reverse mutual exclusivity?

[Madalena Cruz-Ferreira]

Dear Marnie,

I've noticed a similar phenomenon in my data. My children deliberately distorted similar-sounding words in their different languages in order to make them maximally different, starting at the one-word stage. They did this by manipulating segments and/or prosody. I discuss a few examples in a paper published in the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics that I can send electronically to you, if you want. More detail is in my book _Three is a Crowd?_ (Multilingual Matters, 2006), especially chapters 5, 6 and 10.
I find this very, very interesting. If your colleague (or you!) should investigate this further, please let me know?
Best

Madalena

======================================
Madalena Cruz-Ferreira
Dept. English Language and Literature
National University of Singapore
ellmcf at nus.edu.sg
http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/ellmcf/ 
======================================


-----Original Message-----
From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
[mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org]On Behalf Of Marnie Arkenberg
Sent: Monday, 20 March, 2006 10:35 PM
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: reverse mutual exclusivity?


Dear Info-CHILDES,
   A colleague mentioned that her bilingual 3 year old refuses to accept the notion that an object can have the same same in both English and Hebrew. Can anyone guide me towards literature that discusses this sort of thing?
Cheers,
Marnie Arkenberg

Marnie E. Arkenberg, Ph.D.
NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow
254F Baker Hall
Department of Psychology
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 268-7986