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Do young bilinguals acquire past tense morphology like monolinguals, only later? Evidence from French–English and Chinese–English bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2011

ELENA NICOLADIS ,
JIANHUI SONG  and
PAULA MARENTETTE
ELENA NICOLADIS*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
JIANHUI SONG
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
PAULA MARENTETTE
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Elena Nicoladis, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, P2-17 Biological Sciences Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1, Canada. E-mail: elenan@ualberta.ca
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Abstract

Previous studies have shown that preschool bilingual children lag behind same-aged monolinguals in their production of correct past tense forms. This lag has been attributed to bilinguals' less frequent exposure to either language. If so, bilingual children acquire the past tense like monolinguals, only later. In this study, we compared the English past tense production of Chinese–English bilingual children with a matched sample of French–English bilinguals (5–12 years old). The results showed small but reliable differences in the children's past tense production (e.g., the kinds of errors the children made) that could be attributed to knowledge of the other language. Both groups of children showed equivalent rates of accuracy, suggesting that bilinguals exposed to naturalistic speech acquire the past tense much like monolinguals do, only later and with some effects, most likely morphophonological, from their other language.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 457 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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