Bilingual children breaking the rules?

[Lorraine Rice]

I am currently noting (for future study) the first
words and phrases produced by my identical twin sons
in their two native languages, French and English. I
have recently been struck by an odd phenomenon, and
was idly wondering about it. Although it is generally
acknowledged that children have a highly consistent
word order in expressing relationships of actors,
objects, actions etc, my children seem to be reversing
this order in some two-word phrases. Instead of the
expected "Papa gone", we get a mixture of this and
"gone Papa", for example. I suppose that it might be
the influence from the French structure, in which they
frequently hear me produce sentences like, "Il est
parti, papa!". Is this a likely explanation?

If anyone were also able to provide me with some
recent references on the topic of child bilingualism,
twin language development or other related subjects, I
would be grateful. I live far from the world of recent
publications, and of course older publications only
cite even older material...

Lorraine Rice

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