Espe Language acquisition.

1. UNIVERSITY OF THE ARMED
FORCES
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
“BILINGUALISMS IN CHILDREN”
 MERCY RECALDE
 DAYANA TAMAYO

2. BILINGUALISM
 Bilingualism is a term defined for person’s capacity for dominating
two language modalities
 Bilingualism in children let them to understand the difference
between languages at a young age and learn two or more languages at
the same time

3. LANGUAGE LEARNING
 For adults learning a new language may seem:
 intimidating
 difficult
 ludicrous
 For children according their innate linguistic
characteristics can be:
 simple
 natural
 feasible

4. DOUBLE THE LANGUAGES
 BABY ACQUIRING TWO OR MORE LANGUAGES
TYPICALCONCERNS
FORPARENTS
confusion between languages
retards in first language learning
a lot of effort

5. SIMULTANEOUS BILINGUAL FIRST
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
 At early 1980s, linguists focused on the simultaneous acquisition of two
languages from birth
 Researches about Bilingualisms in children showed that a child can learn two
languages and has a little sign of confusion between both
 Simultaneous Bilingualism Process has two stages of bilingual language
development
1. Undifferentiated languages
2. Differentiated languages

6. UNDIFFERENTIATED LANGUAGES
 It is a single-language system composed of elements from both
languages compiled in the baby’s mind
 Grammar
 Vocabulary
 Word combinations
 Verb tenses

7. DIFFERENTIATED LANGUAGES
 It is a differentiated language system of both languages acquired,
using each one to communicate
 Grammar
 Vocabulary
 Word combinations
 Verb tenses

8. DIFFERENTIATED LANGUAGES
 In 2000, a study made to 15 bilingual children of approximate 2-4 years old
(French and English) demonstrated that children sometimes can make mistakes,
for example:
mixed grammar for put the negation in a sentence
 But children know the syntax of each language, and where no should go
comes
before the
verb
English
negation
comes after
the verb
French
negation

9. DIFFERENTIATED LANGUAGES
 Other study in 2005 with a longitudinal data collected from 29 different kids
of 1-6 years olds with different language pairing.
 Each research was looking at a lot of syntactic properties:
pronouns
word order
gender
negation
 And, from of all children no was evidence of they mixing their grammar
together
 Grammar was separated in children’s mind

10. LANGUAGE SOUNDS
 DIFFERENT PHONEMES OF TWO LANGUAGES
Babies have the ability to differentiate two sounds which form a phoneme in any
language
Young children, children, and adults can lose this ability when they are more related
to their own language and cannot distinguish other sounds

11. CODE MIXING
Mixing process of two or more languages or language varieties in speech:
• sounds
• words
• sentences structure
Earlier studies about it assumed that children are confused, but adults also do it

12. CODE MIXING
 ADULT RESEARCH IN CODE MIXING
Code mixing process in adults depend on the social cues as:
 who are talking to
 what are talking about
 how good are for both languages
 how formal is your language

13. CODE MIXING
 CODE MIXING IN CHILDREN
Code mixing process in children can happen due to:
 speaking in their weaker language
 less mixing when they talk with someone who only speak one language
It is a controlled process, children are not confused with grammar, or any
structure of the language

14. CONCLUSIONS
 For adults could be difficult learn a new language, but for children it is
easier
 Sometimes parents use to be worried about how their kids can deal
with two languages at the same time
 When children are involved with two languages simultaneously, they
learn two vocabulary, grammar, sounds, syntax; and are able to
distinguish the structure and its features of each one

15. CONCLUSIONS
 The way of learning phonemes became simple for them
 The younger the children, they have more possibilities to differentiate
phonemes from one language to another
 Many studies had been made and the conclusion of all of them is that
children learn two languages from the start and it is an advantage for
them