Bilingual Substrate

8/13/2019 Bilingual Substrate

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Bilingual first language acquisition

and the mechanisms

of substrate influence

Stephen Matthews,

University of Hong Kong

&

Virginia Yip,Chinese University of Hong Kong


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1. Theoretical background

Linguists who study language contact often

seek to describe changes at the level of

linguistics systems in isolation and

abstraction from speakers. Sometimes theytend to treat the outcome of bilingual

interaction in static rather than dynamic terms,

and lose sight of the fact that the bilingualindividual is the ultimate locus of language

contact(Romaine 1996: 573, our emphasis)


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1.1 Mechanisms of contact-induced

language change (Thomason 2001)1. Code-switching

2. Code alternation

3. Passive familiarity

4. Negotiation (approximation)

5. Second language acquisition strategies(interference/transfer)

6. Bilingual first language acquisition

7. Deliberate decision (language planning/engineering)

Synergy: in situations of widespread

bi-/multilingualism, any combination of these factors

could be operating.


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Thomason's example of bilingual first

language acquisition

In bilingual acquisition of French and German,frequencies of some French word orders areaffected, relative to monolingual children

Also in French/Dutch (Hulk & van der Linden1996)

(1) live lire (Anouk, 2;05;20)

book read

(2) Anouk riz manger (Anouk, 2;05;20)

Anouk rice eat-INFIN


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subjects exposed to Cantonese andEnglish from birth in one parent one

language families longitudinal data for Timmy (1;5-3;6),

Sophie (1;06-3;0), Kathryn (3;6-4;6) andLlywelyn (2;0-3;04)

Total of 191 tagged files in 2 languages

special features: digital audio and videodemo files

The Hong Kong Bilingual

Child Language Corpus
http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/My%20Documents/cancorphp/getmsg.htmlhttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/My%20Documents/cancorphp/getmsg.htmlhttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/My%20Documents/cancorphp/getmsg.htmlhttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/My%20Documents/cancorphp/getmsg.htmlhttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/My%20Documents/cancorphp/getmsg.html


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Corpus information

project homepage:

http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ils/home/

bilingual.htm corpus available at CHILDES (Child

Language Data Exchange System )

archive:http://childes.psy.cmu.edu
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ils/home/bilingual.htmhttp://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ils/home/bilingual.htmhttp://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ils/home/bilingual.htmhttp://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ils/home/bilingual.htmhttp://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ils/home/bilingual.htm


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Subject Information

Subjects

(Name)

Native language of parents Age span during

Study

Mother Father

Timmy Cantonese English 1;05.20-3;06.25

Kathryn English Cantonese 2;09.23-4;06.07

Llywelyn Cantonese English 1;06.00-3;05.28

Sophie Cantonese English 1;06.00-4;00.00Charlotte Cantonese English 1;05.10-3;06.14


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1.2 Mechanisms of creole formation

1.2.1 Theories invoking child first language

acquisition

The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis

(Bickerton 1981, 1984)

Little discussion of the role of bilingual

children


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Theories invoking adult second language

acquisition

Contact ecology: attestations of transfers

from substrate languages in several creoles

are among convincing evidence against the

central role of childrenin theirdevelopment. (Mufwene 2001: 131)

Assumption of these approaches: adults, notchildren are agents of substrate influence


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A role for bilingual children?

Additional possibilities: transfer in bilingual

first language acquisition (BFLA) and/or child

second language acquisition (child SLA)

Transfer is relatively well understood in adultSLA, still poorly understood in BFLA (e.g.

directionality of transfer, determining factors)

The epistemological relationship anddemarcation between BFLA and child SLA

remain unclear (Yip, to appear)


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2.1 Factors determining transfer

Language dominance: development ofLanguage A is ahead of that of Language B.Can be measured by Mean Length of

Utterance (MLU). e.g. wh-in situ interrogatives develop early in

Cantonese and are transferred to English inCantonese-dominant children (Yip &

Matthews 2000):(3) You go to the what? (Timmy, 2;05)

(4) Daddy, you writing what? (Sophie, 3;5)


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Dominance of Cantonese reflected in Timmys

MLUw between age 2;012;08.


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2.1.2 Input ambiguity

sentences in the adult input to children mayallow more than one analysis, one based onlanguage A and one based on languageB

(5) Input sentence: I want to eat

English (target) analysis: I want to eat (something)

Chinese-based analysis: [TOPICi] I want to eat [xi]

(= I want to eat this/that)-> This ambiguity allows the child to hypothesize that

English allows null objects, like Cantonese


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2.Bilingual first language acquisition

= both languages acquired simultaneously frombirth (De Houwer 1990, 1995)

Possible courses of development (bothattested):

(i) Separate development (De Houwer 1990)(ii) Interactive development (Dpke 2000,

Yip & Matthews 2000, among others)


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Null objects in bilingual data

(6) You get, I eat (Timmy, 2;02;03)

[father takes chocolates off shelf]

(7) Daddy: Timmy, do you want the rest of this?

Timmy: I dont want. (2;07;07)

(8) Dont break! [cautioning the adult not to

break a toy cup] (Sophie, 3;06;06)


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2.2 Resolution of transfer-based structures

It is not the case that errors or innovations in achilds grammar survive into adulthood. Instead,childrens errors which presumably manifest agrammar (or lexicon) different from that of theirparents tend to disappear in a later phase oflanguage acquisition (Croft 2000: 47)

Dodevelopmental errors/innovations go away? How?

