Issues in bilingual acquisition: a case study

Abstract

This thesis examines issues related to the relationship between the two languages comprised in a bilingual child's linguistic competence. The data investigated come from a longitudinal case study of an English-French bilingual child (2;00.04 to 4;02.25). The first topic under investigation relates to the reasons behind code switching as well as the constraints on the manifestations of this phenomenon. These constraints result in morphosyntactic combinations that can or cannot occur in code-switched utterances. The data are also analyzed from the perspective of the acoustic manifestation of stress in each language. The results of this acoustic investigation suggest that the child has two separate stress systems and that she has mastered the main phonetic cues related to the manifestation of stress in each language. Overall, this study supports claims in the current literature that bilingual speakers do indeed have separate grammars in their linguistic competence.