Bilingual children: models, measures and studies

[Marilyn Vihman]

Dear Martha,

I would agree with Fred Genesee's remark about the shift to peers as
models. One source of information about this would be the work of D.
Payne, a student of Labov's, who looked at the influence of the peer
group on phonetic and phonological aspects of (monolingual,
bidialectal) children who had moved from New York to the suburbs of
Philadelphia (one paper is in Labov ed, Locating Lang. in Time and
Space, 1980).

Another hint of the time of onset of peer influence can be found in
my paper on 'Conversations between a pair of bilingual siblings' in
Intl. J. of biling., 2 (1998), in which I report the increasing use
of code-switched whole English phrases in an Estonian home context by
my daughter after she began primary school, at age 6, despite the
fact that she had been in English-language nursery school and
kindergarten from the age of 23 mos; a similar shift to use of longer
English phrases code-switched into Estonian could be seen in the
speech of her younger brother at about the same age. I suggest that
this reflects the onset of a shift to peer models at about age 6.

FInally, with regard to L2 in kindergartners, I recall a paper by
Saville-Troike reported in JChLg in the early 1990s on Asian children
in San Francisco kindergartens, whose apparent 'silent period' of a
few months turned out to actually include a good deal of
practice-for-self of the new L2, based on recordings in the school
setting.

-marilyn vihman

>These questions are primarily aimed at Frank Genesee, but - needless to
>say - anybody else with a suggestion or an answer are invited to reply.
>During the discussion of what is normal language development of bilingual
>children, Genesee said that it was his impression that "at a certain age"
>bilingual children used peers as models rather than adults. Also if this
>means gravitating towards another language than that preferred in the home.
>My question is: Do you - or anybody else - have references on that? At what
>age should this be valid? - It is also my impression but I need
>documentation.
>
>Another question concerns the point about vocabulary measures which should
>be particularly sensitive to (amount of) exposure. What other types of
>meaure are available?
>
>My last question is more of a general kind. Does anybody know of studies of
>second language acquisition of kindergarteners in natural settings?
>
>Thanks for any suggestion!
>
>Martha Karrebaek
>
>.


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