studies on

[Annick De Houwer]

Dear Lynn,

Given that this young child has been in a new language situation for 11
months one would, I think, normally expect at least a start with using the
new language (what's the comprehension situation?) - even if you take into
account emotional trauma prior to adoption, or trauma caused by the
adoption. In a loving and caring environment, especially if the child was in
an orphanage situation before, by this time one would expect healing to the
extent that the child can 'open up' to this new world and start to wish to
communicate.
But in this specific L2 exposure situation (not bilingual, since I assume
input in Chinese stopped at the time of adoption) for any of this to happen
it would be ESSENTIAL for the child to have very frequent and regular input
on a one-to-one adult-child basis. I agree with Marilyn Vihman and Lynne
Hewitt that the exposure situation is so different from any studies in the
literature that some delay would be expected. Also we cannot assume that in
this clearly L2 situation the same 'rules' hold as for one/two L1
acquisition with continued input from birth. Certainly it is not clear to me
how the 50 word criterion for this toddler on the basis of only 11 months of
exposure would necessarily be a benchmark here given 1. that any words
acquired earlier in Chinese would by now be completely lost, and 2. that the
50 word point is often not reached by children with, say, 20 months of
monolingual English exposure (and without the emotional traumas involved in
adoption and being raised in an orphanage without perhaps much bonding or
language input). The work by Hart and Risley (1995) on the cumulative nature
of vocabulary development shows just how important frequency of exposure is
particularly with respect to lexical learning. It is not even sure how words
should be counted in a real bilingual situation and what should be expected
from children with regular exposure to 2 languages before age 2 (see a paper
by Barbara Pearson on Assessing lexical development in bilingual babies and
toddlers in the Special Issue on Bilingual Acquisition of the Int'l J of
Bilingualism that I guest-edited in 1998).
Yet I think it would be wise to have tests carried out - just to make sure
there are no language external factors that play a role here.

Best--
Annick De Houwer


****************
Annick De Houwer, PhD
Associate Professor

UIA-PSW
University of Antwerp
Universiteitsplein 1
B2610-Antwerpen
Belgium

tel +32-3_8202863
fax +32-3-8202882
email annick.dehouwer at ua.ac.be



> Van: Lynn Santelmann <santelmannl at pdx.edu>
> Datum: Tue, 15 May 2001 09:23:42 -0700
> Aan: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
> Onderwerp: studies on
>
> A colleague of mine recently asked me for advice because her 25 month
> daughter that she adopted from China at age 16 months is not yet using much
> language. Her pediatrician has recommended a hearing test. She wondered if
> there were studies on L2 learners like this. I know of work with older
> children (preschoolers), but am at a loss for work on younger children.
>
> Can anyone help?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Lynn Santelmann
> **************************************************************
> Lynn Santelmann, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Applied Linguistics
> Portland State University
> P.O. Box 751
> 239 East Hall
> Portland, OR 97201
>
> Phone: (503) 725-4140
> Fax: (503) 725-4139
> e-mail: santelmannl at pdx.edu (last name + FIRST initial)
> http://web.pdx.edu/~dbls/
> ***************************************************************
>
>