Is this the result of normal acquisition processes,

orof schooling and literacy? What happens when a community of such bi/multi-

lingual children develops?


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Possible outcomes in the individual

1. Preemption: e.g. wh-movement largely replaces

wh-in situ between age 3-4

2. Persistence: e.g. null objects persist to age 7

and beyond (Yip & Matthews 2000)

(9) Alicia: I want to put. [bringing jar of face cream]

Sophie: You want to put on your face? (6;11;10)Alicia: Yah. (2;08;10)


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Differential outcomes in the individual

These differential outcomes

(preemption vs. persistence) are

determined in part by considerations of

learnability,

e.g. input ambiguity favours null objects(Yip & Matthews 2003)


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Possible outcomes in a speech community

1. Replacement: transfer-based structure(s)ironed out by adult community

2. Persistence: transfer-based structure

persists as innovation in adult usage

These differential outcomes must bedetermined in part by language-internalconsiderations such as learnability, and inpart by external factors such as ecology(Mufwene 2001)


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Transfer in bilingual development and

substrate influence

Interaction of English with southern Chinese

dialects leads to similar results in Singapore

Colloquial English (SCE) and in Hong Kong

bilingual children


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Singapore Colloquial

English (SCE, Gupta1994)

Hong Kong bilingual

children (Yip & Matthews

2000)

Is it come? (EB, 7:8) Is it works? (SP, 3;8)

And I go where? (YB, 4;6) Put in where? SP, 3;8)

My this can change one

ah (EB, 5;11)

The... blow the flute that

one? (SP, 5;3)

You put there, then how to

go up? (MB)

Eat so much this, then got

sore throat. (SP, 3;3)

John give his boss scold Here is give Timmy

scratch (SP, 3;6)


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alreadymarking perfective aspect

(10) She wake already. (Sophie 2;06)

(11) He go already he go already the

monster (Sophie 2;10;21)

(12) Keoi seng-zo laa (adult Cantonese)

S/he wake-PFV PRT

Shes woken up


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alreadymarking perfective aspect in SCE

(Bao 1995, 2002)

(13) I wash my hand already

I have washed/washed my hand

(14) The tongue red already

The tongue has turned/turned red/

*The tongue was red

Despite the syntactic difference, V-le and S-le in

Chinese and S already in Singapore English, thesubstrate source of alreadyis unmistakable.

(Bao 2002: 9)


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giveas passive marker

(15) Here is give Timmy scratch.

(points to scratched leg) (Sophie, 3;06)

(16) Daddy, I already give the mosquito to

bite (shows bite on tummy) (Sophie, 3;09)


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oneas a nominalizer in relative clauses

(20) Sophie: I also want.

Father: What do you want?

Sophie: Timmy said that one. (3;08;21)[the child has been asking for a piggy-bank]

(21) Ngo jiu Timmy gong go go (adult Cantonese)I want Timmy talk that CL

I want what Timmy was talking about


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Relative clauses with oneas head in adult

SCE (Alsagoff and Ho 1998)

(22) They grow one very sweet.

The fruit that they grow is very sweet.

(23) Don't have car one, I don't want.

I don't want [a man] who does not own a car.


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give-passives in SCE

(Bao & Wee 1999)

(17) John give his boss scold

(18) John bei loubaan laau (adult Cantonese)

John give boss scold

John is scolded by his boss


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4. Discussion

SCE: (almost) a creole? (Ho & Platt 1993,

Gupta 1994, Bao 2002)

- no longer an issue if creole is not seen as a

unique structural type (cf. e.g. Corne 1999,

DeGraff 2001, Mufwene 2001)


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Ecology in which SCE developed (Gupta

1994: 33)

(i) English-medium schools

(ii) Racially mixed districts (in which most of theseschools were located) including Eurasians, Jews,Armenians and Straits Chinese

Both these ecologies involve child bilingualism,hence possibility of transfer in BFLA/child SLA; (ii)may resemble circumstances of creole formation,e.g. Baba Malay in Malacca (Ansaldo & Matthews1999).


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5. Implications

Bilingual first language acquisition is a

possible route for substrate influence, both in

general and specifically in creole formation.

Parallel phenomena in bilingual development(HK) and in Singapore Colloquial English

(SCE) illustrate this possibility.


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Implications: BFLA and/or SLA?

These effects occur alongside classical secondlanguage acquisition, e.g. Chinese substratefeatures are incorporated into SCE in the course ofboth bilingual first language and child/adult second

language acquisition. In principle such effects are only possible in cases

where interactive development occurs; theconditions for this to occur still need further

investigation. Language dominance and inputambiguity both appear to be factors favoringinteraction (Yip & Matthews 2000).


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Implications: creole formation

Balanced development with little or no

interaction is also possible, at least in ideal

circumstances where the input from both

languages is both balanced (resulting in noclear pattern of language dominance) and

separate (e.g. by domains of use). But such

ideal situations are most unlikely to prevail in

complex contact ecologies such as those of

creole formation.


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Acknowledgements

Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC),

ref. nos. HKU336/94H,CUHK 4002/97H,CUHK4014/02H and CUHK Direct Grant

01/02 Special thanks to members of our research

team, especially Huang Yue-Yuan, PengLing-Ling, Bella Leung, Simon Huang Pai-

Yuan, Gene Chu, Chen Ee San, Michelle Liand Uta Lam for their dedication andcommitment at various stages of the project.

Bilingual Substrate

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