35.2112, Review: Korean-English Bilingualism in Early Childhood: Park-Johnson (2024)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-2112. Wed Jul 24 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.2112, Review: Korean-English Bilingualism in Early Childhood: Park-Johnson (2024)

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Date: 25-Jul-2024
From: Teresa Ong [ongtesa at gmail.com]
Subject: Applied Linguistics: Park-Johnson (2024)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35.963

AUTHOR: Sunny K. Park-Johnson
TITLE: Korean-English Bilingualism in Early Childhood
SUBTITLE: A Longitudinal Investigation of Development
SERIES TITLE: Bilingual Education & Bilingualism
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2024

REVIEWER: Teresa Ong

SUMMARY

Spanning nine chapters, Korean-English Bilingualism in Early
Childhood: A Longitudinal Investigation of Development was written by
Sunny K. Park-Johnson based on a longitudinal investigation of four
Korean-English children who were born and grew up in a Korean-speaking
household in the United States.

In Chapter One, the author introduces two theoretical frameworks of
heteroglossic and generative linguistics, which were used to
conceptualise the study. Heteroglossic framework (Bakhtin, 1992) views
multilingualism as the norm and multilingual speakers as
linguistically complete individuals. Within this context, the
framework, therefore values speakers’ unique and valuable multilingual
contributions to the society. On the other hand, Chomsky (1995) states
that in generative linguistic theory, all human languages are regarded
as equally complex and developed and regulated by an innate internal
structure within the human brain, known as Universal Grammar. The
theory also states that all languages have their own linguistic rules
regardless of their social status. The author subsequently provides
definitions for some useful terms, such as native speaker, bilingual,
and heritage speaker.

Chapter Two outlines the types of data used for analysis and the
sociolinguistic profile of the four children. The first type is the
close-up data of morphological and syntactic development, which were
collected through naturalistic play interactions across two and a half
years when the four children (two girls and two boys) began acquiring
and developing both Korean and English. The second type is the
reflections data, consisting of interviews with two of the older
children when they began their young adulthood in the university. When
data collection took place, the youngest child in the study, Dan, was
aged 2;4 while the oldest child, Sarah, was aged 5;3. Two other
siblings were Ben, aged 3;4, and Sandy, aged 4;8. Korean was spoken as
the main home language in both families while English was learnt in
school. The children also received their language input through weekly
attendance of a Korean church where Korean was spoken among the older
generation while English was used among the children themselves.

Chapters Three and Four present findings related to Korean morphology
and syntax. For the Korean morphology, the author examines four areas
of grammar that potentially pose difficulty to any Korean learners:
(i) case marking and ellipsis, (ii) nominal classifiers, (iii)
transitivity marking, and (iv) sentence final markers. Case markers
are challenging to use due to their variable nature while transitivity
markers and nominal classifiers show difficulty because the contexts
which they have invoked are uncommon. Sentence final markers have huge
diversities. The analysis shows that all four children demonstrated
difficulties with acquiring each of the areas but managed to overcome
them and subsequently, improved and excelled over time. For Korean
syntax, the author studies the children’s development of word order
and null pronominals, which are expected to have high frequency in
their grammar. The analysis reveals that the four bilingual children
demonstrated proficiency with word order and prodrop. Despite showing
proficiency in early childhood, the author states that the findings
are not sufficient to conclude that the children will continue to
excel in their competency with Korean word order and prodrop.
Nevertheless, they may impact their continuous development of Korean
alongside English.

Chapters Five and Six illustrate findings related to English
morphology and syntax. For the English morphology, articles and verb
morphology are investigated because both areas do not exist in Korean
or are significantly different. The analysis exhibits the children’s
difficulties in acquiring both English articles and verb morphology
but at the end of the study, they demonstrated improvement with a high
accuracy for articles (94%-98%) and quite high accuracy for verb
morphology (76.9%-94.4%). These findings indicate that their
development of English was not hindered by the presence of their
heritage language, Korean. For the English syntax, the children’s
development of four areas – wh-movement, subject auxiliary movement,
word order, and pronominal use – are examined. The results reveal that
the children’s English development was minimally impacted by Korean.
They did not show difficulties with wh-movement and had near ceiling
performance for word order and pronunciation. The only area the
children struggled with was subject auxiliary movement, but they still
managed to perform at the targeted rate. Therefore, the author
summarises that although bilingual children developed differently from
monolingual children, the four children still acquired English in a
timely manner and that bilingualism did not impact their acquisition
of both languages.

