthews (Author)

9780521836173, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 August 2007

320 pages, 14 b/w illus. 31 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.636 kg

'… this book deserves attention for its extensive data base. … it is an important book. … a 'must-read' for researchers studying language acquisition.' Journal of Linguistics

How does a child become bilingual? The answer to this intriguing question remains largely a mystery, not least because it has been far less extensively researched than the process of mastering a first language. Drawing on new studies of children exposed to two languages from birth (English and Cantonese), this book demonstrates how childhood bilingualism develops naturally in response to the two languages in the children's environment. While each bilingual child's profile is unique, the children studied are shown to develop quite differently from monolingual children. The authors demonstrate significant interactions between the children's developing grammars, as well as the important role played by language dominance in their bilingual development. Based on original research and using findings from the largest available multimedia bilingual corpus, the book will be welcomed by students and scholars working in child language acquisition, bilingualism and language contact.

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical framework
3. Methodology
4. Wh-interrogatives: to move or not to move?
5. Null objects: dual input and learnability
6. Relative clauses: transfer and universals
7. Vulnerable domains and the directionality of transfer
8. Bilingual development and contact-induced grammaticalization
9. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Child & developmental psychology [JMC], Bilingualism & multilingualism [CFDM], Language acquisition [CFDC], Psycholinguistics [CFD], Linguistics [CF]