Abstract
Can early grammatical acquisition across languages be accounted for by one set of predictions about the grammatical patterns heard? This study examines the extent to which Radical Construction Grammar (Croft. Radical construction grammar. Syntactic theory in typological perspective. OUP, Oxford, 2001) and its central tenet, input frequency, can account for the emergence of grammar in the acquisition of Polish and English, two languages which offer typologically different stimuli for the child to work from. The study looks at the onset of grammatical acquisition in a bilingual toddler (aged 1;10.16-2;5.11) exposed to Polish and English from birth but dominant in the latter, examined through 30 half-hour recordings and a diary. The data reveal different effects of input on the acquisition paths in each language and variance in these effects depending on the stage of development. First of all, the order of acquisition of case markings attempted by the child corresponds with the proportions of these markings heard in the input in English but only to a limited degree in Polish. However, the early emergence of the Polish –i marking can be explained in terms of its analogy to existing exemplars and its potential to cover multiple grammatical contexts. Lastly, it is suggested that the infrequent use of Polish language is responsible for what appears to be ‘regression in acquisition’ of the Polish plural/case marking system. These data call for a more dynamic understanding of frequency as a factor facilitating acquisition.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bańko, M. (2009). Wykłady z polskiej fleksji [Lectures in Polish inflection]. Warszawa: PWN.
Barlow, M., & Kemmer, S. (2000). Usage-based models of language. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Barrena, A., Ezeizabarrena, M. J. and Garcia, I. (2008) Influence of the linguistic environment on the development of the lexicon and grammar of Basque bilingual children. C. Perez-Vidal, Juan-Garau, M. and A. Bel A portrait of the young in the new multilingual Spain. Issues in the acquisition of two or more languages in multilingual environments. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 86–110.
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. The early stages. Oxford: HUP.
Bybee, J. (2001). Phonology and language use. Cambridge: CUP.
Cambridge International Dictionary of English (CIDE). (1995). Cambridge: CUP.
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Croft, W. (2001). Radical construction grammar. Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: OUP.
Croft, W. (2007). The origins of grammar in the verbalisation of experience. Cognitive Linguistics, 18(3), 339–382.
Croft, W. (2010). Relativity, linguistic variation and language universals. CogniTextes, 4, 2–19.
Dąbrowska, E. (2001). Learning a morphological system without a default: The Polish genitive. Journal of Child Language, 28, 545–574.
Dąbrowska, E. (2005). Productivity and beyond: Mastering the Polish genitive inflection. Journal of Child Language, 32, 191–205.
Dąbrowska, E., & Szczerbiński, M. (2006). Polish children’s productivity with case marking: The role of regularity, type frequency and phonological diversity. Journal of Child Language, 33, 559–597.
De Houwer, A. (2009). Bilingual first language acquisition. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
De Houwer, A., & Bornstein, M.H. (2003). Balancing on the tightrope: Language use patterns in bilingual families with young children. Paper presented to the Fourth International Symposium on Bilingualism. Tempe, Arizona.
Fillmore, C. J., Kay, P., & Kay O’Connor, M. (1988). Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone. Language, 64, 501–538.
Gaskins, D. (2017). The usage-based perspective on bilingual acquisition: A case study of Polish and English around the second year of life. Unpublished thesis (PhD), University of London.
Gathercole, V. C. M., & Thomas, E. M. (2009). Bilingual first-language development: Dominant language takeover, threatened minority language take-up. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12, 213–237.
Hoff, E., et al. (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 39, 1–27.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1985). Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1, 61–85.
Keshavarz, M. H., & Ingram, D. (2002). The early phonological development of a Farsi-English bilingual child. International Journal of Bilingualism. Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Linguistic Studies of Language Behavior, 6(3), 255–270.
MacWhinney, B. (2014). Item-based patterns in early syntactic development. In T. Herbst, H. J. Schmid, & S. Faulhaber (Eds.), Constructions, collocations, patterns (pp. 33–69). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Paradis, J., Tremblay, A., & Crago, M. (2014). In T. Grüter & J. Paradis (Eds.), Input and experience in bilingual development (pp. 161–180). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pearson, B. Z., et al. (1997). The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 18, 41–58.
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York: Morrow.
Slobin, D. (1966). Comments on developmental psycholingistics. In F. Smith & G. Miller (Eds.), The genesis of language (pp. 85–91). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Słownik Wspȯłczesnego Języka Polskiego (SWJP). (1996). A dictionary of contemporary polish. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Wilga.
Smoczyńska, M. (1985). The acquisition of Polish. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Volume 1: The data (pp. 440–442). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Tanz, C. (1974). Cognitive principles underlying children’s errors in pronominal case marking. Journal of Child Language, 1, 271–276.
Thordardottir, E. (2014). The typical development of simultaneous bilinguals: Vocabulary, morphosyntax and language processing in two age groups of Montreal pre-schoolers. In T. Grüter & J. Paradis (Eds.), Input and experience in bilingual development (pp. 141–160). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tomasello, M. (2000). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge: HUP.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge: HUP.
Unsworth, S. (2014). Comparing the role of input in bilingual acquisition across domains. In T. Grüter & J. Paradis (Eds.), Input and experience in bilingual development (pp. 181–202). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zarębina, M. (1965). Kształtowanie się systemu językowego dziecka [The formation of the child’s language system]. Wrocław: PWN.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gaskins, D. (2018). Two Grammars in the Input: Two Different Strategies to Process the Input. The Usage-Based Perspective on the Development of Nominal Inflections in a Bilingual Child. In: Romanowski, P., Jedynak, M. (eds) Current Research in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Education, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92396-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92396-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92395-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92396-3
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)