CFP: Bilingual Acquisition in Early Childhood

[Francis Hult]

http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/lin/conference/baec/

 

An international conference on Bilingual Acquisition in Early Childhood will be held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from 11-12 December 2008. The conference is organized by the newly established Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre at CUHK.

 

The conference aims to draw together researchers interested in the linguistic development of children exposed to two or more languages in childhood. In many parts of the world including Asia, there has been a growing awareness of the significance of raising bilingual children and investigating their language development. We hope to invite papers which address childhood bilingualism involving any combination of languages, especially with an East Asian language. The processes and pathways of development in bilingual children are often more complex than those in monolingual children. We explore the impact of the multitude of factors that contribute to the complexities in bilingual acquisition including properties of the dual input, balance of input, and affinities or contrasts between the language pairs being acquired. Contributions from any theoretical framework are welcome. 

 

We hope to promote the study of childhood bilingualism in diverse environments and communities, providing a forum for the exchange of views between researchers working with bilingual children and contributing to a better understanding of language acquisition and childhood bilingualism. 

 

Our Keynote Speakers:

Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University)

Language Learning in Childhood and Adulthood: How different are they? 

William O'Grady (University of Hawai'i) 

Scope in Two Languages 

Johanne Paradis (University of Alberta) 

Are Bilingual Children Slower to Acquire Language than Monolingual Children? 

Yasuhiro Shirai (University of Pittsburgh) 

The Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Marking by Cantonese-English Bilingual Children 

 

We invite proposals for paper presentations on relevant topics including (but not restricted to) the following: 

 

Bilingual acquisition of East Asian languages 

Bilingual acquisition in special populations 

Bilingual first language acquisition 

Child second language acquisition 

Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual development 

Input studies in bilingual acquisition 

 

Deadline for submission of abstract: June 15, 2008

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