Based on the children’s development of Korean and English, it is
understood that the process is complex and intermingled between both
languages. Following that, in Chapter Seven, the author looks at the
role played by code-switching in the children’s language development.
The findings reveal several trends. First, the children code-mixed
within the same utterances but the structure closely resembled Korean
syntax. Second, they usually inserted single-word English into Korean
utterances. When children did so, their purpose was to soften their
tone so that they would appear less disrespectful when complaining.
Third, although the children gradually received more input in English
through schooling, their Korean-English code-mixing remained
consistent across the data collection period. The author concludes
that the use of code-mixing does not indicate the children’s decreased
proficiency but demonstrates that bilingualism is a rather complicated
language development process.

As the study is a longitudinal investigation, Chapter Eight provides
two of the oldest children’s reflections of their language development
journey after ten years. Three themes are identified in their
reflections: (i) Korean language proficiency, identity and belonging,
(ii) shame, and (iii) finding themselves. Both Sarah and Sandy found
themselves, continued to use Korean in their adult life, and had
excellent proficiency in it despite their poor writing skills. Through
their continuous usage, they felt that their heritage language
provided them with a sense of belonging as they could engage in
conversations at home and in Korean restaurants as well as enjoy
Korean entertainment. Additionally, being a Korean speaker gave them a
sense of pride and identity. However, during their childhood and
adolescence period, they experienced shame and pain, embarrassed and
alienated because they were considered as part of a minoritised group
in the school. Such feelings caused them to want to hide their Korean
identity. To overcome those negative feelings, they attended weekly
Korean school and socialised with peers who appreciated their culture.
These activities helped in restoring their pride, leading them to feel
that being a bilingual was a blessing. These reflections provided by
Sarah and Sandy indicate that society has changed over time and the
people in the United States have begun to accept the Korean culture
more.

In Chapter Nine, the author concludes the study by summarising major
findings and providing implications for three areas of linguistic
theory, identity, and education. The Korean and English morphological
and syntactic analysis indicates that, based on the four children’s
performance over a period of two years plus, they know both languages
far more than expected, in terms of both breadth and depth. Despite
their proficiency, the author hypothesises that the two older
children’s sharing of their linguistic insecurity through their poorer
performance in writing is largely due to the close relationship of
language serving as a symbol of heritage identity and belonging. In
relation to education purposes, the note to highlight is that heritage
grammars may differ from monolingual grammars and should not be
assumed as wrong despite having differences because such issues
indicate the complexity of language development.

EVALUATION

This book advances the field of bilingualism by providing a
longitudinal account of Korean and English acquisition in early
childhood, where both languages are distinctly different. It is
valuable for researchers investigating heritage language development
in early childhood, particularly those studying participants who were
born and grew up in a minoritised environment. The book provides rich
data in comparing both heritage and dominant languages and shows how
useful the language development journey was to the children when they
entered adulthood.

The author’s approach to the analysis is lucid and comprehensible
through the three-part major categorisation of the chapters. It draws
on detailed transcripts from weekly interactions with the children
over a period of two and half years, establishing a strong foundation
for the different aspects of Korean and English morphology and syntax.
The analysis tracks the children’s progress from the start of learning
each aspect in Korean and English to their mastery through statistical
presentation. It also provides examples from the children’s
interactions, which are vital for a holistic comprehension.

Subsequently, the author presents an analysis and discussion on a
timely issue – code-switching – which is crucial for, and
interconnected with, bilingual development. Through the discussion, it
is understandable that vocabulary does not measure a bilingual
speaker’s grammatical proficiency because vocabulary is learned based
on a specific context. For example, when a child learns maths in
Korean, they will learn those mathematical terms in Korean. Hence, not
knowing those Korean mathematical terms does not indicate that the
child is poor in their heritage language. In other words, the lexical
breadth and depth cannot be used to measure the morphological and
syntactic development of a bilingual individual.

What is unique in this book is the inclusion of reflections from the
two of the four children when they grew up. Most studies did not have
the opportunity to follow up with the examined children, and therefore
the reflections in this book inform us how the children felt during
their childhood days and how speaking a heritage language defines
their adulthood identity. They also tell us how the society is
changing, i.e., whether it is better or worse in accepting bilingual
speakers.

Overall, through a thorough and stimulating discussion of four
Korean-English children’s early childhood language journey, this book
benefits those studying or researching bilingualism and heritage
language acquisition . As the author mentioned, the book is lacking
data looking at middle childhood to early adolescence, which would
provide a fuller picture of heritage language development.
Nevertheless, the informed analysis has presented a thought-provoking
dialogue that is useful in conducting interdisciplinary studies.

Note that there is a minor typographic error in page 19 related to the
siblings’ pairing.

REFERENCES

Bakthin, M. (1992). The dialogic imagination: Four Essays. University
of Texas Press.

Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. MIT Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

As a past research fellow, Teresa Wai See Ong will soon begin her role
as a learning support specialist at the Singapore University of Social
Sciences in Singapore. She has published widely in areas related to
language maintenance and language shift, language planning and policy,
linguistic landscape, and child development. Her next project involves
researching student needs in tertiary education.



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